Big Math: The Hidden Codes That Run Our World

About this event

We live in a world fueled by math that we barely notice. It’s in every photo we post to Instagram, every Google search we make, and every answer we get back from ChatGPT. It routes our packages and planes, maps social networks, and predicts the weather. This is Big Math, a toolkit of powerful ideas such as matrices and vectors, networks and optimization at work, allowing humanity to tackle problems too vast to hold in our heads and transforming how we shop, communicate, live, and heal.

The tools of Big Math are not especially new or mysterious—humans created them, and for most of their history we understood and controlled them. But once we began supercharging them with computers to explore truly enormous systems, things changed. What happens when Big Math outgrows its creators—when it becomes something we no longer understand, but only witness? In their new book, Big Math: The Hidden Codes That Run Our World (Hachette, 2026), Cornell mathematicians Steven Strogatz and Alex Townsend illuminate some of the earth-shaking consequences of mathematical tools that grow stronger and stranger every day to reflect on the challenge of living wisely with the enormous, ongoing technological breakthroughs of our times.

Hosted by the Science and Agriculture Libraries of Cornell University Library, this talk is part of Cornell University Library's "Chats in the Stacks" series that's free and open to the public. Virtual attendance at this book talk is possible; to register for the livestream, please visit https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_myajg0JBS6ybGsgvFat4pw