When theprecision of mathematics meets the messiness of the world of people

 Almost all mathematicians are attracted to thesubject by its certainty and precision. It’s one of the most finely sharpenedblades in the human cognitive armory, and it rules supreme in many parts ofPhysics and Engineering. It is almost as precise when applied to the activitiesof large groups of people, though the precision then is a statistical one thatapplies to the group as a whole.

But can math be useful whenapplied to human activities on a more local scale? The answer is “yes”, but thecontribution mathematics can make shifts from “providing precise answers tospecific questions” to “providing data that helps a domain expert make adecision”.

These newer uses of mathematicscan be traced back at least as far as the early days of probability theory, butbecame prevalent much more recently when computers enabled rapid computationsof large datasets. Applications in the financial markets,manufacture, retailsales, transportation, and workplace design are ubiquitous. I’ll give twoexamples I have worked on: developing a framework to understand informationflow and using that framework to analyze communication breakdown in theworkplace—work that eventually found applications in intelligence analysis.

Dr. Keith Devlin is a co-founder and Executive Director of the university'sH-STAR institute, a co-founder of the Stanford mediaXresearch network, and aSenior Researcher at CSLI. He is a World Economic Forum Fellow, a Fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of theAmerican MathematicaSociety. His current research is focused on the use ofdifferent media to teach and communicate mathematics to diverse audiences. Inthis connection, he is a co-founder and President of an educational technologycompany, BrainQuake, that creates mathematics learning video games. He alsoworks on the design of information/reasoning systems for intelligence analysis.Other research interests include: theory of information, models of reasoning,applications of mathematical techniques in the study of communication, andmathematical cognition. He has written 33 books and over 80 published researcharticles. Recipient of the Pythagoras Prize, the Peano Prize, the Carl SaganAward, and the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics Communications Award. In2003, he was recognized by the California State Assembly for his"innovative work and longtime service in the field of mathematics and itsrelation to logic and linguistics." He is "the Math Guy" onNational Public.