Social Physics
Description
Social Physics: The dynamics of human behaviour and economy
The study association for Applied Physics "Johannes Diderik van der Waals" is organising a symposium in the Black Box at Eindhoven University of Technology on Tuesday 18 December 2012.
The symposium will deal with sociophysics and econophysics, interesting topics that often remain underexposed. Socio-physics is the application of physical models and ideas to groups of people. Sometimes surprising insights come from research in this direction, such as the work of Roy Henderson who measured that the velocity distribution of students and children corresponds to the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, and that children possess more kinetic energy than students.
Nowadays, much research in sociophysics focuses on the dynamics of opinion distribution and election results.
In econophysics, on the contrary, people try to predict the behaviour of markets using physics. This involves, for example, the flow of money between countries, the evolution of stock market prices and predicting crises. The field is also called "statistical finance", referring to its origins in statistical physics
In the morning programme, Diego Garlaschelli and Frank Witte will talk about topics from econophysics. Socio-physics will be the subject of lectures by Timoteo Carletti and Serge Galam, labelled by some as "the father of socio-physics".
For the afternoon programme, a choice can be made between a workshop on econophysics, a workshop on socio-physics or a focus session. on econophysics.
KIVI NIRIA members are welcome.
Location
Eindhoven University of Technology
The Black Box
Organiser
Technical Physics
Study association Van der Waals
Name and contact details for information
Daan van Vugt
Study association Van der Waals
Apply via
Daan van Vugt
daanvanvugt@gmail.com