The Canberra Mathematics Association conference was on Saturday 13 August, and I was delighted to accept the invitation to speak. The theme was “Change – one of life’s constants?” so I decided to pin my talk to this theme by presenting on linear models. The Palmer penguins got a good workout, as did a variety of extensions to the simple linear regression models ranging from transforming the right and left hand sides to adding more error terms.
I was also pleased to hear Professor Jason Sharples of UNSW Canberra present this talk on his career’s work around bushfire modelling. The talk was in honour of the late Neville de Mestre, who not only worked on some of the first elliptic models of the mathematics of bushfires but also the mathematics of bodysurfing! Check out his scientific paper on this very Australian topic.
Jason drew not only on Neville’s work but also the Renaissance mathematician Christian Huygens, whose elliptical model served well but has been updated in a number of directions. Jason showed how the models need to include the wind that the fire clouds create needs to be included in modelling, to ensure that firefronts are modelled in the curved shapes that they follow. Log-linear models also come into play, which I was able to refer back to in my own presentation later that afternoon.
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