The 2025 Bowen Lectures will be delivered by Donald Saari, University of California, Irvine
Lecture Title: The mathematics of decision and voting theory
Abstract:
Decisions, whether to select a new colleague or a scientific approach, are central for all areas, which means that finding a reliable method is critical. But because of hidden mathematical flaws, no matter what is your preferred voting or decision method, there are times where it selected a non-optimal alternative. Motivated by mathematics of dynamical systems, representation theory, etc., we are learning that the problem is more serious than previously believed. Yet, as it will be described, a reliable, easy to use method does exist.
Biography of Speaker:
After earning his math PhD at Purdue (“Singularities of the Newtonian N-body problem”) and a post-doc at Yale, Don spent the next 32 years with the Dynamical Systems group at Northwestern University. There, when working with students in his functional analysis course, he discovered several challenging mathematical problems in the social sciences, which were added to his research interests of dynamics. In 2000, he moved to the warmer and sunnier UC Irvine, where for 14 years he was the Director of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences. He is a member of the NAS, AAAS, and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.