Artist Judy Brown, poet
Host Prof. Peter Challenor, Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Streatham Campus
Judy Brown is a poet and poetry tutor. Her Creative Fellowship sat within the Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDSAI) at the University of Exeter where research is taking place in the area of 'Uncertainty Quantification'.
Increasingly complex numerical models are used in the making of decisions. Examples include the design of aeroengines, making climate predictions and modelling the human heart. These numerical models use too much computer time for us to do many model runs. This means random sampling cannot be used to estimate the uncertainty. Uncertainty quantification is the branch of mathematics that enables us to efficiently estimate the uncertainty on model predictions. Not only can the uncertainty be estimated but also the dependency of the model outputs on the model inputs.
So what happens when the worlds of poetry and complex mathematical modelling collide? Poet Judy Brown worked collaboratively with Peter and his team to respond to this research, creating large scale process notebooks which shared her reactions to unknowing and uncertainty.
Judy also wrote three poems in response to her time at the IDSAI, one of which, The Three Gods of the Heart, was published in Finished Creatures poetry magazine in October 2019. You find links to these below.
"I was drawn to this fellowship by the mystique of the words and the elegance of the sentences used by the mathematicians, and by the way my own ignorance tried to fill them with meaning. My aim was to catalyse conversations which might not otherwise have happened, to exchange and generate metaphors, and to share creative processes and reflections on how we think and talk about our work."
The mimic heart will learn to sit in a surgeon’s hand,
ectoplasm in the form of a phone. It’s fast as rats.
It tots up the risk in every alternative future – burn or leave.
The real heart sleeps a ragged sleep like a dog by a fire.
The Three Gods of the Heart - Judy Brown
Read the full poem here.
Q: What were the stupid questions? A: There aren’t any,
the statisticians said, but this was maths, so they could
be out there, capable of being asked. You might find one
holed up in some hard-to-fathom 5D keysafe
downwind of the site manager’s office. Q: Are any cats kind?
Some Security Questions - Judy Brown
Read the full poem here.
The place comes in a kit like a shelf company.
The usual mean runs through the dimensions:
maybe a perch for some exotic bird.
Is the atmosphere even breathable?
At the moment it smells of nothing.
The Habitat - Judy Brown
Read the full poem here.
University of Exeter
Room 153, Queen's Building
The Queen's Drive
Exeter EX4 4QH
