Applications of Algebraic Geometry in Statistics
- Series
- School of Mathematics Colloquium
- Time
- Thursday, February 21, 2013 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
- Location
- Skiles 006
- Speaker
- Mathias Drton – University of Washington – md5@uw.edu
Statistical modeling amounts to specifying a set of candidates for what the probability distribution of an observed random quantity might be. Many models used in practice are of an algebraic nature in thatthey are defined in terms of a polynomial parametrization. The goal of this talk is to exemplify how techniques from computational algebraic geometry may be used to solve statistical problems thatconcern algebraic models. The focus will be on applications in hypothesis testing and parameter identification, for which we will survey some of the known results and open problems.