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SUMMARY:Second-Order Comparison of Functional Data with Applications to DN
 A Geom - Victor Panaretos\, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
DTSTART:20120302T160000Z
DTEND:20120302T170000Z
UID:TALK35865@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Samworth
DESCRIPTION:Given two samples of continuous random curves\, we consider th
 e problem\nof comparing their smoothness properties as these are encoded b
 y their\ncovariance structure. Our study is motivated by the problem of\nd
 etermining whether the mechanical properties of short strands of DNA\nare 
 significantly affected by their base-pair sequence\; while this is\nbeliev
 ed to be true\, it has not been confirmed by 3D data. The\ncorresponding f
 unctional testing problem is seen to involve aspects of\nill-posed inverse
  problems and a test based on spectral truncation is\nproposed and investi
 gated. More generally\, we introduce the notion of\na dispersion operator 
 as a descriptor of second-order functional\nproperties and consider the pr
 oblem of comparing the dispersion\noperators of two functional populations
 . When applied to a dataset of\nDNA minicircles obtained through the elect
 ron microscope\, our tests\nseems to suggest the existence of a sequence e
 ffect on DNA shape.\n\n
LOCATION:MR12\, CMS\, Wilberforce Road\, Cambridge\, CB3 0WB
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