"Nonparametric Estimation and Comparison for Networks" (Friday at U. Washington)

Attention conservation notice:: An academic promoting his own talk. Even if you can get past that, only of interest if you (1) care about statistical methods for comparing network data sets, and (2) will be in Seattle on Friday.

Since the coin came up heads, I ought to mention I'm giving a talk at the end of the week:

"Nonparametric Estimation and Comparison for Networks", UW-Seattle statistics dept. seminar

Abstract: Scientific questions about networks are often comparative: we want to know whether the difference between two networks is just noise, and, if not, how their structures differ. I'll describe a general framework for network comparison, based on testing whether the distance between models estimated from separate networks exceeds what we'd expect based on a pooled estimate. This framework is especially useful with nonparametric network models, such as densities of latent node locations, or continuous generalizations of block models ("graphons"); the estimation methods for those models also let us generate surrogate data, predict links, and summarize structure.

(Joint work with Dena Asta, Chris Genovese, Brian Karrer, Andrew Thomas, and Lawrence Wang.)

Time and place: 3:30--4:30 pm on Friday, 6 May 2016, in SMI 211, UW-Seattle

Self-Centered; Enigmas of Chance; Networks