Past Probability Seminars Spring 2020

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Fall 2012

Thursdays in 901 Van Vleck Hall at 2:25 PM, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to receive announcements about upcoming seminars, please visit this page to sign up for the email list.


Past Seminars

Thursday, September 13, Sebastien Roch, UW-Madison

Title: Markov models on trees: Variants of the reconstruction problem

Abstract: I will consider the so-called `reconstruction problem': how accurately can one guess the state at the root of a Markov chain on a finite tree, given the states at the leaves? I will introduce variants of this problem that arise naturally in connection with applications in molecular evolution, and discuss recent results and open problems. Based on joint works with Andoni, Daskalakis, Hassidim, Mossel and Sly.


Thursday, September 20, Jun Yin, UW-Madison

Title: Some new results on random matrices.

Abstract: In this talk, we will introduce some new results on random matrices, especially the necessary and sufficient conditions for universality at the edge and a new result on the circular law.

Friday, October 5, Nicos Georgiou, University of Utah

Title: Busemann functions and variational formula for last passage percolation.

Abstract: Directed last passage percolation on the two dimensional lattice is exactly solvable when the weight distribution is i.i.d. exponential or geometric. The reason for that is the Burke property associated to a model with "boundaries".

We investigate the solvable model further in order to generalize the idea of boundaries into the general setting, and we compute a variational formula for passage times for more general weights. The variatonal formula is given in terms of Busemann functions and all restrictive assumptions on the environment are to guarantee their existence.

Joint work with T. Seppalainen, F. Rassoul-Agha and A. Yilmaz.

Thursday, October 11, No seminar

because of the MIDWEST PROBABILITY COLLOQUIUM


Thursday, October 18, Jason Swanson, University of Central Florida

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA


Thursday, October 25, Mihai Stoiciu, Williams College

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA


Friday, November 2, Michael Damron, Princeton

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA