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arXiv research

A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.

168,742 papers · 148 categories

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145290434579 · Jun 202019922001200920172026
48 results for empirical gain maximization

A new method for multi-objective Bayesian optimization using entropy search and variational lower bound maximization.

problem Efficiently optimizing multiple objectives in continuous domains.
method Approximates the Pareto-frontier using a mixture distribution and optimizes the balance through variational lower bound maximization.
result Demonstrated effectiveness especially with many objective functions.

Bayesian decision theory outlines a rigorous framework for making optimal decisions based on maximizing expected utility over a model posterior. However, practitioners often do not have access to the full posterior and resort to approximate inference strategies. In such cases, taking the eventual decision-making task i…

2019-02-02abs ↗pdf ↗

This work investigates fundamental questions related to learning features in convolutional neural networks (CNN). Empirical findings across multiple architectures such as VGG, ResNet, Inception, DenseNet and MobileNet indicate that weights near the center of a filter are larger than weights on the outside. Current regu…

2019-05-25abs ↗pdf ↗

New guarantees for adaptive combinatorial maximization with various objectives.

problem Maximizing under cardinality constraints and minimum cost coverage in adaptive settings.
method Bayesian approach with comprehensive approximation guarantees for various utility functions.
result Maximal gain ratio is a new parameter that provides stronger approximation guarantees than greedy policies.

Proposes a new method to enhance neural learning by maximizing information gain.

problem Improving neural learning by selecting key variables to maximize information gain.
method Adaptive Ensemble Kalman Filter to quantify uncertainty and maximize information gain.
result The proposed method enables the neural network to learn more effectively from stochastic systems.

We present a general-purpose method to train Markov chain Monte Carlo kernels, parameterized by deep neural networks, that converge and mix quickly to their target distribution. Our method generalizes Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and is trained to maximize expected squared jumped distance, a proxy for mixing speed. We demon…

2017-11-25abs ↗pdf ↗

New framework analyzes regret in guided diffusion for optimizing structured inputs.

problem Understanding regret behavior in guided-diffusion black-box optimization for structured design problems.
method Developed a certificate-based expected simple-regret framework that avoids assumptions breaking down in modern diffusion BO pipelines.
result Explains how exponential and polynomial convergence can arise from mass lift in near-optimal designs.

FisherSFT selects informative examples to fine-tune LLMs efficiently.

problem Adapting large language models to new domains efficiently.
method Selects examples maximizing information gain using Hessian of log-likelihood.
result Empirically demonstrates improved performance with reduced computational cost.

We introduce a new weight-decay scaling rule to maintain sublayer gains across different widths in modern scale-invariant architectures.

problem In modern scale-invariant architectures, training quickly enters a steady state where normalization layers create backward scale sensitivity, degrading learning-rate transfer.
method We introduce a weight-decay scaling rule for AdamW that preserves sublayer gain across widths by equalizing the effective learning rate.
result Our empirical weight-decay scaling rule λ2dλ_2\propto \sqrt{d} approximately keeps sublayer gains width invariant, enabling zero-shot transfer of learning rate and weight decay.

We propose minimum regret search (MRS), a novel acquisition function for Bayesian optimization. MRS bears similarities with information-theoretic approaches such as entropy search (ES). However, while ES aims in each query at maximizing the information gain with respect to the global maximum, MRS aims at minimizing the…

2016-02-02abs ↗pdf ↗

GoBOED optimizes experiments for specific decision-making objectives, improving downstream outcomes.

problem Reducing parameter uncertainty does not always improve decision-making in critical settings.
method Combines variational posterior surrogate and differentiable convex decision layer for gradient-based design optimization.
result GoBOED identifies designs that better align with specific decision objectives and reveals wider optimal design windows.

Active inference minimizes expected free energy for optimal behavior.

problem Understanding and optimizing behavior in complex systems.
method Combines Bayesian decision theory, optimal Bayesian design, and the free energy principle.
result Active inference emerges as a unified framework for information-seeking, utility maximization, and goal-directed behavior.

Entropy Search (ES) and Predictive Entropy Search (PES) are popular and empirically successful Bayesian Optimization techniques. Both rely on a compelling information-theoretic motivation, and maximize the information gained about the argmax\arg\max of the unknown function; yet, both are plagued by the expensive computatio…

2017-03-06abs ↗pdf ↗

New method corrects active learning for distribution shifts and outliers.

problem Conventional active learning methods fail to account for test-time distribution.
method JEPIG, a hybrid of BALD and EPIG, maximizes expected predictive information gain.
result JEPIG outperforms conventional methods in active learning with distribution shifts.

This work improves policy optimization by maximizing entropy of state distribution, leading to better exploration.

problem Lack of exploration in state space when maximizing policy entropy.
method Proposes maximizing the entropy of a lower bound approximation to the state weighting distribution, based on latent space representation.
result Entropy regularization based on marginal state distribution achieves superior state space coverage and better performance in various domains.

Paper presents an algorithm for optimal regret in communicating Markov decision processes.

problem Achieving optimal regret in Markov decision processes with a communicating assumption.
method The algorithm explicitly tracks the constant K(M) to learn optimally, balancing exploration, co-exploration, and exploitation.
result The algorithm achieves asymptotically optimal regret K(M)log(T)+o(log(T))K(M) \log(T) + \mathrm{o}(\log(T)) for communicating Markov decision processes.

New active learning strategy improves decision-making accuracy.

problem Maximizing decision-making accuracy in sequential data acquisition.
method Introduces a novel active learning criterion that maximizes expected information gain on the posterior decision distribution.
result Improved performance in decision-making accuracy compared to existing alternatives.

