Title: The Sum-Product Algorithm

Speaker: Sekhar Tatikonda, Yale University Department of Electrical
Engineering

When/where: Thursday, November 11th, 4:15PM, AKW 200

Abstract: The problem of computing marginal statistics of probability
distributions defined over graphs with cycles occurs in many fields:
error-correcting coding, machine learning, communication theory,
computer vision, and statistical physics. Because exact computations
are often difficult approximate algorithms based on local message
passing have been developed. One such algorithm is the sum-product
(loopy belief propagation)
algorithm. In this talk we present a new framework for analyzing the
sum-product
algorithm. Applications to some combinatorial optimization problems
will be discussed.