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Colloquium
Approximation Guarantees for Data-Driven Algorithm Design
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Speaker: Avrim Blum (TTIC) Chief Academic Officer and Interim President Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago Wednesday, April 22, 2026 12:00PM - 1:00PM Lunch at 11:30am in 1307
Talk 12:00-1:00pm in 1327 Location: Yale Institute for Foundations of Data Science & Webcast, 219 Prospect Street, 13th Floor, New Haven, CT 06511 and via Webcast: https://yale.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=ed83d163-ce1a-48ba-b136-b3ca014e9669 |
Abstract: Data-Driven Algorithm Design refers to the idea of using typical problem-instances from a domain of interest to help produce an algorithm that performs particularly well on that domain. This idea has a long history in AI, and recently, there have been growing advances in Theoretical Computer Science and Machine Learning Theory developing tools for proving guarantees for this approach. In this talk, I will discuss work on using ideas from approximation algorithms (and competitive analysis) to simplify the algorithmic challenge involved, and perhaps also make it easier to compare to stronger benchmarks, by willingly giving up some constant (or logarithmic or polynomial) factors. I will focus on the setting of algorithms that can benefit from “warm start” initialization, where we will also see connections to several classic algorithmic problems.
Speaker Bio: Avrim Blum is Professor and Chief Academic Officer at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC); prior to this he was on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University for 25 years. His main research interests are in Machine Learning Theory, Algorithmic Game Theory, Approximation Algorithms, and Algorithmic Fairness. He has served as Program Chair for the Conference on Learning Theory (COLT), the IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), and the Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS). Blum is recipient of the AI Journal Classic Paper Award, the ICML/COLT 10-Year Best Paper Award, the ACM Paris Kanellakis Award, the Sloan Fellowship, the NSF National Young Investigator Award, and the Herbert Simon Teaching Award, and he is a Fellow of the ACM.
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