New method uses random decompositions for high-dimensional Bayesian optimization.

problem Learning accurate decompositions for high-dimensional black-box functions.
method Data-independent random tree-based decomposition sampling.
result Random decomposition upper-confidence bound algorithm (RDUCB) yields significant empirical gains.

TES optimizes black-box functions efficiently with minimal approximations.

problem Efficient Bayesian optimization with minimal approximations and generalization to batch BO.
method TES acquisition function measures information gain on trusted maximizers.
result TES achieves state-of-the-art performance with minimal approximations.

Active sampling algorithm improves accuracy of inferred scores from pairwise comparisons.

problem Inference of accurate scores from time-consuming pairwise comparisons.
method Approximate message passing and expected information gain maximization.
result ASAP offers the highest accuracy of inferred scores compared to existing methods.

A neural network method estimates densities from characteristic functions.

problem Estimating fixed-horizon probability densities from empirical characteristic functions.
method Data-driven Fourier-mixture neural-network method trained in Fourier space.
result Competitive performance and clear gains on heavy-tailed targets.

Study evaluates reinforcement learning algorithms for sequential experimental design.

problem Lack of generalization in reinforcement learning for experimental design.
method Investigated several reinforcement learning algorithms for sequential experimental design.
result Certain algorithms, using dropout or ensemble approaches, show attractive generalization properties.

GO-OED maximizes predictive information gain on nonlinear QoIs.

problem Maximizing information gain on nonlinear predictive quantities.
method Nested Monte Carlo estimator, Markov chain Monte Carlo, kernel density estimation, Bayesian optimization.
result GO-OED outperforms conventional OED in nonlinear settings.

Many modern commercial sites employ recommender systems to propose relevant content to users. While most systems are focused on maximizing the immediate gain (clicks, purchases or ratings), a better notion of success would be the lifetime value (LTV) of the user-system interaction. The LTV approach considers the future…

2017-02-23abs ↗pdf ↗

InfoTree improves reinforcement learning by optimizing tool use with a greedy submodular approach.

problem Maximizing information from tool use in reinforcement learning with limited resources.
method Formalizes Rollout Informativeness, recasts state selection as submodular maximization, and uses UUCB and ABA.
result InfoTree outperforms existing methods across various benchmarks, improving performance by 18.2% on average.

New method uses diffusion models to optimize experimental design efficiently.

problem Optimizing experimental design for high-dimensional and complex settings.
method Introduces a pooled posterior distribution and uses diffusion-based samplers for efficient sampling and optimization.
result Extends Bayesian Optimal Experimental Design to practical scenarios.

The paper studies optimal investment using acceptability indices to maximize portfolio performance.

problem Optimal investment problem using coherent acceptability indices.
method Numerical algorithm approximating the original problem, dynamic coherent risk measures, set-valued Bellman's principle.
result Acceptability maximization problem reduces to a one-period problem under certain conditions.

EAGLE improves reproducibility and stability of model explanations.

problem Creating reliable explanations for opaque machine learning models.
method Formulates perturbation selection as an information-theoretic active learning problem.
result EAGLE learns a linear surrogate model with feature importance scores and uncertainty estimates.

Many machine learning tasks such as clustering, classification, and dataset search benefit from embedding data points in a space where distances reflect notions of relative similarity as perceived by humans. A common way to construct such an embedding is to request triplet similarity queries to an oracle, comparing two…

2019-10-09abs ↗pdf ↗

Model learns image-word associations from captions using contrastive learning.

problem Phrase grounding, associating image regions to caption words.
method Optimizing word-region attention to maximize mutual information, using language model guided word substitutions for negatives.
result Model achieves 76.7% accuracy on Flickr30K Entities benchmark, a 5.7% gain from weak supervision.

Imagine a patient in critical condition. What and when should be measured to forecast detrimental events, especially under the budget constraints? We answer this question by deep reinforcement learning (RL) that jointly minimizes the measurement cost and maximizes predictive gain, by scheduling strategically-timed meas…

2019-01-24abs ↗pdf ↗

CAGES optimizes expensive RL problems by efficiently learning gradients from multiple sources.

problem Optimizing expensive-to-evaluate functions in high-dimensional spaces.
method Cost-Aware Gradient Entropy Search (CAGES) for multi-fidelity Bayesian optimization.
result Significant performance improvements on synthetic and RL benchmark problems.

Develops a method to plan exploration that learns strong policies with fewer samples.

problem Lack of efficient exploration in reinforcement learning for real-world tasks.
method Plans an action sequence that maximizes information gain about the optimal trajectory.
result 2x fewer samples than exploration baselines and 200x fewer than model-free methods.

We address the problem of regret minimization in logistic contextual bandits, where a learner decides among sequential actions or arms given their respective contexts to maximize binary rewards. Using a fast inference procedure with Polya-Gamma distributed augmentation variables, we propose an improved version of Thomp…

2018-05-18abs ↗pdf ↗

For decomposable score-based structure learning of Bayesian networks, existing approaches first compute a collection of candidate parent sets for each variable and then optimize over this collection by choosing one parent set for each variable without creating directed cycles while maximizing the total score. We target…

2017-07-19abs ↗pdf ↗

Active inference selects actions to maximize information gain, aiding structure learning.

problem Learning the structure of underlying world models.
method Active inference selects actions based on expected free energy, which includes information gain and value.
result Actions that maximize information gain help disambiguate among alternative models.