by adminnot | Mar 8, 2010
The Centre for Mathematical Social Science has been officially established as a University of Auckland departmental centre in the Department of Mathematics. It supersedes the informal Mathematical Social Science group. We look forward to the future under this more formal arrangement.
Some information from the formal document setting up the centre:
The CMSS will provide a focus for academic exchanges between social scientists working with mathematical or computational methodologies, and researchers from pure and applied mathematical disciplines who are investigating problems with relevance to social science. It will
also facilitate cross-disciplinary supervision of research students and the teaching of inter-disciplinary courses. Students of mathematical or computational disciplines will discover new areas of application; and social scientists can learn about mathematical techniques that may be useful to their own research.
Since 2005, a group from the Departments of Mathematics, Economics, Computer Science, Statistics, and Engineering Science has run a lively seminar series on mathematical social science, hosted a range of distinguished academic visitors and co-organised several Workshops.
Establishment of the CMSS recognises the growing contribution of this group to the intellectual life of the University. More importantly, we intend that the Centre will contribute to the development of the group’s inter-disciplinary research agenda and expand the scope of its
activities, especially in the area of inter-disciplinary teaching. Faculty from the Departments of Philosophy and Finance are also amongst the founding members of the Centre, and we encourage even broader participation.
CMSS Advisory Board:
Prof. James Sneyd (HOD, Mathematics, Auckland) – CHAIR
Prof. Walter Bossert (Economics, Montreal)
Prof. Steven Brams (Political Science, NYU)
Prof. Andy McLennan (Economics, UQ)
Prof. Hervé Moulin (Economics, Rice)
Prof. Dr Jörg Rothe (Mathematics/Computer Science, Dusseldorf)
Prof. Toby Walsh (Computer Science, UNSW)
Prof. Bill Zwicker (Mathematics, Union College)
by adminnot | Feb 26, 2010
Speaker: Reyhaneh Reyhani
Affiliation: Computer Science Department, The University of Auckland
Title: A general model for effects of polls on voters’ behaviour
Date: Thursday, 4 Mar 2010
Time: 3:00 pm
Location: Room 401
The influence of pre-election polls on the result of an election is a problem that many authors have discussed. In this talk, we investigate this problem with a general model for m candidates under the plurality rule. Voters cannot be completely sure about the result of polls because of coverage bias or response bias. Therefore, we consider a general distribution of uncertainty in each poll for voters. We discuss the best strategy of voters according to the information that polls give them and how the sequence of polls leads voters to a unique equilibrium. We deduce a Duvergerian equilibrium in the limit in some cases. This is joint work in progress with Javad Khazaei and Mark Wilson.
by adminnot | Jan 26, 2010
We are now reachable at cmss.auckland.ac.nz. The acronym in the domain name should be obvious, but we will wait until it is officially confirmed before posting about it.
by adminnot | Dec 12, 2009
Everyone working in the area, or just interested, is welcome to attend the workshop whose details can be found under the Meetings tab above (direct link). It promises to be very productive. Here are some details from Arkadii Slinko:
The idea is not to have it too large but at the same time to have a critical mass of interesting people and talks. At this stage the following people have expressed their intention to come:
– Edith Elkind (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
– Andy McLennan (University of Queensland)
– Joerg Rothe (University of Dusseldorf) and a group of his students
– Detlef Seese (University of Karlsruhe)
– Toby Walsh (University of NSW and NICTA)
– Mike Fellows and Fran Rosamond (University of Newcastle)
Be sure, locals are eager to annoy you with their talks as well. If you are planning to come we would love to hear about it.
We are antipodeans and are supposed to do things differently. We would like to do away with requesting full papers with complete proofs in appendices and vicious competitive refereeing. We would like to provide people with an opportunity to talk about papers which have not been written or even finished yet. Thus a 1/2 page abstract by 1 February would be great so that we can draft a preliminary programme of talks. Indicate how much time you ideally desire. Spread the rumour if you feel like doing it.
by adminnot | Oct 26, 2009
Machine for turning coffee into theorems + practitioner of the dismal science = machine for turning coffee into dismal theorems? machine for turning dismal coffee into theorems?
(Apologies for this attempt at a joke – with several staff on leave, nothing much has happened so far this semester, but we expect some interesting news before the end of the year).
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