The Seminar in Geometry and Statistics takes place monthly at the Department of Mathematics and Data Science of VUB (Building G, Sixth Floor, Room 6.60). It is flexible in terms of schedule and topics, though topics revolve around geometry and statistics.

Forthcoming talks

 

 

DATE: 24 April 2025

 

SPEAKER: Alice Le Brigant (Sorbonne Université)

 

TITLE: The Lp Fisher-Rao metric and the alpha-connection

 

ABSTRACT: Information geometry is a differential geometric framework to study spaces of probability distributions. Central tools of this framework are the Fisher-Rao metric, a Riemannian metric induced by the Fisher information on parametric statistical models, and the family of Amari-Cencov alpha-connections. Both the Fisher-Rao metric and the alpha-connections have non-parametric counterparts, which we discuss in this talk. We introduce the Lp-Fisher-Rao metrics, a family of Finsler metrics that generalize the Fisher-Rao metric, and show that their geodesics coincide with that of the alpha-connection, for p=2/(1-alpha), on the space of smooth densities. This result no longer holds on the space of probability densities. This gives a new variational interpretation of \alpha-geodesics as being energy minimizing curves.

 

 

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Past talks

DATE: 18 March 2025 at 14:00

SPEAKER: Mauricio Che (University of Vienna)

TITLE: Spaces of Persistence Diagrams and Optimal Partial Transport

 

DATE: 13 February 2025 at 14:00

SPEAKER: Diego Bolón Rodríguez (ULB)

TITLE: A review on highest density region estimation

 

DATE: 23 January 2025 at 14:00

SPEAKER: Eddie Aamari (École Normale Supérieure de Paris)

TITLE: A theory of stratification learning: clustering-by-dimensionality with reconstruction

 

DATE: 12 December 2024 at 14:00

SPEAKER: Susovan Pal (VUB)

TITLE: Optimal lift, a tool for statistical testing on Singular Shape Spaces

 

DATE: 13 November 2024 at 14:00

SPEAKER: Claire Brécheteau (Nantes Université)

TITLE: Statistical tests for uniformity and iidness on homogeneous spaces

 

DATE: 11 September 2024 at 11:00

SPEAKER: Pierre-Antoine Absil (UCLouvain)

TITLE: Feasible and Infeasible Optimization on Manifolds