During Fall 2021, we will be holding three groups, each focused on a different topic within TCS. The groups are: A Theorist's Toolkit, Combinatorics and Graph Theory, and Deep Learning Theory. Each group is run by an undergraduate student organizer, and some groups have a graduate student mentor. The groups meet weekly and should be approachable for students of all ranges of prior exposure to TCS.
Please see the descriptions and tables below for a summary and the list of talks for each of the groups.
The seminar is run by: Cassandra Marcussen.
Organizer: Cassandra.
| Resource | Title | Link |
|---|---|---|
| O'Donnell | A Theorist's Toolkit | Link |
| Spielman | Spectral Graph Theory | Link |
| Date | Topic | Speaker | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 30th | Asymptotics | Cassandra | O'Donnell Lecture 1 |
| October 7th | Central Limit Theorem | Anthony | O'Donnell Lecture 2 |
| October 14th | Chernoff Bounds | Chang and Eitan | O'Donnell Lecture 3 |
| October 21st | Spectral Graph Theory | Remy | O'Donnell Lecture 6 and Spielman Lecture 1 |
| October 28th | Spectral Graph Theory, continued | Remy | Spielman Lectures 2 and 3 |
| November 4th | Fields and Polynomials | Anda | O'Donnell Lecture 9 |
| November 11th | Information Theory | Leo | Entropy and Diversity Ch. 2 |
| November 18th | Error-Correcting Codes | Cassandra | O'Donnell Lecture 10 and Computational Complexity Section 17.4, 17.5 |
| December 2nd | Communication Complexity | Luke | O'Donnell Lecture 19 and Computational Complexity Ch. 12 |
| December 16th | Cryptography | Alan | O'Donnell Lecture 23 and Introduction to Modern Cryptography (3rd edition) Ch. 1 and 2 |
Organizer: Alex. Graduate Student Mentor: Shivam.
Description: Combinatorics is the study of some of the most foundational discrete structures found throughout mathematics and theoretical computer science. We study important techniques that are used in combinatorial proofs. Our focus is in graph theory, looking at inherent structures and extremal properties of networks.
| Resource | Title | Link |
|---|---|---|
| GTAC | Graph Theory and Additive Combinatorics | Link |
| Date | Topic | Speaker | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 8th | Counting, Combinations, Binomial Theorem | Alex | Extremal Combinatorics Ch. 1 and Exercises |
| October 15th | Ramsey Theory and Topics | Shivam | No reading |
| October 24th | The Probabilistic Method | Yunya | Advanced Cominbatorics Handouts Ch. 4.1, 4.2 |
| October 29th | Extremal Graph Theory | Casey | GTAC Ch. 2.1, 2.2, 2.5 |
| November 5th | Linear Algebraic Methods | Tianqi | Linear Algebra Methods in Combinatorics Ch. 2 |
| November 12th | Szemerédi’s Regularity Lemma | Remy | GTAC Ch. 3.1 |
| November 19th | Szemerédi’s Regularity Lemma, continued | Remy | GTAC Ch. 3.1 |
| December 3rd | Roth's Theorem | Jet | GTAC Ch. 3.3 |
| December 10th | Mark and Geoffrey |
Organizer: Ari. Graduate Student Mentor: Clayton.
| Resource | Title | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Goodfellow | Deep Learning | Link |
| Date | Topic | Discussion Leader | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 19th | Feedforward Networks | AJ | Goodfellow Ch. 6 |
| October 26th | Regularization | Mark and Geoffrey | Goodfellow Ch. 7 |
| November 2nd | Optimization | Alfonso and Theo | Goodfellow Ch. 8 |
| November 9th | Vector Symbolic Architectures | Alexandra | Vector Symbolic Architectures as a Computing Framework for Nanoscale Hardware |
| November 16th | CNN Basics | Berkan and Kevin | Goodfellow Ch. 9 |
| November 28th | GradCam | Berkan and Kevin | Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization |
| December 5th | Clayton |