Dean P. Foster's home page

• LLMs:
  • COLM 2025 talk
  • We want to make LLMs into excellent tutors: blog post, arxiv.
  • A game theory / evolutionary look at Alignment.
  • Picking the right batch size .
  • A TCS / statistical look at LLMs.
  • Mind the gap.
• Mortality: Over the years, I have worked on several mortality calculators:
  • Classic first version Mortality
  • The newest one works for people over 50. It will tell you your optimal weight.
  • A phone friendly version.
  • Heart disease by ACC. (Not mine! I always assumed someone would create a much better calculator than the ones we created! I like this one a lot. But only hearts and not many variables.)
• Family and Photos:
  • Old photos (old photos on facebook).
  • My Dad shot a movie about India called The future for Ram, (youtube). I only recently saw Apu and realized how much my dad's film is an homage to it.
  • My parents created this picture book about Tibirita, Colombia. My sister Shanti scanned and translated it into Spanish.
  • My grandfather built a lake (map) in upstate NY (youtube, mushrooms, bubbles).
• Talks:
  • LLM: Alignment, TCS.
  • NYC Ops day (RL for supply chain).
  • Calibration: Simons, Calibeating, AMLC.
  • CMU talks: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
  • Older talks: Falsifiability, calibration (handout), linear (shorter).
  • bio, head shot
  • Teaching: Old teaching materials are still on line.
• Rants: Some 20 year old rants and raves.
• Refereeing: I'm a supporter of open access of science to everyone. Hence I will only referee for journals that are open access (OASPA).
• Research: vita, arXiv, scholar, obsolete research page, covid work.

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