Colloquium Schedule for 1996-7

The measure concentration phenomenon and its applicationsin optimization


Alexander Barvinok,
University of Michigan

The measure concentration phenomenon is ubiquitous in local Banach geometry,probability and combinatorics. It refers to the situation where "almostall" values of a continuous function on a higher-dimensional spaceconcentrate around some most frequent value. For example, the measure concentrationon the sphere, described by classic Levy's Lemma, is a far-reaching generalizationof the fact that the volume of a higher-dimensional sphere concentratesaround its hyperplane section. In this talk I am going to present some unexpectedconsequences of the measure concentration phenomenon for several famousproblems in optimization.