Symmetric products, duality and homological dimension of configuration spaces

We discuss various aspects of `braid spaces' or configuration spaces of unordered points on manifolds. First we describe how the homology of these spaces is affected by puncturing the underlying manifold, hence extending some results of Fred Cohen, Goryunov and Napolitano. Next we obtain a precise bound for the cohomological dimension of braid spaces. This is related to some sharp and useful connectivity bounds that we establish for the reduced symmetric products of any simplicial complex. Our methods are geometric and exploit a dual version of configuration spaces given in terms of truncated symmetric products. We finally refine and then apply a theorem of McDuff on the homological connectivity of a map from braid spaces to some spaces of `vector fields'.Comment: This is the version published by Geometry & Topology Monographs on 26 July 2008. arXiv-admin note: this is the same article as the author's version arXiv:math/061143

Configuration Spaces and the Topology of Curves in Projective Space

We survey and expand on the work of Segal, Milgram and the author on the topology of spaces of maps of positive genus curves into $n$-th complex projective space, $n\geq 1$ (in both the holomorphic and continuous categories). Both based and unbased maps are studied and in particular we compute the fundamental groups of the spaces in question. The relevant case when $n=1$ is given by a non-trivial extension which we fully determine.Comment: 24page

Remarks on Finite Subset Spaces

This paper expands on and refines some known and less well-known results about the finite subset spaces of a simplicial complex $X$ including their connectivity and their top homology groups. It also discusses the inclusion of the singletons into the three fold subset space and shows that this subspace is weakly contractible but generally non-contractible unless $X$ is a co-$H$ group. Some homological calculations are provided.Comment: Several improvements. Sections 5 and 7 expanded out. One missing condition in theorem 1.3 added. Introduction rewritten. To appear in HH

Generalized Dunkl-Lipschitz Spaces

This paper deals with generalized Lipschitz spaces $\wedge^k_{\alpha,p,q}(\R)$ in the context of Dunkl harmonic analysis on $\R$, for all real $\alpha$. It also introduces a generalized Dunkl-Lipschitz spaces ${\cal T}\wedge^k_{\alpha,p,q}(\R^2_+)$ of $k$-temperature on $\R^2_+$. Some properties and continuous embedding of these spaces and the isomorphism of ${\cal T}\wedge^k_{\alpha,p,q}(\R^2_+)$ and $\wedge^k_{\alpha,p,q}(\R)$ are established

Bootstrap for neural model selection

Bootstrap techniques (also called resampling computation techniques) have introduced new advances in modeling and model evaluation. Using resampling methods to construct a series of new samples which are based on the original data set, allows to estimate the stability of the parameters. Properties such as convergence and asymptotic normality can be checked for any particular observed data set. In most cases, the statistics computed on the generated data sets give a good idea of the confidence regions of the estimates. In this paper, we debate on the contribution of such methods for model selection, in the case of feedforward neural networks. The method is described and compared with the leave-one-out resampling method. The effectiveness of the bootstrap method, versus the leave-one-out methode, is checked through a number of examples.Comment: A la suite de la conf\'{e}rence ESANN 200