February 11, 2022

Colloquium Topic: The Raven's Hat: Fallen Pictures, Rising Sequences, and Other Mathematical Games

This book presents a series of games that seem unsolvable – but can be solved when they are translated into mathematical terms. Each of the solutions is based on mathematical results from different fields such as algebraic topology, permutations or coding theory. Seeing how the theory enables us to solve the games reveals how beautiful and powerful mathematics can be – and it helps us to understand and never forget the underlying theory. This talk discusses examples from the book and requires no prior knowledge.

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Colloquium Speaker: Jonas Peters

Jonas Peters is a professor in statistics at the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. Previously, he has worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tuebingen and at the Seminar for Statistics, ETH Zurich. He studied Mathematics at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Cambridge. In his research, Jonas aims to infer causal relationships from different types of data and to build statistical methods that are robust with respect to distributional shifts. He seeks to combine theory, methodology, and applications (for example, in Earth system science and biology). His methodological work relates to areas such as computational statistics, causal inference, graphical models, high-dimensional statistics, and statistical testing. Jonas has received several awards, such as the Guy Medal in Bronze, the Silver Medal of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and the ASA Causality in Statistics Education Award. Since 2021, he is a member of the COPSS Leadership academy.