On the afternoon of March 22, Yuan Yaxiang, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, and Researcher of the Academy of Mathematics and System Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was invited to give the first lecture of the 2023 Mathematics Culture Festival series at Beihang University. The lecture, centered on the topic “Big Data and Optimization”, was hosted by Han Deren, Dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences.

Academician Yuan Yaxiang introduced the application of big data in transportation, intelligence, medical services, finance, wireless communication, etc., and explained the changes and innovations brought by big data technology to every aspect of social life. He pointed out that data science as an interdisciplinary subject has emerged as the times require. Combining cases in health and photography fields, Academician Yuan introduced data science from four aspects, including data collection, data processing, data analysis, and data application.

As one of the core techniques of data science, optimization can be commonly interpreted as picking the best one among multiple choices, said Academician Yuan. Many big data problems can be summed up as optimization problems. For instance, the compression-awareness problem can be reduced to finding the solution with the smallest 0-parameter for a system of linear equations of low rank and multivariate. Subsequently, Academician Yuan introduced the gradient method, alternating direction method, augmented Lagrangian function method, subspace technique, stochastic gradient method and other optimization methods frequently used in data science.

“Life is like a super marathon, the bigger the derivative, the greater the achievement.” Academician Yuan hoped that students could make good use of optimization thinking methods to solve practical problems in study and life with perseverance and persistence, understand the essence of mathematics, follow the progress of the times, aim at social needs, and use Chinese data to carry out Chinese research.

This lecture is the first one of its kind during the 2023 Mathematics Culture Festival. This year’s festival opened on March 14 and has launched various activities to demonstrate the charm of mathematical culture, so that Beihang students could have a multi-faceted, all-round experience about the beauty of mathematics.

Reported by Li Fei

Reviewed by Yuan Xing

Edited by Jia Aiping

Translated by Lu Meili