• A Mathematical Exploration of Why Language Models Help Solve Downstream Tasks

    https://youtu.be/OoimTbnSe7I Speaker: Nikunj Saunshi, Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University Title: A Mathematical Exploration of Why Language Models Help Solve Downstream Tasks Abstract: Autoregressive language models pretrained on large corpora have been successful at solving downstream tasks, even with zero-shot usage. However, there is little theoretical justification for their success. This paper considers the following […]

  • 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 […]

  • Global Anomalies on the Hilbert Space

    Virtual

    Speaker:  Jaume Gomis (Perimeter PI) Title: Global Anomalies on the Hilbert Space Abstract: We will discuss an elementary way of detecting some global anomalies from the way the symmetry algebra is realized on the torus Hilbert space of the anomalous theory, give a physical description of the imprint of the “layers” that enter in the […]

  • 2/18/2021 Quantum Matter Seminar

    Virtual

    Speaker:  Xiao-Gang Wen (MIT) Title: A solution to the chiral fermion problem Abstract: Motivated by the relation between anomaly and topological/SPT order in one higher dimension, we propose a solution to the chiral fermion problem. In particular, we find several sufficient conditions, such that a chiral fermion field theory can be regularized by an interacting […]

  • Full SYZ Conjecture for del Pezzo Surfaces and Rational Elliptic Surfaces

    Speaker: Yu-Shen Lin (Boston University) Title: Full SYZ Conjecture for del Pezzo Surfaces and Rational Elliptic Surfaces Abstract: Strominger-Yau-Zaslow conjecture predicts the existence of special Lagrangian fibrations on Calabi-Yau manifolds. The conjecture inspires the development of mirror symmetry while the original conjecture has little progress. In this talk, I will confirm the conjecture for the […]

  • CMSA Math-Science Literature Lecture: Homological (homotopical) algebra and moduli spaces in Topological Field theories

    Virtual

    Kenji Fukaya (Simons Center for Geometry and Physics) Title: Homological (homotopical) algebra and moduli spaces in Topological Field theories Abstract: Moduli spaces of various gauge theory equations and of various versions of (pseudo) holomorphic curve equations have played important role in geometry in these 40 years. Started with Floer’s work people start to obtain more […]