Grosswald Lectures
Wednesday, February 28, 2018 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Bernd Sturnfeld
University of California, Berkeley
Gaussoids offer a new link between combinatorics, statistics and algebraic geometry. Introduced by Lnenicka and Matus in 2007, their axioms describe conditional independence for Gaussian random variables. We explain this theory and how it relates to matroids. The role of the Grassmannian for matroids is now played by a projection of the Lagrangian Grassmannian. We discuss the classification and realizability of gaussoids, and we explore oriented gaussoids, valuated gaussoids, and the analogue to positroids.