arXiv research

The function on the Teichmueller space of complete, orientable, finite-area hyperbolic surfaces of a fixed topological type that assigns to a hyperbolic surface its maximal injectivity radius has no local maxima that are not global maxima.

In this note, we show that some F-harmonic maps into spheres are global maxima of the variations of their energy functional on the conformal group of the sphere. Our result extends partially those obtained in [15] and [17] for harmonic and p-harmonic maps.

Researchers prove solvmanifolds are global maxima for Ricci pinching functional in new cases.

Proposes efficient FOBO algorithms for global maxima of expensive functions.

Linear VAEs explain posterior collapse in VAEs via local maxima in log marginal likelihood.

The study finds a unique systole maximum in non-hyperelliptic surfaces.

We provide two fundamental results on the population (infinite-sample) likelihood function of Gaussian mixture models with $M \geq 3$ components. Our first main result shows that the population likelihood function has bad local maxima even in the special case of equally-weighted mixtures of well-separated and spherical…

Three types of Einstein metrics are disqualified as potential local maxima.

We derive high-probability finite-sample uniform rates of consistency for $k$-NN regression that are optimal up to logarithmic factors under mild assumptions. We moreover show that $k$-NN regression adapts to an unknown lower intrinsic dimension automatically. We then apply the $k$-NN regression rates to establish new …

We construct infinite families of closed hyperbolic surfaces that are local maxima for the systole function on their respective moduli spaces. The systole takes values along a linearly divergent sequence $(L_n)_{n\geq 1}$ at these local maxima. The only surface corresponding to $L_1\approx 3.057$ is the Bolza surface i…

In this paper we are concerned with harmonic maps and minimal immersions defined on compact Riemannian manifolds and with values in homogenous strongly harmonic manifolds. We show some results on the Morse index by varying these maps along suitable conformal vector fields. We obtain also that they are global maxima on …

The paper tackles stable maxima optimization for expensive functions.

The study finds multiple maxima for eigenfunctions on positively curved spheres.

SGD with large learning rates can converge to local maxima.

The most direct way to express arbitrary dependencies in datasets is to estimate the joint distribution and to apply afterwards the argmax-function to obtain the mode of the corresponding conditional distribution. This method is in practice difficult, because it requires a global optimization of a complicated function,…

New method resolves nonidentifiability in mixture models.

Dimensionality reduction is one of the key issues in the design of effective machine learning methods for automatic induction. In this work, we introduce recursive maxima hunting (RMH) for variable selection in classification problems with functional data. In this context, variable selection techniques are especially a…

The paper introduces a method to learn local maxima from unlabeled data.

We study the natural functional F=scal^2/|Ric|^2 on the space of all non-flat left-invariant metrics on all solvable Lie groups of a given dimension n. As an application of properties of the beta operator, we obtain that solvsolitons are the only global maxima of F restricted to the set of all left-invariant metrics on…

Non-convex optimization with local search heuristics has been widely used in machine learning, achieving many state-of-art results. It becomes increasingly important to understand why they can work for these NP-hard problems on typical data. The landscape of many objective functions in learning has been conjectured to …

StoSOO optimistically maximizes noisy, locally smooth functions.

We describe a novel algorithm for noisy global optimisation and continuum-armed bandits, with good convergence properties over any continuous reward function having finitely many polynomial maxima. Over such functions, our algorithm achieves square-root regret in bandits, and inverse-square-root error in optimisation, …

For a translation surface, we define the systole to be the length of the shortest saddle connection. We give a characterization of the maxima of the systole function on a stratum, and give a family of examples providing local but nonglobal maxima on each stratum of genus at least three. We further study the relation be…

New AI-block models for clustering high-dimensional variables based on maxima of random processes.

Eigenfunction maxima inside high-d nodal domains.

Study on trapped submanifolds in spacetimes, proving rigidity and non-existence results.

