Previous Conferences & Workshops

May
13
2020

Mathematical Conversations

The Simplicity Conjecture
Daniel Cristofaro-Gardiner
5:30pm|Remote Access Only

In the 60s and 70s, there was a flurry of activity concerning the question of whether or not various subgroups of homeomorphism groups of manifolds are simple, with beautiful contributions by Fathi, Kirby, Mather, Thurston, and many others. A...

May
12
2020

Theoretical Machine Learning Seminar

Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution
Stefano Ermon
12:00pm|Remote Access Only - see link below

Existing generative models are typically based on explicit representations of probability distributions (e.g., autoregressive or VAEs) or implicit sampling procedures (e.g., GANs). We propose an alternative approach based on modeling directly the...

May
12
2020

Analysis Seminar

Quantitative decompositions of Lipschitz mappings
Guy C. David
11:00am|https://theias.zoom.us/j/562592856

Given a Lipschitz map, it is often useful to chop the domain into pieces on which the map has simple behavior. For example, depending on the dimensions of source and target, one may ask for pieces on which the map behaves like a bi-Lipschitz...

May
12
2020

Computer Science/Discrete Mathematics Seminar II

Convex Set Disjointness, Distributed Learning of Halfspaces, and Linear Programming
10:30am|https://theias.zoom.us/j/360043913

Distributed learning protocols are designed to train on distributed data without gathering it all on a single centralized machine, thus contributing to the efficiency of the system and enhancing its privacy. We study a central problem in distributed...

May
11
2020

Computer Science/Discrete Mathematics Seminar I

Using discrepancy theory to improve the design of randomized controlled trials
Daniel Spielman
11:00am|https://theias.zoom.us/j/360043913

 

In randomized experiments, such as a medical trials, we randomly assign the treatment, such as a drug or a placebo, that each experimental subject receives. Randomization can help us accurately estimate the difference in treatment effects with...

May
08
2020

Joint IAS/Princeton/Montreal/Paris/Tel-Aviv Symplectic Geometry Zoominar

Spectral characterizations of Besse and Zoll Reeb flows
Marco Mazzucchelli
9:00am|https://princeton.zoom.us/j/745635914

In this talk, I will address a geometric inverse problem from contact geometry: is it possible to recognize whether all orbits of a given Reeb flow are closed from the knowledge of the action spectrum? Borrowing the terminology from Riemannian...

May
07
2020

Joint IAS/Princeton University Number Theory Seminar

On triple product L functions
Jayce Robert Getz
4:30pm|https://theias.zoom.us/j/959183254

Establishing the conjectured analytic properties of triple product L-functions is a crucial case of Langlands functoriality. However, little is known. I will present work in progress on the case of triples of automorphic representations on GL_3; in...

May
07
2020

Theoretical Machine Learning Seminar

Learning probability distributions; What can, What can't be done
Shai Ben-David
3:00pm|Remote Access Only - see link below

A possible high level description of statistical learning is that it aims to learn about some unknown probability distribution ("environment”) from samples it generates ("training data”). In its most general form, assuming no prior knowledge and...

May
06
2020

Mathematical Conversations

Discrepancy Theory and Randomized Controlled Trials
Daniel Spielman
5:30pm|Remote Access Only

Discrepancy theory tells us that it is possible to partition vectors into sets so that each set looks surprisingly similar to every other. By "surprisingly similar" we mean much more similar than a random partition. Randomized Controlled Trials are...

May
05
2020

Theoretical Machine Learning Seminar

Boosting Simple Learners
12:00pm|Remote Access Only - see link below

We study boosting algorithms under the assumption that the given weak learner outputs hypotheses from a class of bounded capacity. This assumption is inspired by the common convention that weak hypotheses are “rules-of-thumbs” from an “easy-to-learn...