Name: The mathematics of history
Uploaded: 2012-05-15T15:00:09Z
Duration: 4 min 9 s
Description: What can mathematics say about history? According to TED Fellow Jean-Baptiste Michel, quite a lot. From changes to language to the deadliness of wars, he shows how digitized history is just starting to reveal deep underlying patterns.

Jean-Baptiste Michel: The mathematics of history

The mathematics of history

What can mathematics say about history? According to TED Fellow Jean-Baptiste Michel, quite a lot. From changes to language to the deadliness of wars, he shows how digitized history is just starting to reveal deep underlying patterns.

Mathematics is revealing surprising regularities in how languages evolve and how wars unfold across centuries. For example, irregular verbs in English become regular at predictable rates, and wars are exponentially less frequent as they grow deadlier. With millions of books now digitized, the once unmeasurable fabric of human history is open to quantitative analysis. As data grows, the sciences and humanities are poised to merge, unlocking deeper insights about how cultures change.