Professor Hannah Fry

Hannah Fry is an Associate Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL.

She works alongside a unique mix of physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, architects and geographers to study the patterns in human behaviour - particularly in an urban setting. Her research applies to a wide range of social problems and questions, from shopping and transport to urban crime, riots and terrorism.

Hannah’s mathematical expertise has led to the development of several BBC documentaries including City in the Sky (BBC2), Britain's Greatest Inventions (BBC2), Climate Change By Numbers (BBC4), Calculating Ada: The Countess of Computing (BBC4), Horizon: How to Find Love Online (BBC2) and The Joy of Data (BBC4).

Hannah regularly appears on radio in the UK including on her long running BBC Radio 4 show The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry. You can find the podcasts of that show here. Online, her YouTube videos have clocked up millions of views, including her popular TED talk, The Mathematics of Love.

Hannah has also authored a number of books. Her latest, Hello World: How to be human in the age of the machine (Penguin Random House/Transworld) was shortlisted for the prestigious Bailie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction and the Royal Society Book Prize.

She has also written two popular maths books: The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation (Simon & Schuster/ Ted) and The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus (Penguin Random House/Transworld).

Alongside her academic position, Dr Hannah Fry is an experienced public speaker giving conference keynote presentations and also taking the joy of maths into theatres and schools. She also chairs conferences and seminars for corporate events and is popular for hosting award ceremonies.

Dr Fry’s popular keynote presentations include:

Data And Bias
Data has an unearned aura of objectivity. Statistics certainly has the power to illuminate, but when collected without care, it can also exclude and discriminate. Our insatiable appetite to turn the world into something that can be counted can force a gap between what matters and what can be measured.

In this keynote speech, with wit and warmth, Dr Hannah Fry looks at some of the ways bias has become such a profound modern issue, how it can be amplified, the ways in which it causes genuine harm and what we can do about it. She examines the issue of fairness – how it can be defined and whether it can be achieved.

What Data Can (And Can't) Tell Us About Ourselves
In the era of Big Data, we've come to believe that, with enough information, human behaviour is predictable. And to a large extent, it is. There are no shortage of terrific stories where numbers have unlocked the answers to our biggest questions.

But numbers can also lead us perilously awry and science is no stranger to this fact. Some of the best in the world have been guilty of finding signals in the noise where there are none. Of missing and misinterpreting subtle signals that go on to have dramatic and catastrophic consequences, of falling into the trap of over-relying on the numbers and of believing them to hold an objective fact.

In this talk, Dr Hannah Fry takes the audience on a tour of some of the most important lessons science has learned in recent years. She’ll demonstrate why they matter, share extraordinary stories about what happens when things go wrong and probe at the edges of quantitative thinking. We'll decide what parts of our future are truly forecastable, demonstrate the awesome power and potential of data, and find its limitations.

The Trouble With Automation
We like to think of ourselves as master decision makers; as perfectly rational creatures, grounded in reason and logic. It's a nice idea, but the reality is rather different. In truth, humans are a mess of competing incentives, of bad memories and of blind, impulsive biases.

The modern era of data analytics is, in some sense, an attempt to automate our decision making, iron out some of the fallibilities and biases built in to our choices. But decisions driven by data have blind spots too. And all this leaves us to a conundrum: humans are flawed, machines are flawed. So who do we want to leave in charge of our decision making and who should be the ultimate arbiter when there are very real dangers of leaving any one side in charge?

The Joy of Data
Dr Hannah Fry has spent the last decade working with data and hunting for mathematical patterns in human behaviour. In that time, she’s come across some incredible stories - written solely in the numbers - that get right to the heart of who we are as people.

In this optimistic talk, she’ll share some extraordinary tales about what's happening at the very cutting edge of data science – a host of surprising and delightful stories that demonstrate how far you can go when we look back at ourselves through the eyes of data. And how a mathematical view of what it means to be human can shape the way we design our society, from dating and healthcare to catching serial killers and everything in between.

The Winner's Handbook
Only an idiot would choose to play chicken. No sane person, surely, has ever chosen to drive directly towards their opponent at speed, knowing that choosing to swerve away from an inevitable collision will result in a loss.

An idiotic game, yes. But not one without a winning strategy. Indeed, ask a mathematician, and they'll tell you the best way to force your rival to blink is to unscrew your own steering wheel, wind down your window and throw it into the road.

Welcome to the world of game theory. The mathematics of winning. In this interactive, high energy talk, Dr Hannah Fry will give you a flavour of what game theory has to offer – the surprising and counter intuitive strategies it sometimes suggests, and the difficult questions it asks. To be a good negotiator, do you have to accept some risk of disaster? And – perhaps more importantly - is there always a way to get what you want?

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Clients often ask about purchasing books for giveaways and delegate packs. Below you’ll find a selection of products by Professor Hannah Fry. Click the images to view on Amazon's website. For bulk orders, please speak with your Booking Agent.