Department of Statistics      

Distinguished Lecture Series

Upcoming Colloquiums

Oct 5

Herman K. van Dijk

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Oct 12

Allen Gorin

U.S. Department of Defense, Fort Meade, MD

Oct 19

Blake McShane

Northwestern University

Oct 26

Carlos Carvalho

University of Texas at Austin

Nov 2

Robert Vanderbei

Princeton University

Nov 9

Shankar Bhamidi

University of  North Carolina

Nov 16

Larry Brown

University of Pennsylvania

Nov 30

Fan Li

Duke University

Dec 7

David Madigan

Columbia University

Elchanan Mossel

University of California, Berkeley

Some Recent Progress in Combinatorial Statistics

Combinatorial statistics deals with estimation of discrete parameters where the goal is to reconstruct the parameters exactly using explicit bounds on the number of samples needed, the running time of the estimation procedure and the estimation accuracy. I will discuss some recent work in this area including estimation of Markov random fields and estimation of "noisy" rankings. 

Thursday, September 29, 4:30-5:30 PM

265 Jon M. Huntsman Hall  

Statistics – CIS Joint Seminar

Non-linear Invariance and Applications

Over the last decade, non-linear invariance principles for low-influence func­tions have played a major role in the theory approximation algorithms in com­puter science and in the theory of voting schemes in theoretical economics. The talk will provide a broad overview of non-linear invariance, Gaussian geometry and their connection to hardness of approximation and social choice theory.

Friday, September 30, 2:00-3:00 PM

100 Towne Building

Statistics – AMCS Joint Seminar

On Reverse Hypercontractive Inequalities

A hyper-contractive inequality for an operator T states that |Tf|q <= |f|p where q > p > 1 for all functions f. Hyper contractive inequalities play a crucial role in analysis in general and indiscrete Fourier analysis in particular. A reverse hyper-contractive inequality for the operator T states that |Tf|q >= |f| p for q < p < 1 (q and p can be negative) and all strictly positive functions f. The first reverse hyper-contractive inequalities were proved by Borell more than 2 decades ago. While these inequalities may look obscure, they have been used for the solution of a number of problems in the last decade. I will survey applications of the inequalities and discuss new results relating reverse hyper-contractive inequalities to hyper-contractive, Log-Sobolev and Poincare inequalities as well as some new applications. This is a joint work with K. Oleszkiewicz (Warsaw) and A. Sen (Cambridge).

Refreshments will be served on 9/28 and 9/29

at 4:00 pm in 440 Huntsman Hall

Check out our website for details about upcoming seminars: http://statistics.wharton.upenn.edu/news/Seminars.cfm