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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.

168,695 papers · 148 categories

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165331496661 · Jun 202019922001200920172026
48 results for hard tasks

Meta-learning strategy improves few-shot classification performance.

problem Few-shot classification with deep neural networks struggles when labeled samples are limited.
method Proposes an easy-to-hard expert meta-training strategy to arrange training tasks based on task hardness.
result Meta-learners achieve better results with the proposed expert training strategy.

Model shows feature learning can improve neural scaling laws for hard tasks.

problem Understanding and improving neural network scaling laws for various task difficulties.
method Developed a solvable model of neural scaling laws, identified three scaling regimes, and demonstrated feature learning's impact on scaling exponents.
result Feature learning can improve scaling with training time and compute for hard tasks, nearly doubling the exponent.

APT-Gen generates tasks to help RL learn in hard problems.

problem Learning in hard exploration problems.
method APT-Gen uses a task generator to create tasks from a parameterized space, balancing performance and similarity to target tasks.
result APT-Gen outperforms baselines in grid world and robotic manipulation tasks.

There has recently been significant interest in hard attention models for tasks such as object recognition, visual captioning and speech recognition. Hard attention can offer benefits over soft attention such as decreased computational cost, but training hard attention models can be difficult because of the discrete la…

2017-05-16abs ↗pdf ↗

We propose a novel approach for estimating the difficulty and transferability of supervised classification tasks. Unlike previous work, our approach is solution agnostic and does not require or assume trained models. Instead, we estimate these values using an information theoretic approach: treating training labels as …

2019-08-21abs ↗pdf ↗

Catastrophic forgetting occurs when a neural network loses the information learned in a previous task after training on subsequent tasks. This problem remains a hurdle for artificial intelligence systems with sequential learning capabilities. In this paper, we propose a task-based hard attention mechanism that preserve…

2018-01-04abs ↗pdf ↗

The paper explores when to prioritize easy or hard samples in learning tasks.

problem Determining the optimal order of learning easy or hard samples.
method Theoretical analyses and experiments were conducted to propose and validate four priority modes.
result Four priority modes (easy-first, hard-first, medium-first, two-ends-first) can be flexibly applied.

The paper develops a theory for iterative self-improvement of models, proving conditions for better performance with easy-to-hard curricula.

problem Lack of theoretical foundation for iterative self-improvement in practical settings.
method Modeling self-improvement as maximum-likelihood fine-tuning on reward-filtered distributions and proving finite-sample guarantees.
result Explicit feedback loop and conditions for better performance with easy-to-hard curricula.

Binary classification is a common statistical learning problem in which a model is estimated on a set of covariates for some outcome indicating the membership of one of two classes. In the literature, there exists a distinction between hard and soft classification. In soft classification, the conditional class probabil…

2014-11-19abs ↗pdf ↗

We continue the study of statistical/computational tradeoffs in learning robust classifiers, following the recent work of Bubeck, Lee, Price and Razenshteyn who showed examples of classification tasks where (a) an efficient robust classifier exists, in the small-perturbation regime; (b) a non-robust classifier can be l…

2019-02-04abs ↗pdf ↗

New research shows deep learning struggles with hard problems due to biased data generation.

problem Deep learning's limitations in solving computationally hard problems.
method Proved that polynomial-time sample generators for NP-hard problems sample from easier sub-problems.
result Machine learning models trained on biased datasets overestimate their accuracy for hard problems.

Over recent years, devising classification algorithms that are robust to adversarial perturbations has emerged as a challenging problem. In particular, deep neural nets (DNNs) seem to be susceptible to small imperceptible changes over test instances. However, the line of work in provable robustness, so far, has been fo…

2019-05-28abs ↗pdf ↗

Although deep convolutional neural networks achieve state-of-the-art performance across nearly all image classification tasks, their decisions are difficult to interpret. One approach that offers some level of interpretability by design is \textit{hard attention}, which uses only relevant portions of the image. However…

2019-08-20abs ↗pdf ↗

DC3 uses deep learning to solve hard-constrained optimization problems efficiently.

problem Hard constraints in optimization problems make classical solvers slow and infeasible.
method DC3 employs a differentiable procedure to enforce feasibility and unrolls corrections for inequality constraints.
result DC3 achieves near-optimal solutions while maintaining feasibility in both synthetic and real-world tasks.

In our recent work (Bubeck, Price, Razenshteyn, arXiv:1805.10204) we argued that adversarial examples in machine learning might be due to an inherent computational hardness of the problem. More precisely, we constructed a binary classification task for which (i) a robust classifier exists; yet no non-trivial accuracy c…

2018-11-15abs ↗pdf ↗

Transformers struggle to learn Markovian dynamics, showing NP-hard optimization challenges.

problem Understanding transformers' limitations in learning Markovian dynamical functions.
method Investigated through a structured ICL setup, analyzing loss landscapes and parameter optimization.
result Recovering optimal transformer parameters for Markovian functions is NP-hard.

