Please sign up on the course Piazza page if you are interested in following this class, whether locally or remotely (non Harvard users, use this form to sign up).
The first Princeton meeting will be on Monday Sept 19, 1:30pm-4:20pm, location TBA
Boaz and David will teach a four-day winter course in UC San Diego on the sum of squares algorithm January 3-6. See the web page for registration and more information.
See also similar courses/seminars I (Boaz) taught in previous years
In this graduate seminar we will cover recent research on the use of mathematical programming for problems arising from optimization, machine learning, computational complexity and more, with a particular focus on the Parrilo-Lasserre “Sum of Squares” semidefinite programming hierarchy. We will discuss both lower and upper bounds, as well as how such mathematical programs give rise to a general theory of computational difficulty, computation vs. sample size tradeoffs, and computational analogs of Bayesian probabilities.
More concretely, we will touch some of the following topics:
However, this is a fast moving research area and our plans may change as new results, as well as new understandings of old results, come to light. The course will not require much mathematical background beyond so called “mathematical maturity”. However, some familiarity with notions such as convexity, linear programming duality, separation oracles, eigenvalues/eigenvectors and positive semidefiniteness, could be helpful.
See this blog post for a longer introduction to this course.