Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

The Edrei-Thoma theorem characterizes totally positive functions, and plays an important role in character theory of the infinite symmetric group. The Loewner-Whitney theorem characterizes totally positive elements of the general linear group, and is fundamental for Lusztig's theory of total positivity in reductive groups. In this work we derive a common generalization of the two theorems. The talk is based on joint work with Thomas Lam.

In a regression model, say Y_i=f(X_i)+\epsilon_i, where (X_i,Y_i) are observed and f is an unknown regression function, the errors \epsilon_i may satisfy what we call the "weak'' assumption that they are orthogonal with mean 0 and the same variance, and often the further ``strong'' assumption that they are i.i.d. N(0,\sigma^2) for some \sigma\geq 0. In this talk, I will focus on the polynomial regression model, namely f(x) = \sum_{i=0}^n a_i x^i for unknown parameters a_i, under the strong assumption on the errors. When a_i's are estimated via least squares (equivalent to maximum likelihood) by \hat a_i, we then get the {\it residuals} \hat epsilon_j := Y_j-\sum_{i=0}^n\hat a_iX_j^i. We would like to test the hypothesis that the nth order polynomial regression holds with \epsilon_j i.i.d. N(0,\sigma^2) while the alternative can simply be the negation or be more specific, e.g., polynomial regression with order higher than n. I will talk about two possible tests, first the rather well known turning point test, and second a possibly new "convexity point test.'' Here the errors \epsilon_j are unobserved but for large enough n, if the model holds, \hat a_i will be close enough to the true a_i so that \hat epsilon_j will have approximately the properties of \epsilon_j. The turning point test would be applicable either by this approximation or in case one can evaluate the distribution of the turning point statistic for residuals. The "convexity point test'' for which the test statistic is actually the same whether applied to the errors \epsilon_j or the residuals \hat epsilon_j avoids the approximation required in applying the turning point test to residuals. On the other hand the null distribution of the convexity point statistic depends on the assumption of i.i.d. normal (not only continuously distributed) errors.

In late 1980's Manin et al put forward a precise conjecture about the density of rational points on Fano varieties. Over the last two decades some progress has been made towards proving this conjecture. But the conjecture is far from being proved even for the case of two dimensional Fano varieties or del Pezzo surfaces. These surfaces are geometrically classified according to `degree', and the geometric, as well as, the arithmetic complexity increases as the degree drops. The most interesting cases of Manin's conjecture for surfaces are degrees four and lower. In this talk I will mainly focus on the arithmetic of these del Pezzo surfaces, and report some of my own results (partly joint with Henryk Iwaniec). I will also talk about some other problems which apparently have a different flavor but, nonetheless, are directly related with the problem of rational points on surfaces.

Carleson's Corona Theorem from the 1960's has served as a major motivation for many results in complex function theory, operator theory and harmonic analysis. In its simplest form, the result states that for two bounded analytic functions, g_1 and g_2, on the unit disc with no common zeros, it is possible to find two other bounded analytic functions, f_1 and f_2, such that f_1g_1+f_2g_2=1. Moreover, the functions f_1 and f_2 can be chosen with some norm control. In this talk we will discuss an exciting new generalization of this result to certain function spaces on the unit ball in several complex variables. In particular, we will highlight the Corona Theorem for the Drury-Arveson space and its applications in multi-variable operator theory.