UCLA Department of Statistics Speakers Series
| 3 - 4 pm, Tuesday, November 10, 2009 |
| 4660 Geology Bldg. |
Adrian BarbuStatistics Florida State University |
Supervised Aggregation of Classifiers using Artificial Prediction Markets |
| Prediction markets are used in real life to predict outcomes of interest such as presidential elections. In this work we introduce a mathematical theory for Artificial Prediction Markets for the purpose of supervised classifier aggregation and probability estimation. In this direction, we bring the following contributions. First, we derive the market equations starting from the total budget conservation condition, show the market price uniqueness and give efficient algorithms for computing it. Second, we present a method for classifier aggregation using the market price as the estimated conditional probability given the evidence presented to the market participants though a feature vector x. We also show how to train the market in a supervised manner, updating the participants budgets based on the market price and the amount they bet. Third, we introduce classifier specialization as a new type of differentiating characteristic of classifiers. Finally, we present an application to multi-class classification using random decision rules as specialized classifiers and show that the prediction market consistently outperforms Random Forest on an array of datasets with Bayes errors ranging from 0 (very easy) to 0.5 (impossible). |
Part-time Lecturer Position Available for 2009-2010 Academic Year
Status: Open
The UCLA Department of Statistics seeks a temporary part-time lecturer to teach introductory statistics during the winter quarter in the 2009-10 academic year. Ideal candidates will have a Ph.D. in Statistics, demonstrated excellence in teaching, knowledge of and experience with R, experience in applied statistics, and a commitment to excellent undergraduate teaching. If interested, please send a CV and cover letter to:
Robert Gould
Vice-Chair of Undergraduate Studies
UCLA Department of Statistics
8125 Math Sciences Building
Box 951554
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1554
rgould@stat.ucla.edu
In cover letter, please address teaching experience and provide evidence of teaching excellence. Women and underrepresented minorities are encouraged to apply. Full consideration is guaranteed to those who apply by November 13, 2009, however, the search will remain open until all positions are filled.
The University of California Los Angeles is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.
Contact: Rob Gould
Posted: 2009-11-02, 11:17:00 by Jose Hales-Garcia
2009 UCLA Statistics Commencement |
The Department of Statistics is holding its annual Commencement Celebration at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday June 13, 2009 at the IPAM Building. This year, sixteen students received the Bachelor’s of Science degree in Statistics. The following students have completed their degree requirements or are expected to complete their degree requirements by Summer 2009:
Five students have completed their degree requirements or are expected to complete their degree requirements with a Minor in Statistics by Summer 2009. These students are:
Twenty-one students have completed their degree requirements or are expected to receive their Masters of Science degree in Statistics by the end of Summer 2009:
Nine students have completed their degree requirements or are expecting to complete their Ph.D. in Statistics by the end of Summer 2009. Their names, dissertation titles and advisor’s names are:
All dissertations and theses can be obtained at http://theses.stat.ucla.edu |
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Rakhee Patel: 2009 Teaching Assistant of the Year |
We are very pleased to announce that Rakhee Patel has been selected as TA of the Year. This year we had a very strong set of nominees for TA of the Year. Many of those nominated by faculty received multiple nominations, and all with very high praise. The level of commitment of all of our TAs is very high, and every year we single a few out for special mention. This year honorable mention goes to Mine Cetinkaya, Miles Chen, Fei Fu, Nathan Langholz, and Masanao Yajima. We hope you can join us at our graduation ceremony this year, June 13th, 1pm at IPAM to publicly honor and thank these outstanding TAs. |
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Mine Cetinkaya: Collegium of University Teaching Fellow |
We would like to congratulate Mine Cetinkaya for receiving a Collegium of University Teaching Fellows teaching fellowship to teach a course that she developed entitled “More Doctors Smoke Camels: Statistics and Science Behind Public Health Research and Policy”.
