Sophie Dundovic, of St John's College, University of Cambridge, presentation at "Women, Count!" day to encourage women in STEM fields.

1. A Mathematical
Foundation
Sophie Dundovic

2. Part I
Behavioural Economics
 Economics + Psychology
 “Irrational” Behaviour

3. Quick Experiment
 Would you rather have £100 now or £105 tomorrow?

4.  Would you rather have £100 in one year or £105 in one
year and one day?

5.  Same question, waiting one day = £5
 Many people have inconsistent answers
 Discounting

6. Risk Preferences affect
Behaviour
 Novelty seekers are more likely to exercise an anti –
endowment effect than their risk averse counterparts
 Impact in career choices, relationships and addictive/
impulsive behaviours.

7. Novelty Seeking Behaviour
Risk
Averse
Novelty
Seeking
Status Quo, security Newness,
uncertainty, risk

8. Endowment Effect
 Willingness to pay is not equal to willingness to accept
 This is ‘irrational’
WHY?
 Loss aversion
 Status Quo bias

9. Investigating the link
 Measuring personality spectrum
 Repeating and adapting classic endowment effect
experiments
 Newness and Uncertainty

10. Treatment Groups
Newness

11. Uncertainty

12. Results and limitations
 People scoring higher on the novelty seeking scale
were more likely to ‘switch’
 Most people will stay put
 Experimental setting in the lab
 Need to test with greater sample size

13. Part II
Technology Start - Ups
 New sector
 Many problems that are solved through computer
science
 Ranges from consumer facing (eg snapchat) to making
business processes more efficient (eg automating
tasks/ getting more accurate measurements using
computers)

14. Mental Health Tech
 Platform connecting Psychologists and Patients outside
of treatment sessions

15. Problem
 Mental health a 24/7 problem
 Treatment is hard to come by/ expensive
 Once a week
 Paper based tasks

16. Solution
 Psychologists can set ready tailor made treatment
program with a few clicks
 Patients get messages to their phone at appropriate
times
 Both can track progress

17. Summary
 Many exciting options with a mathematical foundation
 Quantitative skills and problem solving are important

18. www.mathigon.org