You are on page 1of 1

COLLOQUIUM SERIES

MarkHughes,BYUUniversity
December8th,2016WIDT007@3:00
Refreshments2:303:00ANSC112

AMachineLearningApproachtoKnotTheory

Inrecentyearsartificialneuralnetworkshavereceivedagreatdealofattentionduetotheirabilitytodetectsubtleand verycomplex
patternsinlargedatasets.Theyhavebecomeanimportantmachinelearningtoolandhavebeenappliedsuccessfullytomany
problems,includingcomputervision,frauddetection,medicaldiagnostics,andfinancialmodeling.

Knotsaretopologicalobjectswhichwerefirststudiedinthe1700s.Theyappearinmodernphysicsandbiology,andplayacrucialrole
inthestudyofthetopologyof3and4dimensionalmanifolds.Numerousalgebraic,geometric,andanalyticinvariantscanbedefined
whichreflectinterestingpropertiesoftheseknots.

InthistalkIwilloutlineanapproachtousingneuralnetworkstomodelknotinvariants.Althoughthesenetworkscanbeusedto
modelavarietyofinvariants,wewillfocusontwowhichareparticularlydifficulttocompute:quasipositivity andtheslicegenus.After
definingtheseinvariantsanddiscussingtheirimportanceinlowdimensionaltopologywewillshowhowtheycanbecomputedand
studiedusingpredictionsmadefromneuralnetworks.Wewillalsooutlineanapproachtousingthesetechniquestouncovernew
algebraicstructureintherelatedknotconcordancegroup.

You might also like