The annual LIDS Student Conference is a student-organized, student-run event that provides an opportunity for graduate students to present their research to peers as well as to the community at large.
Andrea Montanari Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Department of Statistics Stanford University This lecture is in conjunction with the LIDS Student Conference. Abstract: Let A be n × n symmetric random matrix with independent and identically distributed Gaussian entries above the diagonal. We consider the problem of maximizing xT Ax over binary vectors with ±1 entries. In the language of statistical physics, this amounts to finding the ground state of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model of spin glasses. The asymptotic value of this…
Developed by 11 MIT faculty members at IDSS, this seven-week course is specially designed for data scientists, business analysts, engineers and technical managers looking to learn strategies to harness data. Offered by MIT xPRO. Course begins Feb 4, 2019.
Abstract: We present an algorithm for creating high resolution anatomically plausible images that are consistent with acquired clinical brain MRI scans with large inter-slice spacing. Although large databases of clinical images contain a wealth of information, medical acquisition constraints result in sparse scans that miss much of the anatomy. These characteristics often render computational analysis impractical as standard processing algorithms tend to fail when applied to such images. Our goal is to enable application of existing algorithms that were originally…
Abstract: We consider the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model of spin glasses with ferromagnetically biased couplings. For a specific choice of the couplings mean, the resulting Gibbs measure is equivalent to the Bayesian posterior for a high-dimensional estimation problem known as "Z2 synchronization". Statistical physics suggests to compute the expectation with respect to this Gibbs measure (the posterior mean in the synchronization problem), by minimizing the so-called Thouless-Anderson-Palmer (TAP) free energy, instead of the mean field (MF) free energy. We prove that this identification…
Abstract: The perceptron is a toy model of a simple neural network that stores a collection of given patterns. Its analysis reduces to a simple problem in high-dimensional geometry, namely, understanding the intersection of the cube (or sphere) with a collection of random half-spaces. Despite the simplicity of this model, its high-dimensional asymptotics are not well understood. I will describe what is known and present recent results. This is a joint work with Jian Ding. Biography: Nike Sun is a…
Abstract: Over 500K scientific articles have been published since 1999 with the word “network” in the title. And the vast majority of these report network summary statistics of one type or another. However, these numbers are rarely accompanied by any quantification of uncertainty. Yet any error inherent in the measurements underlying the construction of the network, or in the network construction procedure itself, necessarily must propagate to any summary statistics reported. Perhaps surprisingly, there is little in the way of…
This one-day technical conference will bring together local academic leaders, industrial professionals, and students to hear about the latest data science related research in a number of domains, to learn how leading-edge companies are leveraging data science for success, and to connect with potential mentors, collaborators, and others in the field. The program will include technical talks, a student poster session, recruiting opportunities, and several networking breaks throughout the day.
Abstract: Total variation denoising (TVD) is a popular technique for nonparametric function estimation. I will first present a theoretical optimality result for univariate TVD for estimating piecewise constant functions. I will then present related results for various extensions of univariate TVD including adaptive risk bounds for higher-order TVD (also known as trend filtering) as well as a multivariate extension via the Hardy-Krause Variation which avoids the curse of dimensionality to some extent. I will also mention connections to shape restricted…
Abstract: Targeted socio-economic policies require an accurate understanding of a country's demographic makeup. To that end, the United States spends more than 1 billion dollars a year gathering census data such as race, gender, education, occupation and unemployment rates. Compared to the traditional method of collecting surveys across many years which is costly and labor intensive, data-driven, machine learning driven approaches are cheaper and faster--with the potential ability to detect trends in close to real time. In this work, we…
