Math and the art of describing randomness

Humans brains are pattern recognition machines. Our brains, however, are not so good at dealing with randomness; we humans prefer causal explanations of observed phenomena instead. This talk explores patterns in randomness, and how recognizing these patterns can help us better deal with an uncertain world.

Biography

Stephan Dreiseitl received a Commodore 64 as a teenager in the 1980s. Ever since then, he has been fascinated by computers; an early infatuation with computer games gave way to a more mature interest in mathematics and artificial intelligence. After receiving a PhD and doing a postdoc in biomedical informatics, he is now a professor at the Hagenberg campus of the FH Upper Austria. He loves teaching mathematics and statistics as the tools for structured and abstract thinking, skills he considers essential for a wide variety of computer-related activities. On the research side, he is interested in machine learning and its application in decision support tools.