From random walks to colonoscopies: modelling how memory of the past affects future behaviour

As humans, how does memory of our past experiences affect our future choices? Are there psychological biases which might cause us to behave less rationally than we think? Can we make mathematical predictions about such situations? And what does this all this have to do with theoretical physics research into "non-Markovian statistical mechanics"? In this talk, I will attempt to address some of these questions starting from the statistical physics of random walkers with different kinds of memory and progressing (via discussion of colonoscopies!) to simple decision-making models of behavioural economics.

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