Birgit Erni, a senior lecturer in the Department of Statistical Sciences will give a talk entitled, "An introduction to Particle Filters and Fairy Circles".  Particle Filters are an extension of the Kalman Filteres, for non-normal or non-linear state-space models.  Fairy Circles are bare patches in an otherwise uniform grassland, found along the Namib desert.  They form interesting spatial point patterns.  Birgit will look at some statistical  aspects of these patterns.