Texas A&M - Beihang Summer Program

Date: August 1, 2019

Time: 1:15PM - 2:15PM

Location: BLOC 220

Speaker: Florent Baudier, Texas A&M University

Description:
Title: The geometric approach: harnessing the hidden geometric structure.
Abstract: The geometric approach is a strategy that consists in uncovering an a priori hidden geometric structure pertaining to a certain mathematical problem, and in solving the problem under scrutiny by applying a wealth of geometric techniques that have now become relevant. Due to its versatility, the geometric approach has permeated virtually all fields of mathematics. Moreover, this fundamental approach has had a far reaching influence in the development of theoretical computer science. The hidden geometric structure alluded to above typically reveals itself as a metric space, and understanding its characteristics is usually challenging. One way to gain information about an abstract metric space is to faithfully represent it into some other metric space that we do understand much better, e.g. a well chosen normed linear space. What ‘faithfully’ means depends on the context. For these reasons, the theory of metric embeddings became a preponderant part of metric geometry. We will explain how the geometric approach can be used to design efficient and fast approximation algorithms for optimization problems on graphs.