Graduate Student Seminar

Speaker 1:  Qing Ji

Title

Predicting Lameness of Cows Using B-spline Regression

Abstract

Lameness of cows is the result of hoof and limb ailments, which in turn leads to reduced milk production and decreased fertility.  Early diagnosis of lameness would be a great benefit to farmers in terms of cost saving and our project is build a prediction model based on limb movement variables recorded and lameness status diagnosed by veterinarians.  The basis spline regression is used as a classifier with cross-validation.  I will present the result, discuss the short coming of the current method and possible future work to improve the accuracy.

Speaker 2: Ahmad Mousavi

Title

An Inexact SQP Method for Equality Constrained Optimization

Abstract

This presentation presents an algorithm for large-scale equality constrained optimization. The method is based on a characterization of inexact sequential quadratic programming (SQP) steps that can ensure global convergence. Inexact SQP methods are needed for large-scale applications for which the iteration matrix cannot be explicitly formed or factored and the arising linear systems must be solved using iterative linear algebra techniques. We address how to determine when a given inexact step makes sufficient progress toward a solution of the nonlinear program, as measured by an exact penalty function.