evolution

Can mathematicians help fight terror? A mathematician, John Nash, won the Nobel Prize* in economics for his work in game theory (which was the subject of the movie A Beautiful Mind) - and those were used heavily in the 1980s in military strategy, so why not? This AP story has more.

It doesn’t sound all that far-fetched when you think of counter-terrorism as an exercise in data-mining and in finding the probability that a certain person with a given set of contacts and background will commit terrorist acts. Part of the problem with American counter-intelligence is the ponderous speed with which it has acted, and greater data-mining efficiency would certainly help.

* Nash did not win the Nobel Prize in mathematics — there is no such prize. Mathematics’ highest honor is the Fields Medal. There are competing stories behind this, depending on what country you’re from. The Swedish version is that Alfred Nobel (a Swede) was a practical man who didn’t think much of mathematics as a science; the French/American version is that a mathematician (some versions even provide a name) ran off with Alfred Nobel’s wife.

[15:50 UPDATE]: Lo and behold, look which story Yahoo put in its In the News section on the front page. Wish I had a screen shot.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 10th, 2004 at 15:06 and is filed under mathematics, terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.