Andrea Montanari (@Andrea_

Andrea Montanari

903 posts

Andrea Montanari

@Andrea__M

Professor, Statistics and Mathematics, Stanford University. (Opinions are my own)

Joined April 2009

Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
May 16, 2021
A reminder that: 1. Number of citations is not a measure of scientific validity; 2. Number of publications is not a measure of scientific value; 3. The argument from authority is not acceptable in science. (On a personal note, 3 is why I started loving science as a kid.)
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Oct 5, 2021
The Nobel prize to Giorgio Parisi is such a joy and and multiply well deserved recognition: In random order: (1) Stochastic quantization; (2) The KPZ equation; (3) Matrix models; (4) Mean field spin glasses (!); (5) Random constraint satisfaction problems. 1/2
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Feb 5, 2022
I can see the end-game in the current quest for the mathematical foundations of deep learning: A neural network will find a (very long) proof that deep learning works. No human will be able to understand it, but the proof will be formally verified.
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Mar 18, 2021
With Peter Bartlett and Sasha Rakhlin, an overview of a slice of research in theoretical machine learning (and an effort to connect some dots):
arxiv.org
Deep learning: a statistical viewpoint
The remarkable practical success of deep learning has revealed some major surprises from a theoretical perspective. In particular, simple gradient methods easily find near-optimal solutions to...
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Sep 25, 2023
A professional update. After 17 years in the wonderful Stanford Electrical Engineering Department, I am moving 50% of my appointment to Stanford Math. I am grateful to the University for making this change possible.
49K
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Aug 28, 2023
Lecture notes from summer schools in Princeton (2021) and Les Houches (2022), with Theodor Misiakiewicz:
arxiv.org
Six Lectures on Linearized Neural Networks
In these six lectures, we examine what can be learnt about the behavior of multi-layer neural networks from the analysis of linear models. We first recall the correspondence between neural...
23K
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Aug 10, 2020
I devoted good part of the last 2 years trying to understand interpolators: models with vanishing training error. These behave well when the interpolator is selected via a `min norm' principle. Do I understand this phenomenon better now? A bit, summarized here in a cartoon. 1/n
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Jul 1, 2022
The Shannon award to Rudiger Urbanke is both terrific news and a long overdue recognition to one of the most influential information and coding theorists of the last quarter century. 1/n
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Apr 7, 2022
arxiv.org/abs/2204.02909 I was asked several times for the lecture notes of this class (taught at Stanford in Winter 2017). At long last, with @subhabratasen90, we managed to clean them up and make them presentable. Hopefully, they will be useful.
arxiv.org
A Friendly Tutorial on Mean-Field Spin Glass Techniques for Non-Physicists
This tutorial is based on lecture notes written for a class taught in the Statistics Department at Stanford in the Winter Quarter of 2017. The objective was to provide a working knowledge of some...
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Sep 13, 2021
If you were ever curious about what theoretical physics has to do with high-dimensional statistics. (Next week, in Stanford, in person!) web.stanford.edu/class/stats369/
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Jul 6, 2020
When do neural networks outperform kernel methods? High-dimensional noise orthogonal to the discriminative direction seem to hurt kernel methods more than nnets. arxiv.org/abs/2006.13409 (Experiment: tweeting a paper for the first time. Curious to see the feedback.)
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Oct 20, 2024
Does anyone know how does it happen that I am systematically bombarded with propaganda by the owner of this platform? Propaganda that I don’t like or am interested in. I am not asking why (which is easier to understand) but what is the tweak in the rec system
41K
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Sep 23, 2022
Slides from a talk at MCQMC2022. Discussed (among other things) sampling via stochastic localization and its connection to diffusions. web.stanford.edu/~montanar/OTHE…
Andrea Montanari
@Andrea__M
Apr 5, 2022
I do not think that this is ok @Stanford
Jelani Nelson
@minilek
Apr 5, 2022
A @Stanford professor just threatened me with police. After BBQ Becky, Permit Patty, Golfcart Gail, and all the memes, we now have Retweet Rachel. Public advisory: don't call the cops on black people for no reason. Black people disagreeing with you on Twitter is not a crime.