What's On at UWA

Followed by Cheese and wine in Maths Common Room

Abstract: We all have our doubts off and on if life is really so wonderful. But that is not what I want to address here. Watching the Jimmy Stewart movie with this title, there was one scene which captured my imagination: the Guardian Angel shows George Bailey how the world would have been without him. Personally, I never had much need to know how the world would have looked without me. However, all other things equal, how would life have been if I had lived in a different time and place, would be something of interest to me! This is the stuff of movies and fairy tales. But at least it is possible to play this as an intellectual game. I was born and raised in Germany before WW II. After getting my Ph.D. in 1962, I married a fellow mathematician and we immigrated to the US one year later, where we taught at a university until our retirements, first at Ohio State and then at Binghamton University. What would life have been if I stayed in Germany, did not get married, were born fifty or one hundred years earlier, or were born in another country? Looking at actual and potential role models over the centuries helped me answer some of these questions. In essence, it got me back to the roots of what shaped my life.

Finite geometry involves the study of finitely many objects -- points, lines, planes, etc -- in analogy with classical geometric language and concepts. The exciting aspect of finite geometry is that it often shares properties of the usual Euclidean geometry, yet the finite-ness of the geometry enables us to exchange information with cognate disciplines such as coding theory, design theory, and finite group theory. This talk is an introduction to the world of finite geometry.

We propose a model-free approach to analyse the movement of pedestrians in experiments and simulations. Using concepts from control and analysis of complex dynamical systems we set up a scheme which allows us to identify dynamical unstable signatures in pedestrian flows. These signatures are the building blocks for crowd control and soft management of people. Our approach is entirely data driven and we provide a proof of concept by field and laboratory experiments. In addition, our approach provides, based on experimental observations, quantitative benchmarks to judge the quality of mathematical models for pedestrian motion.