Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures

Mathematical models are used to inform decisions across many sectors including climate change, finance, and epidemics. But models are not perfect representations of the real world – they are partial, uncertain and often biased.  What, then, does responsible modelling look like?  And how can we apply this ethical framework to new AI modelling methods?

Erica Thompson is Associate Professor of Modelling for Decision Making at UCL’s Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP), and the author of 'Escape From Model Land' (2022).

Please email @email to register to attend in person.

The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Wednesday 25 June at 5-6pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Many of the artists that we encounter are completely unaware of the mathematics that bubble beneath their craft, while some consciously use it for inspiration. Our instincts might tell us that these two subjects are incompatible forces with nothing in common, mathematics being the realm of precise logic and art being the realm of emotion and aesthetics. But what if we’re wrong?

Marcus du Sautoy unpacks how we make art, why a creative mindset is vital for discovering mathematics, and how a fundamental connection to the natural world intrinsically links the two subjects. 

Marcus du Sautoy is a mathematician, author and broadcaster. He is Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science in Oxford.

Please email @email to register to attend in person.

The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Wednesday 11 June at 5-6pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Wound healing is a highly conserved process required for survival of an animal after tissue damage. Tannie will describe how we are beginning to use a combination of mathematics, physics and biology to disentangle some of the organising principles behind the complex orchestrated dynamics that lead to wound healing.

Tanniemola Liverpool is a Professor in the Applied Mathematics Institute of the School of Mathematics at Bristol.

Please email @email to register to attend in person.

The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Wednesday 12 March at 5-6pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Hugo will illustrate how counting can shed light on the behaviour of complex physical systems, while simultaneously revealing the need to sometimes go beyond what numbers tell us in order to unveil all the mysteries of the world around us.

Hugo Duminil-Copin is is a French mathematician recognised for his groundbreaking work in probability theory and mathematical physics. He was appointed full professor at the University of Geneva in 2014 and since 2016 has also been a permanent professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES) in France. In 2022 he was awarded the Fields Medal, the highest distinction in mathematics. 

Please email @email to register to attend in person.

The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Thursday 20 February at 5-6pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

We all have to live with uncertainty about what is going to happen, what has happened, and why things turned out how they did.  We attribute good and bad events as ‘due to chance’, label people as ‘lucky’, and (sometimes) admit our ignorance.  I will show how to use the theory of probability to take apart all these ideas, and demonstrate how you can put numbers on your ignorance, and then measure how good those numbers are. Along the way we will look at three types of luck, and judge whether Derren Brown was lucky or unlucky when he was filmed flipping ten Heads in a row.

David Spiegelhalter was Cambridge University's first Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk. He has appeared regularly on television and radio and is the author of several books, the latest of which is The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck (Penguin, September 2024).

Please email @email to register to attend in person.

The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Wednesday 11 December at 5-6pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Between 1905 and 1910 the idea of the random walk, now a major topic in applied maths, was invented simultaneously and independently by multiple people in multiple countries for completely different purposes – in the UK, the story starts with Ronald Ross and the problem of mosquito control, but elsewhere, the theory was being developed in domains from physics to finance to winning a theological argument (really!).

Jordan will tell some part of this story and also gesture at ways that random walks (or Markov processes, named after the theological arguer) underlie current approaches to artificial intelligence; he will touch on some of his own work with DeepMind and speculate about the capabilities of those systems now and in the future.

Jordan Ellenberg is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of best-selling works of non-fiction and fiction, and has written and lectured extensively for a general audience about the wonders of mathematics for over fifteen years.

Please email @email to register to attend in person.

The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Thursday 18 July at 5-6pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.