“Dumb Machine Learning for Physics”
Machine learning is now a part of physics for the foreseeable future, but many deep learning tools, architectures, and algorithms are imported from industry to physics with minimal modifications. Does physics really need all of these fancy techniques, or does “dumb” machine learning with the simplest possible neural network suffice? The answer may depend on the extent to which the training data relevant to physics problems is truly analogous to problems from industry such as image classification, which in turn depends on the topology and statistical structures of physics data. This talk will not endeavor to answer this very broad and difficult question, but will rather provide a set of illustrative examples inspired by a novice’s exploration of this rapidly-developing field.