The Warwick-Imperial Mathematics Conference (WIMP) will take place this weekend, on Saturday (23rd). For the timings and talk titles, see the attached itinerary. Abstracts for the student talks can be found below.
The plenary talk will be given by Professor Keith Ball, from 0930 to 1030 in *MS.02.
Title: Why is Everything so Bell-Shaped?
Abstract:
The Central Limit Theorem, which guarantees the appearance of the bell-shaped or normal curve, is one of the most fundamental principles in mathematics. It underlies much of statistics and is important in statistical mechanics, functional analysis and even number theory.
In this talk I will explain why we have a right to expect this remarkable ubiquity by analogy with the second law of thermodynamics. I will also illustrate how the normal curve turns up in geometry and how this led to a proof that the analogy with thermodynamics does indeed make sense.
The conference is free to attend for Warwick students and you don’t have to attend every talk - if you are interested in attending, it would be helpful if you could fill in this form (to help us get an idea of attendance, audience makeup and for catering purposes)!
Itinerary