A Description of the Course
In this class we will discuss complex issues in public health through the lens of statistical reasoning. We will critically read and discuss scientific articles on smoking, obesity, nutrition and physical activity, and use these discussions as a platform for introducing statistical concepts. We will consider multiple hypotheses about the causes and prevention of health problems related to these issues. We will show that the path between data and inference is not as clear-cut as it often appears in popular media. The goals of this course are twofold: (1) to understand how the public opinion and public policy have changed over the years with regard to these topics, and (2) to develop a critical understanding of statistical concepts that can be applied to better understand controversies around these and other issues. We will also consider Statistics as a tool that can influence health policy development. We will look at cases where improper use of statistics has led to poor policies, and where sound use of statistics has contributed to the development of policies to improve health and well-being.
About the CUTF The Collegium of University Teaching Fellows (CUTF) is an innovative program that creates unique learning opportunities for both graduate teaching fellows and undergraduate students on campus. Through the program, some of UCLA's very best advanced graduate students have the opportunity to develop and teach a lower division seminar in their field of specialization on a one-time only basis. This experience serves as a “capstone” to the teaching apprenticeship, preparing them for the academic job market and their role as future faculty. At the same time, undergraduates enrolled in CUTF seminars have the chance to take courses that are at the cutting edge of a discipline, and to experience the benefits of participating in a small-seminar environment. |
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Yuliya Yaglovskaya Receives Graduate Research Fellowship Stipend |
Yuliya Yaglovskaya has been awarded a three year stipend from the NFS Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Yuliya will receive $10,000 for educational fees and $30,000 per year to fund her research and writing of her doctoral thesis. Although the funding is not tied to any specific research proposal, Yuliya’s research plans focus on environmental and climate change applications of statistics, in particular on modeling uncertainty in climate change. Yuliya will be working with Jan de Leeuw and Amy Braverman in her area of interest. To find out more about the GRFP or other graduate sources of funding, please visit the GFRP website or the UCLA Graduate Division Graduate Support website. About the GRFP |
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Undergraduate Project Among the Top Four Winning Projects for the USPROC 2009 |
We are pleased to announce that two of our Statistics undergraduate majors, Victor Louie and Maykel Vosoughiazad, have received one of the top four awards for their paper "Recent Trends in Methane: A Spacio-Temporal Analysis" in the 2009 Second Biennial International Undergraduate Student Project Competition (USPROC). The final rankings will be announced at the United States Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS) at Ohio State University, June 25-27. Victor and Maykel have been invited to the conference to present their work. In their paper, Victor and Maykel perform spatio-temporal analysis of methane gas in the atmosphere of recent years. A newly discovered concern is that a large amount of methane is being released into the atmosphere through what are termed methane "chimneys" in the Arctic permafrost[1]. Victor and Maykel’s analysis includes variogram fitting, kriging predictions, hypothesis testing, and trend analysis to test this hypothesis. We would like to congratulate Victor and Maykel for their achievement and acknowledge their supervisors Nicolas Christou and Dave Zes. Particular acknowledgement goes to Dave Zes for his hard work and dedication to the completion of this project, and to the Center of Environmental Statistics (CES) for providing the topics and ideas. [1] http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-na-global-warming22-2009feb22,0,646220.story |
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The First De Leeuw Seminar in Statistics, Tue, Mar 10: Statistics at Google Scale |
UCLA Department of Statistics is pleased to announce the first annual De Leeuw Seminar in Statistics in honor of its founding chair, Jan de Leeuw. The first speaker of the series will be Diane Lambert of Google and fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Speaker: Diane Lambert, GoogleTitle: Statistics at Google Scale Abstract: In a very real sense, Google can be thought of as a huge statistical analysis system. This talk will describe how Google uses statistics to turn huge amounts of heterogeneous datainto information about search, ads, and advertisers. Date: Tuesday, March 10 Time: 3 - 5 pm Location: 8500 Boelter Hall Penthouse (directions) Reception will follow. |
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Song-Chun Zhu Receives the J.K. Aggarwal Prize |
We are pleased to announce that the second J.K. Aggarwal Prize has been awarded to Song-Chun Zhu. The citation for the prize is:[1] "For fundamental and pioneering contributions to a unified foundation for visual pattern conceptualization, modeling, learning, and inference with applications in computer vision and pattern recognition." The countries of the endorsers are: the United States of America, China, the United Kingdom. The nominator is from the United States of America. In the past 15 years, the nominee, in collaboration with his advisor Prof. David Mumford, colleagues (Profs. Yingnian Wu and Alan Yuille), and students, has developed a statistical modeling, learning, and inference approach to constructing a unified, and sound foundation of computer vision and pattern recognition. His approach has been influenced by the general pattern theory pioneered by Prof. Ulf Grenander. The nominee's contributions have profoundly impacted many areas of computer vision and pattern recognition. The nominee's major contributions are summarized below.
