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SUMMARY:IC Colloquium: Partition Functions: What they are and how to compu
 te them
DTSTART:20211004T161500
DTEND:20211004T171500
DTSTAMP:20260414T090313Z
UID:bd354ab6debae383ab9a6b6a65ad81d43ae71883f380c9dc67fa61a8
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:By: Alistair Sinclair - UC Berkeley\nVideo of his talk\n\nAbst
 ract\nA partition function is a polynomial whose coefficients carry inform
 ation about the possible configurations of a system or model.  Partition 
 functions are ubiquitous in physics\, combinatorics\, probability\, theore
 tical computer science and machine learning.  In almost all interesting c
 ases\, computing a partition function exactly is an intractable problem\, 
 but several techniques exist for approximating them.  This talk will outl
 ine three main techniques—Markov chain Monte Carlo\, correlation decay a
 nd complex analysis—and indicate when they are applicable.  I will also
  briefly discuss the connection between computational complexity of partit
 ion functions and phase transitions in the underlying model.\n\nBio\nAlist
 air Sinclair received his BA in Mathematics from the University of Cambrid
 ge in 1982\, and his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Edinbu
 rgh in 1988.  After a period on the faculty at Edinburgh\, he moved to UC
  Berkeley in 1994\, where he is now the Kikuo Ogawa and Kaoru Ogawa Profes
 sor of Computer Science.  He has held visiting positions at DIMACS\, Prin
 ceton University\, Rutgers University\, Microsoft Research\, Ecole Polytec
 hnique\, University of Paris-Orsay\, and University of Rome III.  He was 
 a winner of the 1996 Gödel Prize and the 2006 Fulkerson Prize\, is an AC
 M Fellow\, and was an IMS Medallion Lecturer.  He also received the SIGAC
 T Distinguished Service Prize for his role in establishing and running the
  Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing from 2012-17.  Sinclair’s
  research interests focus on various applications of randomness in compute
 r science\, including randomized algorithms and Markov chain Monte Carlo\,
  as well as on topics at the intersection of computer science and statisti
 cal physics.\n\nMore information
LOCATION:BC 420 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20420 https://epfl.zoom.us/
 my/urbanke
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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