KLI Colloquia are informal, public talks that are followed by extensive dissussions. Speakers are KLI fellows or visiting researchers who are interested in presenting their work to an interdisciplinary audience and discussing it in a wider research context. We offer three types of talks:
1. Current Research Talks. KLI fellows or visiting researchers present and discuss their most recent research with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.
2. Future Research Talks. Visiting researchers present and discuss future projects and ideas togehter with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.
3. Professional Developmental Talks. Experts about research grants and applications at the Austrian and European levels present career opportunities and strategies to late-PhD and post-doctoral researchers.
- The presentation language is English.
- If you are interested in presenting your current or future work at the KLI, please contact the Scientific Director or the Executive Manager.
Event Details
Topic description:
We seem to be surrounded by bell curves—curves more formally known as normal distributions, or Gaussian distributions. All manner of things appear to be distributed normally: people’s heights, sizes of snowflakes, errors in measurements, lifetimes of lightbulbs, IQ scores, weights of loaves of bread, and so on. Lyon argues that the standard explanation for why such quantities are normally distributed, which one sees throughout the sciences, is often false. The standard explanation invokes the Central Limit Theorem, and he argues that in many cases the conditions of the theorem are not satisfied. Lyon offers some alternative explanatory schemas for why a given quantity is normally distributed.
Biographical note:
Aidan Lyon is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park. He holds a PhD in Philosophy (Australian National University) and degrees in Mathematics (BSc) and Philosophy (BA) (University of Queensland). He works mainly in philosophy of science, philosophy of probability, formal epistemology, and philosophy of mathematics, but is also interested in topics in philosophy of physics and biology. His recent work has been on understanding the notion of objective probability in various scientific theories, with a focus on classical statistical mechanics and evolutionary theory. He also works on issues surrounding judgement aggregation/consensus formation and biosecurity intelligence gathering and analysis. This work is done in collaboration with the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF), and is supported by the Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis (ACERA).
