We study the minimax optimal rates for estimating a range of Integral Probability Metrics (IPMs) between two unknown probability measures, based on independent samples from them. Curiously, we show that estimating the IPM itself between probability measures, is not significantly easier than estimating the probabili…
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We study the minimax optimal rate for estimating the Wasserstein- metric between two unknown probability measures based on i.i.d. empirical samples from them. We show that estimating the Wasserstein metric itself between probability measures, is not significantly easier than estimating the probability measures u…
Consider the problem of minimizing functions that are Lipschitz and strongly convex, but not necessarily differentiable. We prove that after steps of stochastic gradient descent, the error of the final iterate is with high probability. We also construct a function from this class for which the error …
Markov random fields (MRFs) are difficult to evaluate as generative models because computing the test log-probabilities requires the intractable partition function. Annealed importance sampling (AIS) is widely used to estimate MRF partition functions, and often yields quite accurate results. However, AIS is prone to ov…
New bounds for generative models under weaker assumptions.
The study finds effective lower bounds for spectra of random surfaces and bundles.
A new dynamical formulation of log-PCA captures local principal modes of geodesic variations.
This work introduces a geometric approach to probability representation and option pricing.
Boosted decision trees typically yield good accuracy, precision, and ROC area. However, because the outputs from boosting are not well calibrated posterior probabilities, boosting yields poor squared error and cross-entropy. We empirically demonstrate why AdaBoost predicts distorted probabilities and examine three cali…
If we pick random points uniformly in and connect each point to its nearest neighbors, then it is well known that there exists a giant connected component with high probability. We prove that in it suffices to connect every point to points chosen randomly among its $…
We consider the problem of identifying underlying community-like structures in graphs. Towards this end we study the Stochastic Block Model (SBM) on -clusters: a random model on vertices, partitioned in equal sized clusters, with edges sampled independently across clusters with probability and within …
We study the problem of offline learning in automated decision systems under the contextual bandits model. We are given logged historical data consisting of contexts, (randomized) actions, and (nonnegative) rewards. A common goal is to evaluate what would happen if different actions were taken in the same contexts, so …
Study spectral properties of sparse random graphs to recover latent vectors.
Recent research has made significant progress on the problem of bounding log partition functions for exponential family graphical models. Such bounds have associated dual parameters that are often used as heuristic estimates of the marginal probabilities required in inference and learning. However these variational est…
Algorithmic stability is a classical approach to understanding and analysis of the generalization error of learning algorithms. A notable weakness of most stability-based generalization bounds is that they hold only in expectation. Generalization with high probability has been established in a landmark paper of Bousque…
The paper explores how Shapley value for a feature can vary based on model outcomes and feature distribution.
We analyze the data on personal income distribution from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We compare fits of the data to the exponential, log-normal, and gamma distributions. The exponential function gives a good (albeit not perfect) description of 98% of the population in the lower part of the distribution. The lo…
Develops CLTs for Markov chain transition probabilities and policies.
Random scan CAVI converges linearly under log-concave assumptions.
Efficiently matches random graphs with inhomogeneous edge probabilities.
Deep neural networks forecast financial return distributions accurately.
New algorithm for identifying Condorcet team in noisy comparisons.
Evidential Softmax preserves multimodality in sparse probability distributions for generative models.
Proposes MCLLO for assessing and recalibrating multiclass probability predictions.
Researchers found counterexamples to conjectures about optimal transport maps on curved spaces.
In many classification problems it is desirable to output well-calibrated probabilities on the different classes. We propose a robust, non-parametric method of calibrating probabilities called SplineCalib that utilizes smoothing splines to determine a calibration function. We demonstrate how applying certain transforma…
In this paper, we consider the problem of learning an unknown graph via queries on groups of nodes, with the result indicating whether or not at least one edge is present among those nodes. While learning arbitrary graphs with nodes and edges is known to be hard in the sense of requiring $Ω( \min\{ k^2 \log n, …
Optimal algorithm for selecting high-quality arms from infinite bandit arms.
