David Aldous's Home Page

NEW (June 2013). Students interested in an Undergraduate Research Project for Fall 2013 should come to an organizational meeting on Friday August 30 -- time and place to be announced later.

NEW (March 2013. Warning: this is nerd humor) Big Data: the substitute for Love.

Teaching

Semester Course number Topic of course Comments

Fall 2013 STAT 98/198 Introduction to Wall Street Student-taught DeCal course; I am only the sponsor. Link goes to Spring 2013 course.

Fall 2013 STAT 205A Probability Theory First year graduate core course: measure-theoretic probability (first part).

Fall 2013 STAT C206A Topic TBA Graduate topics course

Here is a complete list of courses since 2001 (only the most recent version of each course is listed).

Semester	Course number	Topic of course	Comments
Fall 2013	STAT 98/198	Introduction to Wall Street	Student-taught DeCal course; I am only the sponsor. Link goes to Spring 2013 course.
Fall 2013	STAT 205A	Probability Theory	First year graduate core course: measure-theoretic probability (first part).
Fall 2013	STAT C206A	Topic TBA	Graduate topics course

Seminars

I coordinate the monthly Interdisciplinary Stochastic Processes Colloquium.

My Research Site

short cut to Papers and preprints and to slides from recent talks.

"Probability and the Real World" project

This is a long-term, and overly ambitious, project to articulate what mathematical probability says about the real world. Some self-contained existing pieces are

Non-technical books on probability: list and brief reviews
Undergraduate Research Projects.
My review of The Black Swan.
Two slightly different versions of the same talk:
- (for non-mathematicians) The top ten things that math probability says about the real world. (1/12 version)
- (for mathematicians) Reflections on devising a "probability in the real world" course. (5/12 version)

There is also a lot of material online associated with my junior/senior course From Undergraduate Probability Theory to the Real World .

NEW (1/12): Draft write-up of 13 lectures.

The non-mathematical parts of the project are being developed as a web site, intended as a more idiosyncratic counterpart to two existing sites with somewhat related themes: Understanding Uncertainty and Chance News. The current "beta version" set of pages are sufficiently incomplete and fragmented that I don't want them quoted or linked to; but if you really want to enter the maze at your own risk, start with this cover page to the beta version.

Essays and musings: The blog alternative!

The link goes to brief conceptual pieces, not intended for more formal publication. But not to be outdone by Rick's Ramblings or Terence's Stuff, while notoriously less energetic than either of those monthly authors, let me introduce David's Musings, to appear twice yearly in Bernoulli News.

Popular books on Chance, and Teaching Non-Technical Probability Vol 17, Number 1 (May 2010).
What are the Limits to "Rules Plus Dice" Modeling? Vol 17, Number 2 (November 2010).
In search of a missing word: entropy and ????. Vol 18, Number 1 (May 2011). David Stirzaker pointed out a related discussion by David Ellerman who calls 1-S logical entropy, and that I.J. Good has called it the quadratic diversity index.
What should our college students know (aside from what we teach them)? Vol 18, Number 2 (November 2011).
On password security, Republican candidates and predictability of economic crises. Vol 19, Number 1 (May 2011).
On suspiciously precise answers to intrinsically imprecise questions Vol 19, Number 2 (November 2012).
Cooper versus Greene, Peters versus Mercator, and Silver versus Big Data (May 2013).

Books

Probability Approximations via the Poisson Clumping Heuristic	Springer, 1989
Reversible Markov Chains and Random Walks on Graphs (with Jim Fill)	Draft chapters

Professional Activities

Associate Editor, American Mathematical Monthly.
Chair of committee that awards the biennial Loeve Prize in mathematical probability.
Fellow of the Royal Society
Foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences

Personal stuff

1976 Cambridge photo	1995 official photo	2005 unofficial photo
I wish I'd said that	Mathematical humor (original!)	2011 official photo
The nine best science fiction novels you've never heard of	2007 unofficial photo	Academic vita
Most ambiguous praise I received in 2009	Impressions from my year at Microsoft Research	Why my wife calls me Le Grand Fromage .......
Obituaries of my parents	2013 unofficial photo	..... and the Big Apple.

Here is a written interview of me by a non-mathematician. Reporting conversation in print shows that I have an embarrassingly inarticulate stream-of-consciousness speaking style -- do not take these to be my considered opinions! And here is an audio interview of me by a mathematician (Eugene Dynkin) which I haven't heard because I hate hearing myself on tape .....

Contact information

Postal Address: Statistics Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3860
Telephone: 510-642-3295
Fax: 510-642-7892
E-mail address: aldous_AT_stat.berkeley.edu