Should we close schools and workplaces now, or steadily introduce stricter social distancing measures over time? These mathematical models evaluate different approaches of flattening the curve.
Year 7 students at the International School of Helsinki, Finland, doing a sustainable development exercise with the author (top left) and fellow teacher Rachael Thrash.
Katja Lehtonen
My year of buying almost nothing saved me thousands of dollars – but also taught me valuable lessons as a teacher, including about the benefits of failure.
When politicians use selected modelling results to justify their decisions on contentious projects like Melbourne’s North East Link, the credibility of transport models suffers by association.
Vic Govt/AAP
Transport modelling has been tarnished by its use to justify the predetermined projects politicians favour. But, if used more transparently, it’s a valuable tool for planning our future cities.
You can help stop the spread of ‘fake news’ online.
Shutterstock/panuwat phimpha
Carlo Kopp, Monash University and Kevin Korb, Monash University
We used game theory to show you only need a small amount of fake news to disrupt any group discussion. But we also found a way you can fight back.
Whether it’s birds in a flock or drivers in traffic, agent-based modelling can describe complex phenomena by applying a simple set of rules to each individual’s behaviour.
Barry Sweet/EPA
Yohan Kim, University of Technology Sydney; Jay Falletta, University of Technology Sydney, and Scott Kelly, University of Technology Sydney
By identifying and applying the key rules governing the behaviour of each individual, agent-based modelling offers insights into complex phenomena like traffic jams and flocking.
A 2018 pilot project between the Public Health Agency of Canada and Advanced Symbolics will use social media posts as a resource to predict regional suicide rates.
(Shutterstock)
All earthly and celestial things emit signals. The science of signal processing, born in the 19th Century and now greatly advanced thanks to computers, allows us to better understand them.
If more people live in the Adelaide Hills, they are more likely to be exposed to bushfires.
David Mariuz/AAP
What decisions can we make today to reduce the future risk of hazards like floods and fire? Particularly in a time of climate change, modelling various plausible futures helps us plan for uncertainty.
There’s little research into origins of the geographic patterns of language diversity. A new model exploring processes that shaped Australia’s language diversity provides a template for investigators.
Maths is often a quiet contributor to problems in subjects like biology.
The moon’s Orientale impact basin, with rings. Red corresponds to ‘hills’ and blue to ‘valleys’.
Ernest Wright, NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio.)
New study suggests a 64km diameter body travelling at 15km per second created the Orientale Basin on the moon.
The Titan Supercomputer, in the US, has allowed scientists to study ice formation on wind turbines at a molecular level.
Wikimedia/Oak Ridge National LaboratoryOak Ridge National Laboratory
Developing new technologies requires time-consuming, expensive and even dangerous experiments. But now we can carry out many experiments entirely on computers using modelling.
The economic uncertainty index shows there is still a need for strong policy responses to events that shock the economy.
JUSTIN LANE/EPA
The Reserve Bank of Australia has created a new index for uncertainty in the Australian economy based on news, financial indicators and economic variables.
The original antigenic sin has made fighting diseases really difficult.
Shutterstock
It may sound overly simple, but just five processes can define us as animals: eating, metabolism, reproduction, dispersal and death. They might not seem like much, but, thanks to a mathematical model from…
From geysers to tectonic plate movements, corn syrup has the answers.
Trey Ratcliff
A decade ago, with Ross Griffiths of the Australian National University, we aimed to build a 4D model which could replicate the Earth’s tectonic processes. Now, our research has helped us understand how…
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne