Seminars and Colloquia Schedule

Topology of the Shift Locus via Big Mapping Class Groups by Yan Mary He

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, March 29, 2021 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
ONLINE
Speaker
Yan Mary HeUniversity of Toronto

The shift locus of (monic and centered) complex polynomials of degree d > 1 is the set of polynomials whose filled-in Julia set contains no critical points. Traversing a loop in the shift locus gives rise to a holomorphic motion of Cantor Julia sets, which can be extended to a homeomorphism of the plane minus a Cantor set up to isotopy. Therefore there is a well-defined monodromy representation from the fundamental group of the shift locus to the mapping class group of the plane minus a Cantor set. In this talk, I will discuss the image and the kernel of this map as well as a combinatorial model for the shift locus. This is joint work with J. Bavard, D. Calegari, S. Koch and A. Walker.

Incorporating Invariance to Reduce the Complexity of Parametric Models

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, March 29, 2021 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
https://bluejeans.com/884917410
Speaker
Alex CloningerUniversity of California, San Diego

Many scientific problems involve invariant structures, and learning functions that rely on a much lower dimensional set of features than the data itself.   Incorporating these invariances into a parametric model can significantly reduce the model complexity, and lead to a vast reduction in the number of labeled examples required to estimate the parameters.  We display this benefit in two settings.  The first setting concerns ReLU networks, and the size of networks and number of points required to learn certain functions and classification regions.  Here, we assume that the target function has built in invariances, namely that it only depends on the projection onto a very low dimensional, function defined manifold (with dimension possibly significantly smaller than even the intrinsic dimension of the data).  We use this manifold variant of a single or multi index model to establish network complexity and ERM rates that beat even the intrinsic dimension of the data.  We should note that a corollary of this result is developing intrinsic rates for a manifold plus noise data model without needing to assume the distribution of the noise decays exponentially, and we also discuss implications in two-sample testing and statistical distances.  The second setting for building invariances concerns linearized optimal transport (LOT), and using it to build supervised classifiers on distributions.  Here, we construct invariances to families of group actions (e.g., shifts and scalings of a fixed distribution), and show that LOT can learn a classifier on group orbits using a simple linear separator.   We demonstrate the benefit of this on MNIST by constructing robust classifiers with only a small number of labeled examples.  This talk covers joint work with Timo Klock, Xiuyuan Cheng, and Caroline Moosmueller.

Intersecting families of sets are typically trivial

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Tuesday, March 30, 2021 - 15:45 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Speaker
Lina LiUniversity of Waterloo

A family of subsets of $[n]$ is intersecting if every pair of its members has a non-trivial intersection. Determining the structure of large intersecting families is a central problem in extremal combinatorics. Frankl-Kupavskii and Balogh-Das-Liu-Sharifzadeh-Tran independently showed that for $n \geq 2k + c\sqrt{k\ln k}$, almost all $k$-uniform intersecting families are stars. Significantly improving their results, we show that the same conclusion holds for $n \geq 2k + 100 \ln k$. Our proof uses the Sapozhenko’s graph container method and the Das-Tran removal lemma.

This is joint work with József Balogh, Ramon I. Garcia and Adam Zsolt Wagner.

Symplectic rigidity, flexibility, and embedding problems

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, March 31, 2021 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Online
Speaker
Agniva RoyGeorgia Tech

Embedding problems, of an n-manifold into an m-manifold, can be heuristically thought to belong to a spectrum, from rigid, to flexible. Euclidean embeddings define the rigid end of the spectrum, meaning you can only translate or rotate an object into the target. Symplectic embeddings, depending on the object, and target, can show up anywhere on the spectrum, and it is this flexible vs rigid philosophy, and techniques developed to study them, that has lead to a lot of interesting mathematics. In this talk I will make this heuristic clearer, and show some examples and applications of these embedding problems.

Symmetry and uniqueness via a variational approach

Series
School of Mathematics Colloquium
Time
Thursday, April 1, 2021 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87011170680?pwd=ektPOWtkN1U0TW5ETFcrVDNTL1V1QT09
Speaker
Yao YaoGeorgia Institute of Technology

For some nonlocal PDEs, its steady states can be seen as critical points of an associated energy functional. Therefore, if one can construct perturbations around a function such that the energy decreases to first order along the perturbation, this function cannot be a steady state. In this talk, I will discuss how this simple variational approach has led to some recent progresses in the following equations, where the key is to carefully construct a suitable perturbation.

I will start with the aggregation-diffusion equation, which is a nonlocal PDE driven by two competing effects: nonlinear diffusion and long-range attraction. We show that all steady states are radially symmetric up to a translation (joint with Carrillo, Hittmeir and Volzone), and give some criteria on the uniqueness/non-uniqueness of steady states within the radial class (joint with Delgadino and Yan).

I will also discuss the 2D Euler equation, where we aim to understand under what condition must a stationary/uniformly-rotating solution be radially symmetric. Using a variational approach, we settle some open questions on the radial symmetry of rotating patches, and also show that any smooth stationary solution with compactly supported and nonnegative vorticity must be radial (joint with Gómez-Serrano, Park and Shi).

Optimal Ranking Recovery from Pairwise Comparisons

Series
Stochastics Seminar
Time
Thursday, April 1, 2021 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
https://bluejeans.com/129119189
Speaker
Anderson Y. ZhangUniversity of Pennsylvania

Ranking from pairwise comparisons is a central problem in a wide range of learning and social contexts. Researchers in various disciplines have made significant methodological and theoretical contributions to it. However, many fundamental statistical properties remain unclear especially for the recovery of ranking structure. This talk presents two recent projects towards optimal ranking recovery, under the Bradley-Terry-Luce (BTL) model.

In the first project, we study the problem of top-k ranking. That is, to optimally identify the set of top-k players. We derive the minimax rate and show that it can be achieved by MLE. On the other hand, we show another popular algorithm, the spectral method, is in general suboptimal.

In the second project, we study the problem of full ranking among all players. The minimax rate exhibits a transition between an exponential rate and a polynomial rate depending on the magnitude of the signal-to-noise ratio of the problem. To the best of our knowledge, this phenomenon is unique to full ranking and has not been seen in any other statistical estimation problem. A divide-and-conquer ranking algorithm is proposed to achieve the minimax rate.

Identifiability in Phylogenetics using Algebraic Matroids

Series
Mathematical Biology Seminar
Time
Friday, April 2, 2021 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
ONLINE
Speaker
Seth SullivantNorth Carolina State University

Identifiability is a crucial property for a statistical model since distributions in the model uniquely determine the parameters that produce them. In phylogenetics, the identifiability of the tree parameter is of particular interest since it means that phylogenetic models can be used to infer evolutionary histories from data. In this paper we introduce a new computational strategy for proving the identifiability of discrete parameters in algebraic statistical models that uses algebraic matroids naturally associated to the models. We then use this algorithm to prove that the tree parameters are generically identifiable for 2-tree CFN and K3P mixtures. We also show that the k-cycle phylogenetic network parameter is identifiable under the K2P and K3P models.  This is joint work with Benjamin Hollering.