Raphy Coifman: "Networks and Mathematics"

source: Yale University     2015年1月15日
Math Mornings is a series of public lectures aimed at bringing the joy and variety of mathematics to students and their families. Speakers from Yale and elsewhere talk about aspects of mathematics that they find fascinating or useful. The talks will usually be accessible to students from 7th grade and up, although occasionally some familiarity with high-school subjects will be helpful. Math Mornings lectures will take place on three Sundays each semester, at Davies Auditorium, 10 Hillhouse Avenue.
Math Mornings is partially funded by grants from the National Science Foundation. It is part of Yale's Science Outreach program. To find out more see http://yale.edu/scienceoutreach

On Sunday, October 12th, Professor Raphy Coifman gave his talk on Networks and Mathematics. This is an elementary talk to illustrate the remarkable powers of random walks on Networks. It does not require prior knowledge beyond middle school math. This talk describes a range of examples of Networks and their ubiquity in our life, from social networks to information , economic, political, weather and communication networks. Usually such networks can be organized as mathematical graphs, on which certain transitions,or transactions, or exposures are being quantified. We'll see that a network based computational geometric approach for the sorting and organization of data and information leads to insights, understanding and predictions for complex systems. As specific examples we'll describe the network of characters in a body of literature, the network of Congress, a network of romantic relations in a High School, and many others.