On Apr. 23rd, 2015, Professor Jiaan Yan, Mathematician,the Academician of CAS, came to visit SUSTC. Participants listened to a speech delivered by Professor Jiaan Yan, with the topic of How to tackle the dailylife difficulties with Probability and Statistics, at the 26th SUSTC Lecture series. The lecture was moderated by SUSTC Provost Professor Chuanyue Wu. After the speech, SUSTC President Professor Shiyi Chen had a meeting with the Academician.
“Life’s most important questions are, for the most part, nothing but probability problems”
—- Pierre-Simon Laplace
In the lecture, Professor Yan quoted a word (see above)from Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician, to reveal the fact that most of the daily life issues are in related to the probability and to show the participants how to tackle the daily bugs in a probability and statistics way.Professor Yan raised several examples, including then Birthday Problem theory,the Evaluation of the Diagnostic Accuracy Rate, Designing the Social Survey forthe Sensitive Questions, Simpson’s paradox, How to Lie with Statistics, the Hidden Mystery of the sports competition rules, the Optimal Design of Blood Specimen Test and How to Determine the Sample Size of A Sampling Survey.Professor Yan has involved in the study of probability theory for years and he summarized his research experiences and improvised a poem, as follows:
Realizing the Truth
Random is not the voluntary act,
Probability solves this mystery.
Order is hidden behind the disorder,
Statistics helps you find a way out.
During the question and answer period, hands filled the air. Professor Jiaan Yan also had an informal discussion with students and professors from the department of financial mathematics and engineering.
About ProfessorJiaan Yan
Professor Jiaan Yan, graduated from the University ofScience and Technology of China (Dept. of Applied Mathematics) in 1964, electedas the Academician of CAS in 1999, is one of the academic leaders in the fieldsof Probability theory and stochastic analysis. He is now the Researcher withthe Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Heis mainly engaged in the study of stochastic analysis and financialmathematics.
Awards:
1993 Second Class National Prize of Natural Science(China)
2006 THE HO LEUNG HO LEE FOUNDATION Award for Scientificand Technological Advancement (China &Hong Kong)
2007 Hua Luogeng Math Prize (China)
2010 May Fellow of The Institute of MathematicalStatistics (IMS)
