[ScientiFika] Topological Data Analysis in Social and Spatial Systems

by Mason A. Porter

Friday 23 Oct 2026, 16:00 → 17:30 Europe/Stockholm

Floor 6 - FIKA Area (Nordita Building)

Topological Data Analysis (TDA), which is a mathematical approach that leverages topology to study the “shape” of data, has led to insights in a diverse variety of systems across the life, physical, and social sciences. In this talk, I will give a friendly introduction to TDA and in particular to persistent homology (PH), which is one of its key tools. I will illustrate the key ideas of PH using Pokémon, and I will then discuss how we can use PH to gain insights into phenomena such as voting data, the coverage of resources in a city, the structure of city streets, and the shapes of webs that are spun by spiders under the influence of various drugs.