From firearms to fish -- following patterns to discover causality
Sunday, December 1, 2019 - 13:00
in Mathematics & Economics
Mathematicians have successfully applied a new, pictorial approach to answer complex questions that puzzle analysts, such as, do media stories on firearm legislation influence gun sales? Cause-and-effect queries like this pop up in various fields, from finance to neuroscience, and objective methods are needed to deliver reliable answers. The team of researchers wrestled mathematical theory into quantifiable colorful maps called symbolic recurrence plots, and in this week's Chaos, they have proven the method's validity.