Credit: Su San Lee / Unsplash How can we explain and predict human behavior? Are mathematics and probability up to the task, or are humans too complex and irrational? Often, people’s actions take us by surprise, particularly when they seem irrational. Take the COVID pandemic: one thing nobody saw coming was a rush on toilet paper that left supermarket shelves bare in many countries. But by combining ideas from mathematics, economics and behavioral science, researchers were eventually able to make mathematical models of how panic spreads between people, which made Read More