Main topics
Interest in the methods and concepts of statistical physics is rapidly growing in fields as diverse as theoretical computer science, probability, machine learning, discrete mathematics, optimization and compressed sensing. This course will cover this rich and active interdisciplinary research landscape.
More specifically, we will review the statistical physics approach to problems ranging from graph theory (percolation, community detection) to discrete optimization and constraint satisfaction (satisfiability, coloring, bisection) and to inference and learning problems (learning in neural networks, clustering of data and of networks, compressed sensing or sparse linear regression, low-rank matrix and tensor factorization, etc.).
We will expose theoretical methods of analysis (replica, cavity, …) algorithms (message passing, spectral methods, …), discuss concrete applications, highlight rigorous justifications as well as present the connection to the physics of glassy and disordered systems.
The course is designed to be accessible to graduate students and researchers of all natural science and engineering disciplines with a basic knowledge of probability and analysis. Advanced training in any of the above fields is not requisite.
References: Information, Physics and Computation (Oxford Graduate Texts), 2009, M. Mézard, A. Montanari
Statistical Physics of inference: Thresholds and algorithms, Advances in Physics 65, 5 2016, L. Zdeborová & F. Krzakala