New bounds show faster convergence for learning algorithms.
We derive weighted log-Sobolev inequalities from a class of super Poincaré inequalities. As an application, the Talagrand inequality with larger distances are obtained. In particular, on a complete connected Riemannian manifold, we prove that the $\log^\dd$-Sobolev inequality with $\dd\in (1,2)$ implies the $L^{2/(2-\d…
Proposes a new way to represent uncertainty using implied volatility.
This work improves neural network calibration using explicit regularization.
We consider a natural model of random knotting- choose a knot diagram at random from the finite set of diagrams with n crossings. We tabulate diagrams with 10 and fewer crossings and classify the diagrams by knot type, allowing us to compute exact probabilities for knots in this model. As expected, most diagrams with 1…
This work extends stochastic localization to joint probability measures for data analysis.
We analyze the sample complexity of learning graphical games from purely behavioral data. We assume that we can only observe the players' joint actions and not their payoffs. We analyze the sufficient and necessary number of samples for the correct recovery of the set of pure-strategy Nash equilibria (PSNE) of the true…
Community detection is considered for a stochastic block model graph of n vertices, with K vertices in the planted community, edge probability p for pairs of vertices both in the community, and edge probability q for other pairs of vertices. The main focus of the paper is on weak recovery of the community based on the …
We propose a family of models that enable predictive estimation of time-varying extreme event probabilities in heavy-tailed and nonlinearly dependent time series. The models are a white noise process with conditionally log-Laplace stochastic volatility. In contrast to other, similar stochastic volatility formalisms, th…
Influence maximization, adaptive routing, and dynamic spectrum allocation all require choosing the right action from a large set of alternatives. Thanks to the advances in combinatorial optimization, these and many similar problems can be efficiently solved given an environment with known stochasticity. In this paper, …
In this manuscript we analyse the leading statistical properties of fluctuations of (log) 3-month US Treasury bill quotation in the secondary market, namely: probability density function, autocorrelation, absolute values autocorrelation, and absolute values persistency. We verify that this financial instrument, in spit…
We present sharp tail asymptotics for the density and the distribution function of linear combinations of correlated log-normal random variables, that is, exponentials of components of a correlated Gaussian vector. The asymptotic behavior turns out to depend on the correlation between the components, and the explicit s…
A major problem for the learning of Bayesian networks (BNs) is the exponential number of parameters needed for conditional probability tables. Recent research reduces this complexity by modeling local structure in the probability tables. We examine the use of log-linear local models. While log-linear models in this con…
In this paper we study the possible microscopic origin of heavy-tailed probability density distributions for the price variation of financial instruments. We extend the standard log-normal process to include another random component in the so-called stochastic volatility models. We study these models under an assumptio…
A new tree model, GRST, improves option pricing without log-normality assumptions.
Class probabilities predicted by most multiclass classifiers are uncalibrated, often tending towards over-confidence. With neural networks, calibration can be improved by temperature scaling, a method to learn a single corrective multiplicative factor for inputs to the last softmax layer. On non-neural models the exist…
Building on the success of deep learning, two modern approaches to learn a probability model from the data are Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Variational AutoEncoders (VAEs). VAEs consider an explicit probability model for the data and compute a generative distribution by maximizing a variational lower-boun…
Random hyperbolic surfaces are mostly tangle-free, with geometric implications.
Log-linear models are the popular workhorses of analyzing contingency tables. A log-linear parameterization of an interaction model can be more expressive than a direct parameterization based on probabilities, leading to a powerful way of defining restrictions derived from marginal, conditional and context-specific ind…
Log-linear models are a family of probability distributions which capture relationships between variables. They have been proven useful in a wide variety of fields such as epidemiology, economics and sociology. The interest in using these models is that they are able to capture context-specific independencies, relation…