[Colloquium] Guest Speakers at TTI-C June 5-9, 2006

[Katherine Cumming]

**********TTI-C Guest Speakers Next Week***********
			June 5 - June 9
Presented by:  Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago


(1) 
Speaker:  Robert Kleinberg,  University of California, Berkeley
Speaker's home page:  http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rdk/


Date: Monday, June 5, 2006
Location: TTI-C Conference Room
Time:  11:00am


Title:   Learning an Admission Threshold
 

Abstract:

 We will present algorithms for a class of online learning problems in which
the function to be learned satisfies a monotonicity constraint.  A
prototypical example is the following problem.  Suppose you are presented
with a list of n tests, whose success probabilities form a monotonically
increasing sequence.  Other than this monotonicity property, you have no
knowledge of the success probabilities of the tests.  You must perform a
sequence of experiments, each consisting of choosing one of the n tests and
observing the outcome of a Bernoulli trial with the corresponding success
probability.  The goal is to identify the test which is closest to having a
specified success probability, using as few experiments as possible.  (This
can be regarded as a binary search problem with noisy feedback.)  We present
algorithms which match the information-theoretic lower bound, up to a
constant factor, for this problem and some related search problems.
    This is joint work with Richard Karp.
 
(2)
Speaker:  Sean Mooney, Indiana University
Speaker's Homepage:  http://compbio.iupui.edu/mooney/

Date:  Monday, June 5, 2006
Location:  TTI-C Conference Room
Time:  2:00pm

Title:  TBA

Abstract:  TBA

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If you have questions, or would like to meet the speaker, please contact
Katherine at 773-834-1994 or kcumming at tti-c.org   For information on future
TTI-C talks and events, please go to the TTI-C Events page:
http://www.tti-c.org/events.html.  TTI-C (1427 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL
60637)