Mathematics of Information seminar. CS286, 2005-06

A concern with logical and statistical quantities --- information --- is central to science and engineering. The pertinent mathematics is being actively developed in disciplines such as algorithms, complexity, communications, control, quantum mechanics, economics, probability, combinatorics, algebra and harmonic analysis. This seminar is devoted to synthesis of methods across disciplines. Participants will give short lecture series on techniques and current questions in specific areas.

Instructor: Schulman
Prerequisites: Coursework in some of the relevant fields at the first-year graduate level.
Course sponsored by the CMI
The lectures this year will be given mostly by postdocs, faculty and visitors.
Fall 2005, CS286a
Credit: 3 units P/F
Times: Fridays 2:30-4:00 in Moore 239, with tea
First meeting: October 7

Speaker schedule:
Oct 7 Tracey Ho - A tutorial on network coding Abstract Slides
Oct 14 Tracey Ho - Network coding for online and dynamic networking problems Abstract Slides
Oct 21, 28 no seminar
Nov 4 Mathieu Desbrun - Calculus on Meshes -- Part I Abstract Slides
Nov 11 Mathieu Desbrun - Calculus on Meshes -- Part II Abstract Slides
Nov 18 Raanan Schul - The Analyst's Traveling Salesman Problem and Multiresolution Analysis Abstract Paper
Nov 25 no seminar
Dec 2 Jose Costa - Optimization, Computational Geometry, Graphs and High-Dimensional Data Abstract
Dec 9 Jose Costa - Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction Abstract Slides

Winter 2006, CS286b
Credit: 3 units P/F
Times: Fridays 2:30-4:00 in Moore 239, with tea
First meeting: January 6

Speaker schedule:
January 6 Nevin Kapur - Markov Decision Processes Abstract Notes
January 13 Nevin Kapur - Solvency games: How to gamble forever Abstract Slides
January 20 Frederique Oggier - Division algebras: a tool for Space-Time Coding -- Part I Abstract Slides
January 27 Frederique Oggier - Division algebras: a tool for Space-Time Coding -- Part II Abstract Slides
February 3 Sanjoy Dasgupta (UCSD) - Active learning of linear separators Abstract Paper
February 10 Yuval Rabani (Technion) - Graph Decompositions, Metric Geometry, and Approximation Algorithms Abstract
February 17 Yuval Rabani (Technion)
February 24 Daniel Marco - Lossless coding with coded sided information Abstract
March 3 no seminar
March 10 Peter Keevash - Set systems with restricted intersections Abstract Notes

Spring 2006, CS286c
Credit: 3 units P/F
Times: Fridays 2:30-4:00 in Moore 239, with tea
First meeting: April 7

Speaker schedule:
April 7 Herbert Edelsbrunner - Global Methods for High-dimensional datasets Abstract Lecture Notes
April 14 Herbert Edelsbrunner - Global Methods for High-dimensional datasets Abstract Lecture Notes
April 21, 28 no seminar
May 5 Jean-Charles Delvenne - Control and communication: an overview Abstract Slides
May 12 Jean-Charles Delvenne - Control and communication: noiseless quantized feedback on linear systems Slides
May 19 no seminar: Lee Center workshop
May 26 Farzad Parvaresh - Multivariate interpolation decoding beyond the Guruswami-Sudan radius Abstract
June 2 Chaitanya Swamy - The Effectiveness of Lloyd-type Methods for the k-Means Problem Abstract

Last year's seminar