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Level: MSci, MSc
Title: Modelling distorted memory
Supervisor:

Dr Rosemary Harris

Research Area: Dynamical Systems and Statistical Physics
Description:

The "peak-end rule" [1] is a psychological heuristic reflecting the fact that human recall of past experiences is dominated by extreme events on the one hand, and recent events on the other.  This distorted memory can affect our future decisions in interesting ways as modelled in [2].  The aim of this project is to understand and reproduce some of the calculations in [2], adding new simulation results for different distributions of experience.  For an ambitious student, the model could then be generalized in various ways with particular reference to the economics literature.

  1. D. Kahneman, B. L. Fredrickson, C. A. Schreiber, D. A. Redelmeier, When more pain is preferred to less: adding a better end, Psychol. Sci. 4 (1993) 401–405.
  2. R. J. Harris, Random walkers with extreme value memory: modelling the peak-end rule,  New J. Phys. 17 (2015) 053049.
Further Reading:
Key Modules:

MTH6141 Random Processes (essential)

MTH6934/MTH734U/MTHM012/MTH712P Topics in Probability and Stochastic Processes (desirable)

MTH739U/MTH739P Topics in Scientific Computing (desirable)

MTH743U/MTH743P Complex Systems (desirable)
Other Information:
Current Availability: Yes