Upcoming talk ·
Topological Data Analysis in Social and Spatial Systems
WhenFriday 23 October 2026
16:00–17:00 · Stockholm time
16:00–17:00 · Stockholm time
WhereNordita, 6th floor · fika area
Who can comeStudents & postdocs
Undergraduate, master’s and PhD students, and postdocs.
Abstract
Topological Data Analysis (TDA), which is a mathematical approach that leverages topology to study the “shape” of data, has led to insights in a diverse variety of systems across the life, physical, and social sciences. In this talk, I will give a friendly introduction to TDA and in particular to persistent homology (PH), which is one of its key tools. I will illustrate the key ideas of PH using Pokémon, and I will then discuss how we can use PH to gain insights into phenomena such as voting data, the coverage of resources in a city, the structure of city streets, and the shapes of webs that are spun by spiders under the influence of various drugs.
