Mighty Maths

News bulletins have told us what the R-number (reproduction number) for Covid-19 is. We can use mathematical models to make predictions for the pandemic, but also to simulate fictitious epidemics ourselves. Moreover, we ought not to fully trust any mathematical model (as statistician George Box said, “all models are wrong, but some are useful”): no model can predict whether you will be infected! We also need to be aware of their interplay with other areas: from evolutionary biology to ethics, all the way through behavioural psychology.

I have spent the last twenty years developing machines that do scientific research. Now the challenge is to develop machines able to do Nobel Prize quality research. We aim to achieve this goal by 2050. If we succeed it will profoundly change the world, greatly improving the power of science.