2/16/2021 Computer Science for Mathematicians

Virtual

Speaker: Michael P. Kim (UC Berkeley) Title: Outcome Indistinguishability Abstract: Prediction algorithms assign numbers to individuals that are popularly understood as individual “probabilities” — e.g., what is the probability of 5-year survival after cancer diagnosis? — and which increasingly form the basis for life-altering decisions. The understanding of individual probabilities in the context of such unrepeatable events […]

Rank-Based Independence Testing in Near Linear Time

Speaker: Chaim Even-Zohar (Alan Turing Institute, London) Title: Rank-Based Independence Testing in Near Linear Time Abstract: In 1948 Hoeffding proposed a nonparametric test that detects dependence between two continuous random variables (X,Y), based on the ranking of n paired samples (Xi,Yi). The computation of this commonly-used test statistic requires O(n log n) time. Hoeffding's test is consistent […]