February 10 Math Colloquium

by Mark Iwen, Duke University

Interpolation with Sparsity Assumptions: From Syphilis Testing to Sparse Fourier Transforms

Periodic functions with a relatively small number of energetic Fourier coefficients appear in many applications including communication protocols, image processing problems, and even numerical methods for solving some partial differential equations. In this talk we will discuss algorithms for recovering such functions more quickly than possible via traditional discrete Fourier transform methods. In the process we will encounter world war two history, number theory, combinatorics, error correcting codes, and approximation theory.