Persi Diaconis at the IMT
Excellence research chair for Persi Diaconis
a CIMI project, first semester 2014
Excellence research chair invitee:
Persi Diaconis, 67, is a Statistics and Mathematics professor at Stanford University. His main field of expertise is statistics and probability theory, but he is well-known to trigger interactions with the other parts of Mathematics, from finite group representations to micro-local analysis, as well as with the other sciences: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Humanities. His original background, he started as a professional magician at age 14, gave him a great liking for vulgarization of Mathematics, especially through ludic magic shows. According to MathSciNet, he has authored 194 articles and on his web page can be found the list of his 39 students, some of them are now famous probabilists (http://www-stat.stanford.edu/„cgates/PERSI/students.html). He was awarded the Rollo Davidson Prize (1982), the Van Wijngaarden Award (2003) and the Levi L. Conant Prize (2012). He is also recipient of several Honorary Degrees, among which the Doctor Honoris Causa from the Université Paul Sabatier (2003).
Description of the project:
The main hope behind this project is that Persi Diaconis will help to decompartmentize Mathematics inside the IMT, to open them to stimulating interactions with other sciences and to give them a more attracting image to students and to colleagues from other fields. Indeed, the invitation of Persi Diaconis has already catched the attention, outside the statistics and probability team of the IMT, of people with seemingly different interests such as Vadim Schechtman (IMT, orthogonal polynomials), Jean-Yves Tourneret (IRIT, signal and image statistical treatment) or Clément Sire (LPT, theoretical physics).
The activities will be structured around:
- A one week pluridisciplinary conference on convergence to equilibrium of Markov chains, from 24th to 28th March 2014. For more informations, follow the link:
convergence to equilibrium … in Toulouse
Abstract: A variety of fields study rates of convergence of Markov Chains to their stationary distribution. This includes probabilists, statisticians, analysts, computer scientists and physicists. The conference will aim to bring together people working in these disciplines and try to encourage them to talk to one another. Each field has its own techniques and by now these have developed quite separately. For example, they tend not to cite one another! Of course, the different fields have slightly different problems but this is all grist for the mill.
Confirmed speakers: Pietro Caputo (Roma), Patrick Cattiaux (Toulouse), Djalil Chafaï (Paris), Thierry Delmotte/Clément Rau (Toulouse), Randal Douc (Paris), Martin Dyer (Leeds), Shayan Oveis Gharan (Stanford), Jim Hobert (Florida), Mark Jerrum (Queen Mary), Wilfrid Kendall (Warwick), Werner Krauth (Paris), Eyal Lubetzky (Microsoft), Florent Malrieu (Tours), Fabio Martinelli (Rome), Eric Moulines (Paris), Yann Ollivier (Paris), Yuval Peres (Microsoft), Laurent Saloff-Coste (Cornell), Prasad Tetali (Georgia Institute of Technology).
– A mini-conference on orthogonal polynomials and hypergroups, the 18th and 19th June 2014.
For more informations, follow the link:
Orthogonal Polynomials and Hypergroups
– Persi Diaconis will give six lectures (one per month) on PROBABILITY + X. Here is the syllabus:
– A bimonthly seminar/workshop open to the various possible fields of interactions.
– One mathematics vulgarization show based on magic in direction of a larger audience.