07w5103 Entropy of Hidden Markov Processes and Connections to Dynamical Systems

Arriving Sunday, September 30 and departing Friday, October 5, 2007

Organizers: Brian Marcus (University of British Columbia), Karl Petersen (University of North Carolina), Tsachy Weissman (Stanford University).

Confirmed Participants

Press Release: Workshop on Entropy of Hidden Markov Processes

Information for Participants

Schedule (PDF file)

Abstracts (PDF file)

Mailing List

Final Report (PDF file)

Objectives

Given the enormous amount of recent work, following a long hiatus, the time seems ripe for a meeting on this subject. Given the large number of areas that have recently contributed to the subject, a five-day workshop at BIRS would be ideal. The overview above describes the relevance and importance of the workshop topics to information theory, probability theory, dynamical systems and statistical mechanics.

We aim to bring together experts from the wide variety of subjects that have contributed recent results. This includes people from information theory (source, channel and constrained coding), dynamical systems (iterated function systems and Lyapunov exponents), probability theory (random matrix products), and statistical mechanics.

In addition to experts, we expect to invite several graduate students and postdoctoral fellows (probably 25% of the participants). Currently, all of the organizers, and many of the expected participants, have students and postdocs working on problems in the area.

Our principal objectives are:

-- To introduce, via tutorials, techniques and gestalt from each of the related areas to experts in other areas

-- To report recent results

-- To pose and discuss open problems

In terms of format, we envision four one-hour talks per day, including tutorials on the contributing subjects, as well as sessions on open problems.