The Edinburgh Mathematical Society (EMS) was founded in 1883 and has since become firmly established as the principal society for the Mathematical Sciences community in Scotland.
We are very disappointed with the Government’s withdrawal of their commitment of £6m over three years to fund a new National Academy focussed on Mathematical Sciences. The case for a National Academy is compelling and unchanged. We continue to support the creation of such an Academy to provide the essential connectivity between mathematicians working in academia, education, business, industry, and government […]
Chance, luck, and ignorance; how to put our uncertainty into numbers 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 […]
Perfect sampling, old and new The possibility of obtaining perfect samples efficiently from a complex probability distribution entered the consciousness of the community in the mid-nineties with the invention of `coupling from the past’ by Propp and Wilson. The study of perfect samplers of course has considerable theoretical appeal. But, in addition, their ‘self clocking’ aspect may have practical advantages. […]
Prof. Jonathan Fraser (University of St Andrews) The Sir Edmund Whittaker Memorial Prize for 2023 has been awarded to Professor Jonathan Fraser of the University of St Andrews in recognition of his outstanding research achievements.
The emergence of hydrodynamics in many-body systems One of the most important problems of modern science is that of emergence. How do laws of motion emerge at large scales of space and time, from much different laws at small scales? Hydrodynamics offers a basic but very relevant example. Molecules in air simply go along their journey following Newton’s equations. But […]
Category Theory in Epidemiology “Stock and flow diagrams” are widely used for modeling in epidemiology. Modelers often regard these diagrams as an informal step toward a mathematically rigorous formulation of a model in terms of ordinary differential equations. However, these diagrams have a precise syntax, which can be explicated using category theory. Although commercial tools already exist for drawing these […]
Navigating the Unknown: Harnessing Uncertainty in Renewable Energy and Heart Health Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) emerges as a guiding force in the turbulent sea of data-driven domains, from energy to health. This talk presents a methodology that harnesses UQ for robust renewable energy forecasting, employing a stochastic differential equation model that sails beyond the challenges of wind and solar predictability. Shifting […]
Deconstructing beta: Using mathematical models to understand disease transmission and control – (Stirling) In this talk we will look at mathematical models of infectious diseases and how we model disease transmission and hence understand disease control for a series of case studies. Starting with the simple models that you will be familiar with since covid and ending with an example […]