Symbolic Systems Forum - Susan Holmes, Statistics Department

Susan Holmes, Statistics Department, "Phylogenetic Trees and Their Applications"

ABSTRACT:

Phylogenetic trees are special parameters that do not belong to a Euclidean

space, this makes for interesting mathematical questions which have

repercussions in :

-Making confidence statements about decision trees.

-Deciding whether the Japanese are fishing the blue whale populations.

-Visualizing the space of all trees (linguistic, family or other).

-Deciding whether trees are the right representation for observed data.

I will cover some of these areas that are at the boundaries of probability,

statistics and geometry.

BIO:

Doctor Holmes is an Associate Professor of Statistics and Associate

Director of the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Interdisciplinary

Program. She works with faculty from evolutionary biology to medicine,

exploring relationships between living things through similarities in the

plumage of birds, the social networks of ants, or the protein expression of

immune cells.