Events - Colloquia & Seminars

CCIS Colloquium Fall 2005

Algorithms and Analysis of Depth Functions using Computational Geometry

Speaker: Dr Eynat Rafalin (Tufts University)

Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Talk: 12:00 pm, 366 WVH

Abstract

The field of Computational Geometry deals with the systematic study of algorithms and data structures for geometric objects. Applications can be found in such fields as VLSI design, computer graphics, robotics, computer-aided design, pattern recognition, and statistics.

Data depth is a statistical analysis method that assigns a numeric value to a point, corresponding to its centrality relative to a data set. The data depth concept has significant potential as a data analysis tool, but efficient computational tools are not yet available.

In my talk I will show how computational geometry techniques were used to enhance our knowledge about the statistical concept of data depth and how they provided efficient algorithms to solve problems related to the concept.

Biography

Dr Eynat Rafalin is an NSF-funded Postdoctoral Associate at Tufts University. Her main research interest is development and analysis of geometric algorithms for problems from a variety of application areas. Her recent focus is application of computational geometry techniques to the analysis of the statistical concept of data-depth. Dr. Rafalin received her Ph.D. and M.Sc. in computer-science from Tufts University and a B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics from the Hebrew University. More details about her work in http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~erafalin/