Michael Jordan: Applied Bayesian Nonparametrics

Professor Michael Jordan

EECS Berkeley

4.30 pm, Thursday, 4 March 2010

Room G07, The Informatics Forum

10 Crichton Street

Computer Science has historically been strong on data structures and weak on inference from data, whereas Statistics has historically been weak on data structures and strong on inference from data. One way to draw on the strengths of both disciplines is to pursue the study of “inferential methods for data structures''; i.e., methods that update probability distributions on recursively-defined objects such as trees, graphs, grammars and function calls. This is accommodated in the world of ''Bayesian nonparametrics,'' where prior and posterior distributions are allowed to be general stochastic processes. Both statistical and computational considerations lead one to certain classes of stochastic processes, and these tend to have interesting connections to combinatorics.

I will focus on Bayesian nonparametric modeling based on Dirichlet processes and completely random processes, giving examples of how recursions based on these processes lead to useful models in several applied problem domains, including natural language parsing, computational vision, statistical genetics and protein structural modelling.

Embracing Uncertainty: The New Machine Intelligence

Embracing Uncertainty: The new machine intelligence

Final reminder University of Edinburgh - 18 March 2010 In this year's IET/ BCS Turing Lecture, Professor Christopher Bishop, the Chief Research Scientist at Microsoft Research Cambridge, discusses the field of machine learning, and shows how uncertainty can be modelled and quantified using probabilities. This prestigious, high profile lecture, dedicated to the memory of Alan Turing, explores how computers can 'learn'. The event is supported by the University's School of Informatics. Chris Bishop is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh. He is also member of the Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation in the School of Informatics and has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The evening lecture will be followed by a buffet reception, offering the opportunity to meet the speaker and enjoy the surroundings of the University. To secure your place at this exciting lecture and buffet reception. The lecture is free of charge but there is a charge should you wish to attend the buffet reception. The lecture and buffet reception are both open to members and non-members of BCS and the IET. This year, booking for the event will be via the IET website and BCS Members will need to register an account on the website before being able to book on to the lecture.