Wael Bahsoun, PhD, is making his mark in mathematics

By Frank Kuin

Wael Bahsoun, who is receiving his PhD in mathematics this spring, has been granted a post-doctoral fellowship at the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), a research institute based in Victoria, B.C., in which a number of western universities collaborate.

He will continue his research of dynamical systems, an area of mathematics concerned with predicting the long-term behaviour of statistical developments in, for instance, population growth.

Bahsoun did his master’s and his PhD at Concordia after graduating from the American University of Beirut in his native Lebanon in 1998.

“What I like about mathematics is reason,” he said. “You cannot have two mathematicians arguing about a mathematical fact. One plus one equals two; this is true for everyone. You’re not using logic, it’s reason.”

Yet in the field of forecasting, mathematical reason squares off with the uncertainties of real life.

“This is the beauty of probability theory,” Bahsoun said. “If you go to the casino and you ask me what’s the probability that you will win every time, I will tell you it’s zero per cent — but you may go and win every time. I believe this is the best that we can do.”

For his thesis, Bahsoun has worked with so-called random maps, models of forecasting a trend in which the possible trajectories, or orbits, grow further apart over time.

“What we try to do, instead of following each orbit, is to consider the system as a whole,” he explained. “Instead of answering your question of where the orbit will be at a certain time, I can tell you what the probability is of it being at a certain position at that time.”

Such models can be applied in anything to do with forecasting, from demographics to finance to the weather.

While Bahsoun might end up working in an applied field, he is content to focus on theory for the foreseeable future. “If you want to do applications, you have to have some theory.”

He will miss the friendly atmosphere of Concordia’s Mathematics and Statistics Department. “I was lucky to have this good environment.”