A partnership between Bermuda College and the international and local business communities brought to the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute this week a conference entitled "The future of mathematics in business''.

Fifteen overseas speakers were augmented by nine local speakers. The conference chairman, Dr. Garth Baker, opened the proceedings on Wednesday, with a scholarly overview of the role of mathematics in business.

Bermuda College President, Dr. George Cook, then gave an historian's (for which, read non-mathematician's) eye view of the subject matter as he opened the proceedings on Wednesday morning.

Topics on the first day of the conference ranged from knowledge-based systems in finance and insurance to "Nietzsche for policy-makers and mathematicians''.

Although strictly mathematical content was deliberately kept to a minimum by all the speakers, they provided plenty to chew on, nonetheless.

A common thread which appeared to run through the day concerned the role of the mathematician in the decision-making process.

As the architects of various models, mathematicians have been in the vanguard of the drive towards more objective approaches to solving problems faced by insurers and financiers on a daily basis. These include the management of risk in all its many forms.

It should be said, however, that there were frequent warnings about the pure predictive power of such models. Mathematicians do not pretend to provide all the answers, but rather see themselves as part of a decision-making team which tries to sift through an ever-expanding real-time data stream in an effort to understand, and hopefully manage, risk.

The speakers were unanimous in their desire to see a widening of the role of mathematics in this process, which could be facilitated not only by producing truer models, but also by simply communicating these mathematical ideas to their colleagues in a more readily-digestible form.

Almost as if to emphasise this last point, the speakers were a spirited, yet dryly humorous, group who certainly had no problem holding the attention and stirring the imagination of an appreciative audience.

Even a layman was able to understand, from the way the conference unfolded on its first day, that the future of mathematics in business is in good hands.

BUSINESS BUC BERMUDA COLLEGE EDC