ACEMS 2019 Public lecture series

Professor Dianne Cook

The 2019 ACEMS Public Lecture Series showcased a wide range of topics, the first of which gave an insight into personal data management with world-renowned econometrician and ACEMS Associate Investigator Professor Dianne Cook. Di discussed how accessing data can help you to understand the world you live in – how mobile phones continuously broadcast our location details; how our household smart meter reports our electronic footprint in 30-minute chunks; and how using your credit card can generate an ad appearing in your Facebook stream. Di then described how it is possible to access both your own data, and the data of your environment. Armed with an ability to create statistical ‘plots’ of your data, you can make better sense of the world around you.

The ACEMS Public Lecture Series engages with the broader community and is designed to inspire, challenge and educate the general public via a diverse range of topics that include the latest research and findings on cutting-edge subjects in mathematics and statistics.

A total of nine public lectures were delivered in six of the Centre’s nodes. The speakers were a mix of ACEMS members, visiting professors, alumni, early-career researchers, students and associates, who shared their knowledge and expertise with engaged audiences, often concluding in dynamic Q-&-A sessions. The series also includes a pre-lecture reception providing a wonderful opportunity for the public to network with the mathematical sciences community.

NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte’s public lecture.

Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte (C) with ACEMS Chief Investigators Scott Sisson (L) and Robert Kohn (R).

The 2020 series will continue to present a diverse program of interesting and accessible lectures from leading researchers for the community and general public to ponder, understand and enjoy.

The Lectures

Date	Node	Speaker	Title and Abstract
13 Feb 2019	Monash	Professor Dianne Cook, Professor of Business Analytics at Monash, Fellow of the American Statistical Association and ACEMS Associate Investigator	How Visualisation and Open Data Can Empower You Much of the data about you, is available to you. In this talk, Monash Business School’s world-renowned econometrician and ACEMS Associate Investigator Professor Dianne Cook will discuss how accessing this data can help you understand the world you live in.
19 Mar 2019	UoA	Dennis Liu, ACEMS PhD Student, and Angus Lewis, ACEMS Masters Student, both at UoA	What do probability, disease and energy have in common? Mathematics is, and will continue to be, vital to the functioning of modern society. We hear this often in the news, from our school teachers, lecturers and careers services at universities, and from numerous industries. However, even as maths students we found it hard to imagine going from the chalkboard, to making decisions within inherently complex, real-world problems. This talk is an opportunity to help bridge this gap. We will explore real world problems that we have encountered from the energy and public health sectors, and show how mathematics is used to help make informed decisions in the face of uncertainty.
14 May 2019	UQ	Professor Dirk Kroese, ACEMS Chief Investigator at UQ	Random Stuff Randomness is all around us, from the movement of the stock markets to the atoms that form us. It can be both a source of surprise (I have just won the lottery) or of great frustration (I'm stuck in traffic again!). To better understand randomness, it is useful to perform random experiments on a computer. Such "Monte Carlo simulations" are nowadays important ingredients in many scientific investigations. Have you ever wondered how random numbers and experiments can be produced by a very non-random device such as a computer? Are you sometimes bemused by "financial experts" explaining fluctuations in share prices? Would you like to know how we can use randomness to better search for a needle in a hay stack? If so, check out Professor Dirk Kroese's Public Lecture.
11 Jun 2019	UTS	Dr Suzanne Poynton (Acting Director and Research Manager) and Dr Joanna Wang (Research Statistician), NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR)	Data science helping to create a better justice system BOCSAR uses modern data science tools to maintain a rich and dynamic database that captures information on each person who has been convicted of a criminal offence in NSW since 1994. Statistical modelling can then be applied to extract actionable information that informs policy evaluation and effective criminal justice decision-making. In a recent project, for example, recidivism rates were compared for offenders who received an intensive correction order versus those given short prison sentences. With careful modelling to properly account for the nature of the crime, the analysis can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of intensive correction orders in reducing recidivism rates.
16 Sep 2019	Monash	Professor Bob Griffiths, Emeritus Professor at Oxford University, Adjunct Professor at Monash University, and Fellow of the Royal Society of London	The Mathematics of Evolution within Species Understanding the process of evolution within species is a fundamental topic in biology, but also in mathematics. By studying and utilising the random nature of how gene frequencies change over time, mathematics has made significant contributions to our understanding of within species evolution. Moreover, these studies have motivated deep results in mathematics itself, for example, in quantifying properties of random permutations. This talk gives a non-technical overview of the two-way interaction between mathematics and population genetics.
16 Sep 2019	QUT	Dr Gentry White, QUT Senior Lecturer and ACEMS Associate Investigator	Using data to discover new insights into terrorism Terrorism is not a new phenomenon; it has existed in various forms throughout history. Despite this, it still presents a challenge to scholars and policymakers alike. Though the label terrorism is invoked frequently, there is little consensus about: a reliable definition; its causes; how it spreads; and how to prevent it. The Global Terrorism Database is an open-source publicly available database based on a published methodology containing over 180,000 records of terrorist events from 1970-2017. Using this data, we can explore issues around terrorism and discover new insights into the fundamental questions surrounding terrorism.
23 Oct 2019	UNSW	Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte, New South Wales Chief Scientist and Engineer. Hugh is an honorary fellow of the Institute of Engineers Australia (HonFIEAus), a fellow of the IEEE (FIEEE), of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA), of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) and of the Royal Society of London (FRS).	Zen and the Art of Bayesian Geology Mining companies put substantial resources and effort in to discovering, characterising and exploiting mineral deposits. At the heart of these efforts is the need to create and maintain a geological and geophysical model of an ore body based on a variety of sparse two- and three-dimensional measurements. Typically, these measurements are diverse, sparse (often very sparse) and usually provide only ambiguous interpretations of the three-dimensional ore body structure. Bayesian methods explicitly estimate probability distributions on geological models and capture the ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in geological modelling. Bayesian methods also provide a natural way of combining very diverse measurement types with typical prior expert data. Together, these methods can offer a coherent and insightful approach to framing and addressing the mineral exploitation problem.
21 Nov 2019	QUT	Dr Susanna Cramb, QUT Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation and ACEMS Associate Investigator	Cancer and you: understanding the Australian Cancer Atlas One in two Australians will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, and cancer remains a confronting diagnosis. Also confronting is the variation in diagnosis rates and survival between different neighbourhoods, as revealed by the Australian Cancer Atlas. The Cancer Atlas divided Australia into 2148 populated areas, and showed that some areas have much higher rates of cancer diagnosis than others. Sadly, some areas have lower cancer survival than others. But these patterns varied between the twenty different cancer types examined. This talk highlights the key findings from the Australian Cancer Atlas, gives insights to the methods and data used, and answers the question: "what do the results mean for you?"
21 Nov 2019	UTS	Dr Eugene Dubossarsky, Director and Principal Trainer at Presciient, and founder of ‘Data Science Sydney’	The Sydney Data Science Industry Dr Eugene Dubossarsky has been at the centre of the data science industry from its earliest days in the 2000s. In this lecture, he reflects on its inception, discusses its growth, and speculates on its future.