Oxford Mathematician Karin Erdmann specializes in the areas of algebra known as representation theory (especially modular representation theory) and homological algebra (especially Hochschild cohomology). Here she discusses her latest work.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, some minor algebraic investigations grabbed the interest of a small group of American mathematicians.  The problems they worked on had little impact at the time, but they may nevertheless have had a subtle effect on the way in which mathematics has been taught over the past century.

90% of the world’s data have been generated in the last five years. A small fraction of these data is collected with the aim of validating specific hypotheses. These studies are led by the development of mechanistic models focussed on the causality of input-output relationships. However, the vast majority of the data are aimed at supporting statistical or correlation studies that bypass the need for causality and focus exclusively on prediction.