In this paper, we investigate the geometry of a general class of gradient flows with multiple local maxima. we decompose the underlying space into disjoint regions of attraction and establish the adjacency criterion. The criterion states a necessary and sufficient condition for two regions of attraction of stable equil…

We introduce and analyze a parallel sequential Monte Carlo methodology for the numerical solution of optimization problems that involve the minimization of a cost function that consists of the sum of many individual components. The proposed scheme is a stochastic zeroth order optimization algorithm which demands only t…

Random utility theory models an agent's preferences on alternatives by drawing a real-valued score on each alternative (typically independently) from a parameterized distribution, and then ranking the alternatives according to scores. A special case that has received significant attention is the Plackett-Luce model, fo…

Develops FSC for maxima nominated samples, improving classification in rare-event data.

Researchers solve the realization of Jordan-Kronecker invariants in Lie algebras.

A large number of problems in optimization, machine learning, signal processing can be effectively addressed by suitable semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations. Unfortunately, generic SDP solvers hardly scale beyond instances with a few hundreds variables (in the underlying combinatorial problem). On the other hand…

This paper optimizes Bayesian acquisition functions in Gaussian Processes for better optimization.

In this paper, we show that Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) suffer from catastrophic forgetting even when they are trained to approximate a single target distribution. We show that GAN training is a continual learning problem in which the sequence of changing model distributions is the sequence of tasks to the d…

New algorithm finds global maxima in multi-modal functions.

This work studies how an AI-controlled dog-fighting agent with tunable decision-making parameters can learn to optimize performance against an intelligent adversary, as measured by a stochastic objective function evaluated on simulated combat engagements. Gaussian process Bayesian optimization (GPBO) techniques are dev…

We present a first procedure that can estimate -- with statistical consistency guarantees -- any local-maxima of a density, under benign distributional conditions. The procedure estimates all such local maxima, or $\textit{modal-sets}$, of any bounded shape or dimension, including usual point-modes. In practice, modal-…

Two new invariants that are closely related to Milnor's curvature-torsion invariant are introduced. The first, the spiral index of a knot, captures the minimum number of maxima among all knot projections that are free of inflection points. This invariant is closely related to both the bridge and braid index of the knot…

Develops a machine learning method for parameter estimation in branching processes models.

We investigate triangulations of the two-dimensional sphere and torus with the faces properly colored white and black. We focus on matchings between white triangles and incident vertices. On the torus our objects are perfect pairings, whereas on the sphere this is only true after removing one triangle and its vertices.…

SOO uses bandit theory to optimize functions with limited evaluations.

We consider the problem of estimating a large rank-one tensor ${\boldsymbol u}^{\otimes k}\in({\mathbb R}^{n})^{\otimes k}$, $k\ge 3$ in Gaussian noise. Earlier work characterized a critical signal-to-noise ratio $λ_{Bayes}= O(1)$ above which an ideal estimator achieves strictly positive correlation with the unknown ve…

We prove the transversality result necessary for defining local Morse chain complexes with finite cyclic group symmetry. Our arguments use special regularized distance functions constructed using classical covering lemmas, and an inductive perturbation process indexed by the strata of the isotropy set. A global existen…

Gaussian processes (GPs) are Bayesian nonparametric generative models that provide interpretability of hyperparameters, admit closed-form expressions for training and inference, and are able to accurately represent uncertainty. To model general non-Gaussian data with complex correlation structure, GPs can be paired wit…

This paper concerns thin presentations of knots K in closed 3-manifolds M^3 which produce S^3 by Dehn surgery, for some slope gamma. If M does not have a lens space as a connected summand, we first prove that all such thin presentations, with respect to any spine of M have only local maxima. If M is a lens space and K …

Long-range correlation and fluctuation in the gold market time series of world's two leading gold consuming countries, namely China and India, are studied. For both the market series during the period 1985-2013 we observe a long-range persistence of memory in the sequences of maxima (minima) of returns in successive ti…

Study non-orientable link cobordisms using Floer homologies to prove inequalities.

A fast Modal EM algorithm for Gaussian mixtures.