Professor applies zombies to math

POTSDAM — A mathematician stopped by Clarkson University on Friday to teach students how they can use equations and formulas to predict what would happen in disease outbreaks.

But since Robert J. Smith? (yes, the question mark is part of his name) is not your typical professor, he used zombies to make his point.

"The great power of math is that we can predict into the future. We don't have to go look at zombies in the wild. It's a thought experiment," he said. "If there were a disease like this, we would need to act so quickly or it would spread like wildfire."

Mr. Smith? normally analyzes the spread of diseases and viruses such as malaria, West Nile virus, HIV and human papillomavirus. At the suggestion of his students at the University of Ottawa, the assistant math professor decided to look at what would happen in a battle between zombies and humans.

"The interesting thing about zombies is they hit upon two very primal fears: the fear of being eaten by a predator and the fear of getting a horrible disease," Mr. Smith? said. "The other appeal of zombies is the possibility of fighting your loved ones — grandma come back from the dead."

The group published its results in a book, "Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress." His study gained international attention this summer.

Mr. Smith? and his students researched the history of zombies, from Caribbean voodoo folklore to modern horror films and video games. They settled on the "classic" slow-moving zombie popularized by George Romero's 1968 movie "Night of the Living Dead" for their model.

Then they looked at what would happen if a zombie outbreak hit a city the size of Ottawa, with about 1 million people.

As it turns out, in most cases, zombies win.

Even with quarantines, which aren't 100 percent effective, the zombies completely wiped out humans within four days in the model. When they looked at whether a miracle cure could help, they found that if it didn't make people immune to "zombieism," most humans still would be killed off.

The only solution that the Canadian team found to be successful was to attack the zombies in multiple random spurts, with more and more force each time. Mr. Smith? and his students used a theory of impulsive differential equations to make that conclusion.

The results show how math can be used to predict the best action to take during any pandemic outbreak, Mr. Smith? said.

"I just want to show here's how math can be fun, and the applications are pretty cool," he said. "The lay person can understand physics. Mathematics can be the just the same; we just have to angle it right."

Mr. Smith?, an Australian native, added the question mark to his surname years ago to differentiate himself from the many other men who share his name.

"The idea of questioning the world suits me," he said. "But a friend told me recently that now I'll always be known as the zombie guy."

ON THE NET

Robert J. Smith?'s

zombie articles:

www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/

~rsmith/zombies.htm