| Day | Topic | Reading | Optional Reading | |
| 9/16/08 | Introduction, factor graphs, self-reduction | Kschischang and Frey, "Factor graphs and the sum-product algorithm," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 47(2):498-519, 2001 | ||
| 9/18/08 | Message passing algorithms from statistics, computer science and communications | |||
| 9/23/08 | Variational methods, free energy and Gibbs free energy | M. Wainwright and M. Jordan, "A variational principle for graphical models," In New Directions in Statistical Signal Processing: From Systems to Brain. MIT Press. | ||
| 9/25/08 | Variational methods, Ising models and fixed point iteration | |||
| 9/30/08 | Bethe free energy and locally consistent marginals | J. Yedidia, W. Freeman and Y. Weiss, "Constructing free-energy approximations and generalized belief propagation algorithms," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 51(7):2282-2312, 2005 | ||
| 10/02/08 | Regiona-based approximations and generalized belief propogation | |||
| 10/02/08 | Tree based upper/lower bound approximations | |||
| 10/07/08 | Monte Carlo Markov chain (MCMC) | |||
| 10/09/08 | Density evolution | |||
| 10/14/08 | Gibbs measures on trees: uinqueness, extremality, mixing | |||
| 10/16/08 | Tree pruning algorithm | |||
| 10/21/08 | The cavity method | |||
| 10/23/08 | Presentation by Michael Dedek | Y. Weiss, C. Yanover and T. Meltzer. " MAP estimation, linear programming and belief propagation with convex free energies". Proceedings of the 23th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), 2007. | ||
| 10/28/08 | Presentation | |||
| 10/30/08 | Presentation by Ming Tan | V. Kolmogorov and R. Zabih (2004). " What energy functions can be minimized via graph cuts?". IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 26(2):147-159. | ||
| 11/04/08 | Presentation | |||
| 11/06/08 | Presentation | |||
| 11/11/08 | Veteran's (University Closed) | |||
| 11/13/08 | Presentation |