Diffusion of the dead - The maths of zombie invasions. Part 1, For those who can't wait.

Many years ago I posted a blog post about an academic article I had written about zombies. Finally, the article was published in Mathematical Modelling of Zombies. The book is designed to be readable by anyone with an interest in mathematics. However, those with an numerical background will find that it pushes them further as it does not shy away from clearly displaying the mathematics, whilst explaining the methods behind the madness.

As always, thank you to Martin Berube
for the use of his zombie image.

The articles range over a number of fields and are simply a means to dress up our everyday techniques in a way that is more palatable for a non-mathematical audience. Of course not all of you will want to shell out for the book. Thus, I've decided to essentially serialize the chapter in the next few posts, thus, we will be looking at all of the results of our paper and, hopefully, I'll be explaining the mathematics more clearly, so that any one is able to follow it. I may even throw in a matlab code or two, so that anyone is able to reproduce the results.

For those of you who are just interested in a quick review, you can read The Times article, or my brief version on the University of Oxford's Mathematical Institute website. Alternatively, if you are too tired to read you can always watch, or listen to a recorded version from the Athens Science Festival, Cambridge Science Festival, or on The Science of Fiction radio show. Finally, you could always see me live, when I'm giving one of my talks.

Next time, we will start at the beginning by modelling the zombie motion.