About the IAPR and the Aggarwal Prize[2]The International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) is an international association of non-profit, scientific or professional organizations (being national, multi-national, or international in scope) concerned with pattern recognition, computer vision, and image processing in a broad sense. Normally, only one organization is admitted from any one country, and individuals interested in taking part in IAPR's activities may do so by joining their national organization. The International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) is pleased to announce a call for nominations for the second J.K. Aggarwal Prize in honor of Professor J.K. Aggarwal. Professor Aggarwal is widely recognized for his extensive contributions to the field of pattern recognition and for his participation in IAPR’s activities. The recipient is a young scientist, under the age of 40 at the date of the deadline for nominations, who has brought a substantial contribution to a field that is relevant to the IAPR community and whose research work has had a major impact on the field. The prize consists of a cash amount and a suitably inscribed certificate. The prize is derived from interest income from a special fund set up for this purpose. The prize recipient shall be selected by the J. K. Aggarwal Prize Committee, subject to approval by the IAPR Governing Board, upon nomination by a member of a national member society of IAPR and by endorsement of four members, representing at least two member societies different from that of the nominators and nominee. Members of the IAPR Executive Committee, as well as of the J.K. Aggarwal Prize Committee, shall be ineligible for the prize and may not serve as nominators or endorsers. The 2008 prize will be presented at the [1] From http://pine.eeng.dcu.ie/pipermail/iprcs/2008-August/000136.html [2] From http://dev.conbrio.com/iapr/site/fellowsandawards/awards_aggarwal.php |
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2008 Balmaseda Award Winners |
It is with pleasure that we present the first Balmaseda Award. The 2008 recipients are: All three recipients are Master of Science students who have just completed their first year in our Department, and all three had truly outstanding grades in their courses. Each recipient will receive $1,000 from the Balmaseda Gift Fund. |
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Irina Kukuyeva Receives Ott Scholarship |
We would like to congratulate Irina Kukuyeva who has received the American Society for Quality's 2008 Ellis R. Ott Scholarship for Applied Statistics and Quality Management. The Scholarship recipient must be a student who is planning to enroll or is currently enrolled in a masters degree or higher level US or Canadian program that has a concentration in applied statistics and/or quality management. Complete scholarship information and additional criteria are included in the application and instructions. |
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Position Available for Professor of Statistics in the Department of Statistics, UCLA
Status: Open
Applications and nominations are invited for the position of Professor of Statistics, any level (tenure-track Assistant Professor, tenured Associate Professor or tenured Full Professor), in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The position targets candidates with high quality research, a strong teaching record, and with expertise preferably in one or more of the following areas: Environmental Statistics, Social Statistics, and Spatial Statistics. Qualified candidates must have a Ph.D. in Statistics or Biostatistics. The position is effective July 1, 2009.
Reviews for the position begin May 1, 2008, and will continue until the position is filled. Interested applicants should send a letter describing how their qualifications and interests would fit with the position description, along with their curriculum vitae, to:
Professor Jan de LeeuwDepartment of Statistics
University of California at Los Angeles
8125 Math Sciences Building
Box 951554
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1554
The applicants should arrange for three letters of recommendation to be sent to Professor de Leeuw. Until the file is complete with the requested information, the application cannot be given full consideration.