Proposes Ada-Sit method for mortality prediction of rare diseases.

problem Data insufficiency and clinical diversity of rare diseases make mortality prediction hard.
method Initialization-sharing multi-task learning method (Ada-Sit) for fast adaptation to similar tasks.
result Experimental results show the proposed model is effective for mortality prediction of diverse rare diseases.

Detecting adversarial examples is as hard as classifying them.

problem The difficulty of detecting adversarial examples in machine learning models.
method Proved a general hardness reduction between detection and classification of adversarial examples.
result The hardness reduction implies that detecting adversarial examples is computationally infeasible.

Reinforcement learning is a promising approach to developing hard-to-engineer adaptive solutions for complex and diverse robotic tasks. However, learning with real-world robots is often unreliable and difficult, which resulted in their low adoption in reinforcement learning research. This difficulty is worsened by the …

2018-03-19abs ↗pdf ↗

PS-KD distills a model's own knowledge to soften hard targets during training.

problem Improving generalization of deep neural networks by softening hard targets.
method Progressive self-knowledge distillation (PS-KD) that progressively distills a model's own knowledge to soften hard targets.
result PS-KD improves accuracy and provides high quality of confidence estimates in terms of calibration and ordinal ranking.

Efficient synthetic data generation improves model performance on tabular data.

problem Improving model robustness and performance with scarce or low-quality data.
method Hardness characterization to identify high-value training points, generating synthetic data only from these points.
result Synthetic data generated from hardest points outperforms non-targeted methods on tabular datasets.

Equity-Transformer solves NP-hard min-max routing problems efficiently.

problem Min-max routing problems with multiple agents and large-scale applications.
method Sequential planning approach with Transformer and equitable workload distribution inductive biases.
result Significant runtime and cost reductions in min-max mTSP and min-max mPDP tasks.

Quantum machine learning offers advantages for broader learning tasks.

problem Demonstrate QML advantage over classical methods for general learning tasks.
method Construct a new family of supervised learning tasks and prove their hardness.
result Prove provable advantage of QML based on general quantum computational advantages.

We present a multi-task learning formulation for Deep Gaussian processes (DGPs), through non-linear mixtures of latent processes. The latent space is composed of private processes that capture within-task information and shared processes that capture across-task dependencies. We propose two different methods for segmen…

2019-05-29abs ↗pdf ↗

Proposes TFCL to mitigate negative transfer in MTL by collaborating across features and tasks.

problem Negative transfer in Multi-Task Learning (MTL) due to dissimilar tasks.
method Task-Feature Collaborative Learning (TFCL) with heterogeneous block-diagonal structure regularizer and optimization method.
result Global convergence and block-diagonal structure recovery guarantees.

Study how models represent features in naturalistic learning problems.

problem Understanding which features models use and ignore in naturalistic tasks.
method Synthetic datasets with controlled task-relevance of features, training models to recognize both easy and hard features.
result Models preferentially represent task-relevant features and suppress task-irrelevant ones over training.

Study on the limits of bandit learning, showing hardness and limitations.

problem Understanding the learnability of bandit learning under arbitrary reward functions.
method Investigation into which classes of reward functions are learnable and how they can be learned.
result No combinatorial dimension can characterize bandit learnability, and computational hardness is inherent.

The restricted isometry property (RIP) for design matrices gives guarantees for optimal recovery in sparse linear models. It is of high interest in compressed sensing and statistical learning. This property is particularly important for computationally efficient recovery methods. As a consequence, even though it is in …

2016-05-31abs ↗pdf ↗

We discuss multi-task online learning when a decision maker has to deal simultaneously with M tasks. The tasks are related, which is modeled by imposing that the M-tuple of actions taken by the decision maker needs to satisfy certain constraints. We give natural examples of such restrictions and then discuss a general …

2009-02-20abs ↗pdf ↗

Meta-learning has been proposed as a framework to address the challenging few-shot learning setting. The key idea is to leverage a large number of similar few-shot tasks in order to learn how to adapt a base-learner to a new task for which only a few labeled samples are available. As deep neural networks (DNNs) tend to…

2019-10-07abs ↗pdf ↗

Learning shrinks hard tail, improving inference performance.

problem Improving inference performance in neural networks.
method Latent Instance Difficulty (LID) model analyzing fine-tuning of neural networks.
result Training-dependent inference scaling, with βexteffβ_ ext{eff} growing with sample size before saturating.

We propose the Neural Logic Machine (NLM), a neural-symbolic architecture for both inductive learning and logic reasoning. NLMs exploit the power of both neural networks---as function approximators, and logic programming---as a symbolic processor for objects with properties, relations, logic connectives, and quantifier…

2019-04-26abs ↗pdf ↗

Study uncovers bias in image classification models using attribution maps.

problem Data bias in image classification models.
method Created an artificial dataset with known bias, trained CNNs, and used attribution maps to inspect decisions.
result Different attribution map techniques highlight bias better than others, and metrics support bias identification.