Stanford Mathematician to be Adjunct Professor at SDU

DIAS and FNUG/IMADA invite Dr. Keith Devlin's commencement lecture, which is titled "Can there be a (mathematically-grounded) "physics" of learning?"

Dr. Keith Devlin is an emeritus mathematician at Stanford University. Much of his current research is focused on the use of different media to teach and communicate mathematics to diverse audiences. 

When: Wednesday 13^th of September, 11.15-12.15

Where: DIAS Auditorium, Fioniavej 34, Odense Campus

All are welcome, no registration is needed.

Livestream: Youtube.com/@danishIAS

ABSTRACT
Technically, modern physics is a precisely defined model of the “physical” world and universe we live in – as perceived by our minds, augmented by various observational technologies and measurement devices. As such, it has proved enormously successful not only in increasing dramatically our understanding of the universe we live in, including what we are made of and how it works, but also in construction-, civil-, mechanical-, automotive-, aerospace- and electrical-engineering, resulting in we humans living our lives in a manner totally unlike any other creatures on Earth. Chemistry performs a similar model to support biology, medicine, and pharmacology. Can there be an analogous model that provides a framework for the social and psychological domains, including learning and education?

The answer, based on research (by many scholars) started at Stanford in the early 1980s is, “Maybe yes.” I’ll sketch a model that has already proved effective in a number of human domains (including linguistics, global-project management, office-information-systems design, intelligence analysis, and clinical psychiatry) and will speculate on potential applications to learning and education.