A refined theory of opinion dynamics and its applications
Organizers
Speaker
Time
Monday, April 21, 2025 12:45 PM - 1:25 PM
Venue
A6-101
Online
Zoom 388 528 9728
(BIMSA)
Abstract
I will first briefly introduce the development history of the micro-scale governing equations for opinion dynamics, and then present a refined model based on empirical data and related studies. The model is then applied to study the patterns of the opinion distributions in the US Congress using 154 years of recorded data. The talk tries to answer the following two questions: What drives the separation and reunion of ideologies in the U.S. political system? Is there a relationship between partisan polarization and critical historical events?
Speaker Intro
Dr. Zhang received his bachelor's, master's, and doctor's degrees from Zhejiang University, Peking University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently a professor at the Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, in the artificial intelligence and machine learning research group. He is currently interested in developing machine learning algorithms driven by both data and existing domain knowledge, and applying them to the interpretation and quantification of various physical, biological and social phenomena.