An A.D. White Professors-at-Large keynote public event

Jordan Ellenberg (Professor of Mathematics, Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison; A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell) will present the public talk, “From mosquitoes to ChatGPT — the birth and strange life of the random walk,” on Wednesday, March 15, at 5pm, 196 Statler Hall. This event is open to all ages.

Abstract: Between 1905 and 1910 the idea of the random walk, now ever-present in applied math, was invented simultaneously and independently by multiple people in multiple countries for completely different purposes, from mosquito control to physics to finance to winning a theological argument (really!)  Professor Ellenberg 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 thinking about artificial intelligence.  This talk will be non-technical but should have something new to offer even if you already know what a Markov process is.

Jordan Ellenberg is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Ellenberg is both a world-class scholar of mathematics and a world-class communicator. His mathematical expertise focuses primarily on arithmetic algebraic geometry and number theory. He is the author of Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else (2021), about the ubiquity of geometry in modern life, and How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking (2014), a New York Times hardcover bestseller. His debut novel, The Grasshopper King (2003), has been described as “a profoundly absurd campus satire about immortality, obsession, obscurity and true love.”

This event is part of an A.D. White Professors-at-Large (ADW-PAL) visit and is co-sponsored by the Dept. of Math. Ellenberg visits the Cornell campus in Ithaca as an ADW-PAL March 13-17. Ellenberg was elected as an ADW-PAL in 2019. His appointment runs through 2025.