Information-Theoretic Characterizations of Markov Random Fields and Subfields
Speaker: Prof. Raymond W. Yeung
Affiliation: Department of Information Engineering
*Please note: Time change to 1:30 p.m.
Abstract: Let Xi, i ∈ V form a Markov random field (MRF) represented by an undirected graph G = (V, E), and V′ be a subset of V. We determine the smallest graph that can always represent the subfield Xi, i ∈ V′ as an MRF. Based on this result, we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for a subfield of a Markov tree to be also a Markov tree. When G is a path so that Xi, i ∈ V form a Markov chain, it is known that the I-Measure is always nonnegative (Kawabata and Yeung, 1992). We prove that Markov chain is essentially the only MRF such that the I-Measure is always nonnegative. By applying our characterization of the smallest graph representation of a subfield of an MRF, we develop a recursive approach for constructing information diagrams for MRFs. Our work is built on the set-theoretic characterization of an MRF (Yeung et al., 2002).
Biography: Raymond W. Yeung received the BS, MEng and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1984, 1985, and 1988, respectively. He joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1988. Since 1991, he has been with CUHK, where he is currently Choh-Ming Li Professor of Information Engineering. A cofounder of the field of network coding, he has been serving as Co-Director of the Institute of Network Coding since 2010. He is the author of the books A First Course in Information Theory (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2002) and Information Theory and Network Coding (Springer 2008), which have been adopted by over 100 institutions around the world. In spring 2014, he gave the first MOOC in the world on information theory that reached over 25,000 students. His research interest is in information theory and network coding. He was a consultant in a project of Jet Propulsion Laboratory for salvaging the malfunctioning Galileo Spacecraft.
Professor Yeung also has served on the editorial board of a number of academic journals. He was an Associate Editor for Shannon Theory of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory from 2002 to 2005. He currently serves as an Editor-at-Large of Communications in Information and Systems, an Editor of Foundation and Trends in Communications and Information Theory and an Editor of Foundation and Trends in Networking.
For more information, contact Prof. Suhas Diggavi (suhas@ee.ucla.edu)
Date/Time:
Date(s) - Feb 03, 2020
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Location:
EE-IV Shannon Room #54-134
420 Westwood Plaza - 5th Flr., Los Angeles CA 90095