Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 1: Tutorial: Stochastic Processes from Financial Risk to Genetics (joint session SOE/TUT/BP/DY)

SOE 1.2: Tutorial

Sunday, September 4, 2022, 16:50–17:40, H4

Probabilities in physics, paradoxes and populations — •Tobias Galla — Instituto de Física Interdisciplinary Sistemas Complejos, IFISC (CSIC-UIB), Campus Universitat Illes Balears, E-07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain

It is notoriously hard for humans to develop a good intuition for probabilities and stochastic processes. Our brains are not able to do this naturally, and there are numerous mistakes which are easy to make. These mistakes are in fact made regularly in the press (sometimes perhaps deliberately). More worrisome, decision makers such as judges, doctors or politicians are also prone to mishandling probabilities. In this tutorial I will outline a few of these traps, and how to avoid them. I will also discuss the nature of probabilistic models of physical processes -- is there genuine randomness in the world around us? I will then present a number of instances in which physics approaches combined with stochastic modelling can make a difference. As one example, I will outline experimental and theoretical results which highlight the importance of stochastic processes in population dynamics. Other examples will include stochastic processes in genetics, the evolution of cancer and in game theory.