STAT 8054: Advanced Statistical Computing

Instructor. Aaron J. Molstad (amolstad@umn.edu)
Office hours. Monday 3:00 - 4:00PM and Wednesday 9:00 - 10:00AM in Ford Hall 384

Syllabus. [pdf]
Lecture. Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 12:20 - 1:10PM in Ford Hall 170

Note that you must be logged into your UMN Canvas account to access course materials.


  Lecture   Topics  
  1.1 (1/22)   Course overview [slides]  
  1.2 (1/24)   Fundamentals of numerical linear algebra [slides]  
  1.3 (1/27)   Computational complexity, matrix decompositions [slides]  

Lecture 1 [notes]


  2.1 (1/29)   Unconstrained optimization overview [slides]  
  2.2 (1/31)   Optimality conditions, convexity [slides]  
  2.3 (2/3)   Quasiconvexity, strong convexity, L-smoothness [slides  

Lecture 2 [notes]


  3.1 (2/5)   Steepest descent, gradient descent [slides]  
  3.2 (2/7)   Example, accelerated gradient descent [slides]  
  3.3 (2/10)   Newton’s method [slides]  

Lecture 3 [notes]


  4.1 (2/12)   Majorize-minimize principle [slides]  
  4.2 (2/14)   Expectation-maximization algorithm [slides]  
  4.3 (2/17)   Proximal gradient descent [slides]  
  4.4 (2/19)   Proximal gradient descent [slides]  
  4.5 (2/21)   Generalized gradient descent [slides]