The University of California Los Angeles and the Department of Statistics are interested in candidates who are committed to the highest standards of scholarship and professional activities, and to the development of a campus climate that supports equality and diversity.
The University of California is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
Contact: Jan de Leeuw
Posted: 2008-03-19, 08:21:00 by Jose Hales-Garcia
UCLA Department of Statistics Speakers Series
| 3 - 4 pm, Tuesday, November 3, 2009 |
| 4660 Geology Bldg. |
Yanxi LiuPenn State Univ Computer Science and Engineering |
Computational Regularity |
Symmetry is an essential mathematical concept, as well as a ubiquitous, observable phenomenon in nature, science and art. Either by evolution or by design, symmetry implies an efficiency coding that makes it universally appealing, especially so to computational science. Recognition and categorization of symmetry and regularity is the first step towards capturing the essential skeleton of a real world problem, while at the same time minimizing computational redundancy. However, symmetry group detection from real world data turns out to be a challenging problem that has been puzzling computer vision, computer graphics and psychology researchers for decades. We explore a formal and computational characterization of real world regularity using a hierarchical model of symmetry groups as a theoretical basis, embedded in a well-defined Bayesian framework. Such a formalization simultaneously facilitates (1) a robust and comprehensive algorithmic treatment of the whole regularity spectrum, from regular (perfect symmetry), near-regular (approximate symmetry), to various types of irregularities; (2) an effective detection scheme for real world symmetries and symmetry groups; and (3) a set of computational bases for measuring and discriminating quantified regularities on diverse data sets. Besides some theoretical background on crystallographic groups in particular, I shall illustrate various applications of computational symmetry in texture synthesis, analysis, tracking, and manipulation; human gait and activity recognition; symmetry-based dance analysis; grid-cell clustering; automatic geo-tagging; and image 'de-fencing'. Biosketch: Yanxi Liu received her B.S. degree in physics/electrical engineering in Beijing and her Ph.D. degree in computer science for group theory applications in robotics from University of Massachusetts (Amherst). Her postdoctoral training was at LIFIA/IMAG (France). She also spent one year at DIMACS (NSF center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science) under an NSF research-education fellowship award. Dr. Liu was with the research faculty in the Robotics Institute (RI) of Carnegie Mellon University before she joined the Computer Science Engineering and Electrical Engineering departments of Penn State University in Fall of 2006 as a tenured faculty and the co-director of the lab for perception, action and cognition (LPAC). Dr. Liu's research interests span a wide range of applications including computer vision, computer graphics, robotics, human perception and computer aided diagnosis in medicine, with two main themes: computational symmetry/regularity and discriminative subspace learning. Dr. Liu chaired the First International Workshop on Computer Vision for Biomedical Image Applications (CVBIA) in conjunction with ICCV 2005. Dr. Liu served as an area chair or organizing committee member for CVPR08/MICCAI08/CVPR09, and has served as a multi-year chartered study section member for the US National Institute of Health (NIH). Dr. Liu is a senior member of IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society. |
Welcome
Why Statistics?
The world is becoming more and more quantitative. Many professions depend on numerical measurements to make decisions
in the face of uncertainty. Statisticians use quantitative abilities, statistical knowledge, and communication skills
to work on many challenging problems.
Want to Learn More?
The Department of Statistics at UCLA coordinates undergraduate and graduate statistics teaching and research within the College of Letters and Sciences. We teach a large number of undergraduates and we have a substantial graduate program. Our research and teaching have a strong emphasis on computational and applied statistics. We have an active consulting center for both on-campus and off-campus clients.
You can find the Department’s catalog on-line. We offer nearly one hundred courses; an undergraduate B.S. degree and Minor; and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Statistics.
Want to Help?
Donations and contributions of any amount to the Department of Statistics are greatly appreciated. Generous giving from the community, alumni, and parents helps the department to maintain high standards of computational technology and continue with its rapid growth. Thank you for your consideration. For more information please visit our webpage for online giving.
