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FOLDS seminar: Dependence and degeneracy create: Multiple descent in overparameterized models

September 10 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Details
Date: September 10, 2026
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Event Category: SeminarColloquium
Event Tags:
Organizers
IDEAS Center
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Wharton Statistics and Data Science Department
Penn AI
Venue
Amy Gutmann Hall, Room 414 3333 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia
19104
Google Map

Zoom link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/98220304722

Over-parameterized linear regression has been widely studied over the last decade. However, most existing works assume that the covariates are independent and that their covariance matrices are non-degenerate. In this talk, we will relax both assumptions and derive deterministic equivalents for the prediction risk in a vanishing-ridge regime. We show that degeneracy of the covariance matrices and dependence can lead to multiple descent, and characterize where the corresponding peaks can occur. Our proofs use a novel graph representation of the variance profile. We show that maximum matchings and the Dulmage–Mendelsohn decomposition of the associated bipartite graph identify the configurations at which the variance becomes singular.

Speaker

Morgane Austern

Assistant professor of Statistics at Harvard University

I am an assistant professor of Statistics at Harvard University and an affiliate of the CMSA and of the Applied Math department.   I graduated with a PhD in statistics from Columbia University in 2019 where I worked in collaboration with Peter Orbanz and Arian Maleki on limit theorems for dependent and structured data.  For two great years (2019-2021), I was a  postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research New England. In 2022 I was named a Kavli fellow by the National Academy of science. In 2023 I was invited to speak at the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medecine on the mathematical foundation of machine learning in a symposium on AI for mathematical reasoning. In 2025 I received a CAREER Award from the NSF.  In 2026, I was named a Sloan Fellow.