Essex Data Science Seminar Week 8: Dr Dimitra Kosta

Join us for this week's Essex Data Science seminar, Autumn Term 2023. Our ED-3S seminars are open to everyone, and offer a great opportunity to meet new people and join in with our community.

Dr Dimitra Kosta, University of Edinburgh, will present this seminar on Maximum likelihood estimation of toric Fano varieties.

Abstract

I will talk about the maximum likelihood estimation problem for several classes of toric Fano models. I will start by exploring the maximum likelihood degree for all 2-dimensional Gorenstein toric Fano varieties. I will show that the ML degree is equal to the degree of the surface in every case except for the quintic del Pezzo surface with two ordinary double points and provide explicit expressions that allow one to compute the maximum likelihood estimate in closed form whenever the ML degree is less than 5. I will explore the reasons for the ML degree drop using A-discriminants and intersection theory. If there is time, I will discuss about toric Fano varieties associated to 3-valent phylogenetic trees and their ML degree.

How to attend

The seminar will be held on Zoom at 13:45 on Thursday 23 November. It is open to everyone, including the general public. Please contact Dr Jianya Lu (jianya.lu@essex.ac.uk) for further information, including the Zoom link.