On Friday December 7, the Van Dantzig Seminar on statistics will host lectures by Olga Klopp (Paris) and Christoph Brune (Twente)

The program is (titles and abstracts below):

14.30 – 14.35  Opening
14.35 – 15.35  Olga Klopp
15.35 – 16.00  Break
16.00 – 17.00  Christoph Brune
17.00 – drinks

Location: Leiden University (details on the room will follows)

Free attendance.

The Van Dantzig seminar is a nationwide series of lectures in statistics, that features renowned international and local speakers from the full breadth of the statistical sciences. The name honours David van Dantzig (1900-1959), who was the first modern statistician in the Netherlands, and professor in the “Theory of Collective Phenomena” (i.e. statistics) in Amsterdam. The seminar will convene 4 to 6 times a year at varying locations, and is financially supported by, among others, the STAR cluster and the Section Mathematical Statistics of the VVS-OR.

Everybody is cordially invited to attend.

Johannes Schmidt-Hieber and Frank van der Meulen

TITLES AND ABSTRACTS OF PRESENTATIONS

Olga Klopp
Network models and sparse graphon estimation
Inhomogeneous random graph models encompass many network models such as stochastic block models and latent position models. We consider the problem of statistical estimation of the matrix of connection probabilities based on the observations of the adjacency matrix of the network. We derive optimal rates of estimation of the probability matrix in the important setting of sparse networks. We will also discuss the problem of graphon estimation when the probability matrix is sampled according to the graphon model and the problem of estimation in the cut distance.

Christoph Brune
TBA