mathematics

Sofia Olhede

Sofia Olhede is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sofia Olhede rather than just read about it. In short: Sofia Charlotta Olhede (born 1977) is a British-Swedish mathematical statistician known for her research on wavelets, graphons, and high-dimensional statistics and for her columns on algorithmic bias. She is a professor of statistical science at the EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne).

Key takeaways

Sofia Olhede belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sofia Olhede to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sofia Olhede from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sofia Charlotta Olhede (born 1977) is a British-Swedish mathematical statistician known for her research on wavelets, graphons, and high-dimensional statistics and for her columns on algorithmic bias. She is a professor of statistical science at the EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne).

Education and career Olhede earned a master's degree from Imperial College London in 2000, and completed her doctorate there in 2003. Her dissertation, Analysis via Time, Frequency and Scale of Nonstationary Signals, was supervised by Andrew T. Walden. She began her academic career as a lecturer in statistics at Imperial in 2002, and moved to University College London as a professor in 2007. At University College London, she was also an honorary professor of computer science and an honorary senior research associate in mathematics. She became a professor at the Chair of Statistical Data Science at EPFL in 2019. She was also a member of the Public Policy Commission of the Law Society of England and Wales, and served as university liaison director for University College London at the Alan Turing Institute for 2015–2016.

Research Her scientific work includes non-parametric function regression, high dimensional time series and point process analysis, and network data analysis.

Recognition Olhede won an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Leadership Fellowship in 2010, and an ERC consolidator fellowship in 2016. She was elected as a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2018 "for seminal contributions to the theory and application of large and heterogeneous networks, random fields and point process, for advancing research in data science, and for service to the profession through editorial and committee work".

Selected works Janson, Svante; Olhede, Sofia (2021). "Can smooth graphons in several dimensions be represented by smooth graphons on $[0,1]$?". arXiv:2101.07587 [math.CO]. Sykulski, Adam M.; Olhede, Sofia C.; Guillaumin, Arthur P.; Lilly, Jonathan M.; Early, Jeffrey J. (2019). "The debiased Whittle likelihood". Biometrika. 106 (2): 251–266. doi:10.1093/biomet/asy071. hdl:10044/1/98074. Lunagómez, Simón; Olhede, Sofia C.; Wolfe, Patrick J. (2020). "Modeling Network Populations via Graph Distances". Journal of the American Statistical Association. 116 (536): 1–18. arXiv:1904.07367. doi:10.1080/01621459.2020.1763803. S2CID 119310085. Maugis, P.-A. G.; Olhede, S. C.; Priebe, C. E.; Wolfe, P. J. (2020). "Testing for Equivalence of Network Distribution Using Subgraph Counts". Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics. 29 (3): 455–465. arXiv:1701.00505. doi:10.1080/10618600.2020.1736085. S2CID 201049943.

References

External links Home page Personal website at EPFL Website of the Chair of Statistical Data Science Sofia Olhede publications indexed by Google Scholar

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sofia Olhede

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sofia Olhede claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sofia Olhede before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sofia Olhede ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sofia Olhede

In research: Sofia Olhede appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sofia Olhede in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sofia Olhede is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1977 births, 21st-century British statisticians, Academics of Imperial College London, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sofia Olhede outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Sofia Olhede” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Sofia Olhede in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sofia Olhede means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sofia Olhede out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sofia Olhede in simple terms?

Why does Sofia Olhede matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sofia Olhede?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sofia Olhede.