Events at Physics |
Events During the Week of April 4th through April 11th, 2021
Sunday, April 4th, 2021
- Academic Calendar
- Spring recess (reduced for spring 2021)
- Abstract: *Note: actual end time may vary.*
Monday, April 5th, 2021
- Academic Calendar
- Classes resume
- Abstract: *Note: actual end time may vary.*
- Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar
- NSTX-U Recovery — Motivation and Progress Toward the Resumption of Plasma Operations
- Time: 12:00 pm
- Place: Zoom Meeting
- Speaker: Dr. Stefan Gerhardt, PPPL
- Abstract: Chris Hegna is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
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Meeting ID: 918 3541 9103
Passcode: 578475
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Meeting ID: 918 3541 9103
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- Plasma Theory Seminar
- NO SEMINAR
- Time: 4:00 pm
Tuesday, April 6th, 2021
- Academic Calendar
- Election Day
- Time: 7:00 am - 8:00 pm
- Abstract: Election for State Superintendent of Public Instruction and other local offices. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Local: County Executive, School Board, Alders, and Judges Go to MyVote.wi.gov to find your polling place, see what is on your ballot, and check your registration. If you are not registered at your current address, you can register at your polling place on Election Day. See vote.wisc.edu for information on registration and voter ID. CONTACT: malischke@wisc.edu URL:
- Council Meeting
- Physics Council
- Time: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place:
- Host: Sridhara Dasu
Wednesday, April 7th, 2021
- Physics ∩ ML Seminar
- A Mathematical Exploration of Why Language Models Help Solve Downstream Tasks
- Time: 11:00 am - 12:15 pm
- Place: Online Seminar: Please sign up for our mailing list at www.physicsmeetsml.org for zoom link
- Speaker: Nikunj Saunshi, Princeton University
- Abstract: Autoregressive language models, pretrained on large text corpora to do well on next word prediction, have been successful at solving many downstream tasks, even with zero-shot usage. However, there is little theoretical understanding of this success. We initiate a mathematical study of this phenomenon for the downstream task of text classification by considering the following questions: (1) What is the intuitive connection between the pretraining task of next word prediction and text classification? (2) How can we mathematically formalize this connection and quantify the benefit of language modeling? For (1), we hypothesize, and verify empirically, that classification tasks of interest can be reformulated as sentence completion tasks, thus making language modeling a meaningful pretraining task. With a mathematical formalization of this hypothesis, we make progress towards (2) and show that language models that are \epsilon-optimal in cross-entropy (log-perplexity) learn features that can linearly solve such classification tasks with O(\sqrt{\epsilon})-error, thus demonstrating that doing well on language modeling can be beneficial for downstream tasks. We experimentally verify various assumptions and theoretical findings, and also use insights from the analysis to design a new objective function that performs well on some classification tasks.
- Host: Gary Shiu
- Department Meeting
- Department Meeting - CANCELLED
- Time: 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm
- Place: cancelled today due to lack of urgent business
- Speaker: Sridhara Dasu, Department Chair
- cancelled
- Host: Sridhara Dasu
Thursday, April 8th, 2021
- Cosmology Journal Club
- Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
- Abstract: Each week, we start with a couple scheduled 15 minute talks about one's research, or an arXiv paper. The last 30 minutes will typically be open to the group for anyone to discuss an arXiv paper.
All are welcome and all fields of cosmology are appropriate.
Contact Ross Cawthon, cawthon@wisc, for more information.
Zoom info
Meeting ID: 93592708053, passcode: cmbadger
Or click:
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Investigating the Origin of the Stars Closest to the Milky Way Supermassive Black Hole
- Time: 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place: Zoom meeting(see Abstract ) Coffee and tea 3:30pm, Talk 3:45pm
- Speaker: Devin Chu, UCLA
- Abstract: The formation mechanism of the young stars called "S-stars" located within an arcsecond of the Milky Way supermassive black hole remains a mystery. Proposed formation scenarios for these S-stars include the tidal disruption of a binary system and migration from the clockwise disk of young stars. Identifying current binary systems among the S-stars can provide important constraints for these formation mechanisms. Binary stars also play a significant role in the evolution and dynamics of the clusters they live in. While binary systems are important for understanding the history of the young star cluster at the Galactic Center, there have been limited surveys for binaries of the region. With two decades of integral field spectroscopy data and advanced tools for fitting mid-infrared stellar spectra, it is feasible to conduct a comprehensive spectroscopic binary search of the Galactic Center S-stars. I will present a framework for searching for spectroscopic binaries. This analysis uses 20 years of spectroscopy data and includes a sample of 29 stars located closest to the supermassive black hole. With these data and framework, I can place constraints on potential companion masses and the intrinsic binary fraction. I will also discuss how these limits have implications for the proposed S-stars’ formation mechanisms. Web Link: Zoom Link:
Friday, April 9th, 2021
- Department Coffee Hour
- Department Coffee Hour (Virtual)
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: Virtual (see abstract for connection info)
- Abstract: Topic: Department Coffee Hour
Time: Jan 29, 2021 03:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Every week on Fri, until May 14, 2021, 16 occurrence(s)
Jan 29, 2021 03:30 PM
Feb 5, 2021 03:30 PM
Feb 12, 2021 03:30 PM
Feb 19, 2021 03:30 PM
Feb 26, 2021 03:30 PM
Mar 5, 2021 03:30 PM
Mar 12, 2021 03:30 PM
Mar 19, 2021 03:30 PM
Mar 26, 2021 03:30 PM
Apr 2, 2021 03:30 PM
Apr 9, 2021 03:30 PM
Apr 16, 2021 03:30 PM
Apr 23, 2021 03:30 PM
Apr 30, 2021 03:30 PM
May 7, 2021 03:30 PM
May 14, 2021 03:30 PM
Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
Weekly:
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Meeting ID: 979 8528 1970
Passcode: 309601
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+13126266799,,97985281970#,,,,*309601# US (Chicago)
+19292056099,,97985281970#,,,,*309601# US (New York)
Dial by your location
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington D.C)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
Meeting ID: 979 8528 1970
Passcode: 309601
Find your local number:
Join by SIP
97985281970@zoomcrc.com
Join by H.323
162.255.37.11 (US West)
162.255.36.11 (US East)
115.114.131.7 (India Mumbai)
115.114.115.7 (India Hyderabad)
213.19.144.110 (Amsterdam Netherlands)
213.244.140.110 (Germany)
103.122.166.55 (Australia)
149.137.40.110 (Singapore)
64.211.144.160 (Brazil)
69.174.57.160 (Canada)
207.226.132.110 (Japan)
Meeting ID: 979 8528 1970
Passcode: 309601
- Host: Climate and Diversity Committee