Shafi Goldwasser (Berkeley (USA), MIT (USA), Weizmann (Israel)) - Privacy, Verification, Robustness: A Cryptographer's perspective on ML
4 March, 11:00 am, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PW
The Strachey Lectures are a series of termly computer science lectures named after Christopher Strachey, the first Professor of Computation at the University of Oxford.
Glen Callater Room, H B Allen Centre, Keble College, Wednesday, 12 February 2025. All welcome. Coffee from 4.10 pm.
Public Lecture: Helge Holden (Chair of the Abel Prize Committee) - The Abel Prize
Workshops: Jose Carrillo - Aggregation-Diffusion Equations for Collective Behaviour in the Sciences;
François Caron - Frequentist, Assisted by Bayes, Prediction-Powered Inference;
Andras Juhasz - The Unknotting Number, Hard Unknot Diagrams, and Reinforcement Learning
15:00
Monodromy in bi-parameter persistence modules
Note: we would recommend to join the meeting using the Teams client for best user experience.
Abstract
Informally, monodromy captures the behavior of objects when one circles around a singularity. In persistent homology, non-trivial monodromy has been observed in the case of biparameter filtrations obtained by sublevel sets of a continuous function [1]. One might consider the fundamental group of an admissible open subspace of all lines defining linear one-parameter reductions of a bi-parameter filtration. Monodromy occurs when this fundamental group acts non-trivially on the persistence space, i.e. the collection of all the persistence diagrams obtained for each linear one-parameter reduction of the bi-parameter filtration. Here, under some tameness assumptions, we formalize the monodromy behavior in algebraic terms, that is in terms of the persistence module associated with a bi-parameter filtration. This allows to translate monodromy in terms of persistence module presentations as bigraded modules. We prove that non-trivial monodromy involves generators within the same summand in the direct sum decomposition of a persistence module. Hence, in particular interval-decomposable persistence modules have necessarily trivial monodromy group.
15:00
Decomposing Multiparameter Persistence Modules
Note: we would recommend to join the meeting using the Teams client for best user experience.
Abstract
Dey and Xin (J. Appl.Comput.Top. 2022) describe an algorithm to decompose finitely presented multiparameter persistence modules using a matrix reduction algorithm. Their algorithm only works for modules whose generators and relations are distinctly graded. We extend their approach to work on all finitely presented modules and introduce several improvements that lead to significant speed-ups in practice.
Our algorithm is FPT with respect to the maximal number of relations with the same degree and with further optimisation we obtain an O(n3) algorithm for interval-decomposable modules. As a by-product to the proofs of correctness we develop a theory of parameter restriction for persistence modules. Our algorithm is implemented as a software library aida which is the first to enable the decomposition of large inputs.
This is joint work with Tamal Dey and Michael Kerber.
15:00
Distance-from-flat persistent homology transforms
Note: we would recommend to join the meeting using the Teams client for best user experience.
Abstract
15:30
Transport of Gaussian measures under the flow of semilinear (S)PDEs: quasi-invariance and singularity.
Abstract
In this talk, we consider the Cauchy problem for a number of semilinear PDEs, subject to initial data distributed according to a family of Gaussian measures.
We first discuss how the flow of Hamiltonian equations transports these Gaussian measures. When the transported measure is absolutely continuous with respect to the initial measure, we say that the initial measure is quasi-invariant.
In the high-dispersion regime, we exploit quasi-invariance to build a (unique) global flow for initial data with negative regularity, in a regime that cannot be replicated by the deterministic (pathwise) theory.
In the 0-dispersion regime, we discuss the limits of this approach, and exhibit a sharp transition from quasi-invariance to singularity, depending on the regularity of the initial measure.
We will also discuss how the same techniques can be used in the context of stochastic PDEs, and how they provide information on the invariant measures for their flow.
This is based on joint works with J. Coe (University of Edinburgh), J. Forlano (Monash University), and M. Hairer (EPFL).