Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

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The neighbor-joining algorithm is a popular phylogenetic tree inference method invented by two biologists (Naruya Saitou and Masatoshi Nei) in 1987. During the past twenty years there have been numerous attempts to understand the theoretical underpinnings of the algorithm. We will explain a number of recent results that provide a clear picture of what the algorithm is optimizing, why it is robust, and how it can be improved. In particular, we discuss interesting mathematical connections to polyhedral geometry and explain the relevance of the space M_0,n(R).