I will define the notion of a partition function and give examples of how these objects are used in different areas ranging from physics to computer science. Tactics for approximating partition functions will be discussed including: Correlation Decay, Barvinok's Interpolation, and Monte Carlo methods. Time permitting, I will look at how the locations of complex zeros affect the computational complexity of this approximation problem.
Speaker(s): Anthony Della Pella (University of Michigan)