The walk of a drunkard, as anybody who has taken a few more mojitos than allowed may confirm, is a very good example of a random process. Nevertheless, most people have preconceived notions of randomness which often differ substantially from true randomness. These misperceptions can lead to misinterpret many events of everyday life in business, economics, politics and other areas of human affairs. This talk will aim to explain how understanding variation can help to extract the relevant information from different sources like production processes or newspapers and therefore make the correct conclusions. Moreover, it will illustrate how understanding random patterns can help to detect felonies and wrongdoings and how understanding probabilities can help to avoid common fallacies.
Marite Mehr has a PhD in theoretical physics by the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. She worked in the field of elementary particles for several years, first in Argentina at the Atomic Energy Commission in Buenos Aires and later in Germany at the Institute for Heavy Ions Research in Darmstadt. In 1988 she began to work at BASF – The Chemical Company – in Ludwigshafen, where she mainly developed statistical methods for modelling chemical processes. In 1998 she moved to Sao Paulo, Brasil, as Quality Management and Operational Excellence Director for South America. She is currently retired, lives in Marbella and holds twice a year seminars on Process Optimization for university scholarship holders in Berlin.
There will also be a short talk covering desktop fabrication. Two decades ago the availability of consumer led products such as personal computers, flatbed scanners and quality printers led to a minor revolution in the production of publications. This became known as ‘Desktop Publishing‘.
Today a similar albeit quiet revolution is taking place in the area of manufacturing with the availability again of consumer led products such as 3D Printers capable of additive manufacturing in a variety of materials, Computer Numerical Control Machines (CNC) and Plasma Cutters for subtractive manufacturing again using materials such as wood, metals, plastics and many more.
Together with this hardware there are the software tools many of which are downloadable free of charge. This has led to a democratisation in the way in which objects may be produced. The collective term is ‘Desktop Fabrication‘.
This talk will aim to explain some of the products and processes used in this field and to highlight the advantages to hobbyists, small businesses and professional practices by the adoption of these exciting new developments.
There will also be a short talk covering desktop fabrication which will aim to explain some of the products and processes used in this field and to highlight the advantages to hobbyists, small businesses and professional practices.
