[Colloq] Colloquium Speaker - TODAY @ 12NOON

[Chantal Cardona]

**

* *

*College** of **Computer** and Information Science Colloquium*

 

Presents:

*Dr. Eynat Rafalin*

*Tufts** **University***

 

Who will speak on:

*Algorithms & Analysis of Depth Functions using Computational Geometry*

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*/Wednesday, October 19, 2005/**//*

*/12:00pm/**//*

*/366 West Village H/*

*/Northeastern University/*

*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/ 
<http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/%7Eerafalin/>