Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. From now until the launch of Oxford Events, new events cannot be published or edited on OxTalks while all existing records are migrated to the new platform. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period.
From 16th, Oxford Events will launch on a new website: events.ox.ac.uk, and event submissions will resume. You will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture
From Ronald Ross to ChatGPT: the birth and strange life of the random walk – Jordan Ellenberg
Wednesday 26 June 2024
5-6pm Andrew Wiles Building, Mathematical Institute, Oxford
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 external-relations@maths.ox.ac.uk 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.
