Paper proves autodiff systems are correct for non-differentiable functions.
arXiv research
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We generalize stochastic smoothing for gradient estimation of non-differentiable functions.
New algorithms improve inference in non-differentiable models.
Paper generalizes Hardy-Rogers maps for market equilibrium analysis in duopoly markets.
Study shows AD for neural nets with machine-representable numbers can be incorrect.
Modern neural network training relies on piece-wise (sub-)differentiable functions in order to use backpropagation to update model parameters. In this work, we introduce a novel method to allow simple non-differentiable functions at intermediary layers of deep neural networks. We do so by training with a differentiable…
Several tasks in machine learning are evaluated using non-differentiable metrics such as mean average precision or Spearman correlation. However, their non-differentiability prevents from using them as objective functions in a learning framework. Surrogate and relaxation methods exist but tend to be specific to a given…
This paper extends geometric study of neural networks to non-differentiable layers and random walks.
Difference of convex (DC) functions cover a broad family of non-convex and possibly non-smooth and non-differentiable functions, and have wide applications in machine learning and statistics. Although deterministic algorithms for DC functions have been extensively studied, stochastic optimization that is more suitable …
Complex computer simulators are increasingly used across fields of science as generative models tying parameters of an underlying theory to experimental observations. Inference in this setup is often difficult, as simulators rarely admit a tractable density or likelihood function. We introduce Adversarial Variational O…
Proposes a method for inference in high-dimensional classification with non-differentiable surrogate losses.
We study a nonparametric contextual bandit problem where the expected reward functions belong to a Hölder class with smoothness parameter . We show how this interpolates between two extremes that were previously studied in isolation: non-differentiable bandits (), where rate-optimal regret is achieved by run…
The study connects Hilbert entropy to non-differentiability points of limit sets in flag spaces.
We present a new algorithm for stochastic variational inference that targets at models with non-differentiable densities. One of the key challenges in stochastic variational inference is to come up with a low-variance estimator of the gradient of a variational objective. We tackle the challenge by generalizing the repa…
A new method for discrete data normalizing flows using latent transformations.
Configuring deep Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) is an exciting research avenue for low power spike event based computation. However, the spike generation function is non-differentiable and therefore not directly compatible with the standard error backpropagation algorithm. In this paper, we introduce a new general back…
Unified approach for sampling non-differentiable and heavy-tailed targets.
We propose an algorithm to calculate the exact solution for utility optimization problems on finite state spaces under a class of non-differentiable preferences. We prove that optimal strategies must lie on a discrete grid in the plane, and this allows us to reduce the dimension of the problem and define a very efficie…
Study improves understanding of non-differentiable penalties in high-dimensional settings.
Extends batch active learning to non-differentiable models.
Study identifies conditions for proxy adjustment in confounded binary treatment outcomes.
Parametric quantile regressions are a useful tool for creating probabilistic energy forecasts. Nonetheless, since classical quantile regressions are trained using a non-differentiable cost function, their creation using complex data mining techniques (e.g., artificial neural networks) may be complicated. This article p…
Differentiable pipeline replaces non-differentiable CAE components for shape optimization.
This paper is an attempt at understanding the quantum-like dynamics of financial markets in terms of non-differentiable price-time continuum having fractal properties. The main steps of this development are the statistical scaling, the non-differentiability hypothesis, and the equations of motion entailed by this hypot…
We show that an analogue of the Ball-Box Theorem for step 2, completely non-integrable bundles from smooth sub-Riemannian geometry hold true for a class of non-differentiable tangent subbundles that satisfy a geometric condition. In the final section of the paper we give examples of such bundles and an application to d…
SANE improves exploration of noisy, multimodal functions by finding multiple optima.
We study the dynamics of a particle in a space that is non-differentiable. Non-smooth geometrical objects have an inherently probabilistic nature and, consequently, introduce stochasticity in the motion of a body that lives in their realm. We use the mathematical concept of fiber bundle to characterize the multivalued …
We discuss a general technique that can be used to form a differentiable bound on the optima of non-differentiable or discrete objective functions. We form a unified description of these methods and consider under which circumstances the bound is concave. In particular we consider two concrete applications of the metho…
In this work we show that Evolution Strategies (ES) are a viable method for learning non-differentiable parameters of large supervised models. ES are black-box optimization algorithms that estimate distributions of model parameters; however they have only been used for relatively small problems so far. We show that it …
We develop a new Low-level, First-order Probabilistic Programming Language (LF-PPL) suited for models containing a mix of continuous, discrete, and/or piecewise-continuous variables. The key success of this language and its compilation scheme is in its ability to automatically distinguish parameters the density functio…
We show that many machine learning goals, such as improved fairness metrics, can be expressed as constraints on the model's predictions, which we call rate constraints. We study the problem of training non-convex models subject to these rate constraints (or any non-convex and non-differentiable constraints). In the non…
This paper proposes a new randomized strategy for adaptive MCMC using Bayesian optimization. This approach applies to non-differentiable objective functions and trades off exploration and exploitation to reduce the number of potentially costly objective function evaluations. We demonstrate the strategy in the complex s…
Demon aligns diffusion models without retraining or backpropagation.
Optimize black-box simulators with local generative models.
We introduce non-smooth symplectic forms on manifolds and describe corresponding Poisson structures on the algebra of Colombeau generalized functions. This is achieved by establishing an extension of the classical map of smooth functions to Hamiltonian vector fields to the setting of non-smooth geometry. For mildly sin…
The study proves a quantitative functional CLT for neural networks with smooth activation functions.
New algorithm solves non-convex, non-differentiable min-max games.
Study calculates slope gaps on polygon surfaces, finding non-unimodal distributions.
New method optimizes diffusion models without fine-tuning, integrating soft value functions.
Bayesian optimization uses triangulation candidates for better performance.
This paper addresses the scalability challenge of architecture search by formulating the task in a differentiable manner. Unlike conventional approaches of applying evolution or reinforcement learning over a discrete and non-differentiable search space, our method is based on the continuous relaxation of the architectu…
Neural architecture search (NAS) aims to discover network architectures with desired properties such as high accuracy or low latency. Recently, differentiable NAS (DNAS) has demonstrated promising results while maintaining a search cost orders of magnitude lower than reinforcement learning (RL) based NAS. However, DNAS…
Non-negative matrix factorization is a problem of dimensionality reduction and source separation of data that has been widely used in many fields since it was studied in depth in 1999 by Lee and Seung, including in compression of data, document clustering, processing of audio spectrograms and astronomy. In this work we…
The paper improves ALO for -regularized models.
New method fine-tunes discrete diffusion models for RLHF tasks.
The minimization of loss functions is the heart and soul of Machine Learning. In this paper, we propose an off-the-shelf optimization approach that can minimize virtually any non-differentiable and non-decomposable loss function (e.g. Miss-classification Rate, AUC, F1, Jaccard Index, Mathew Correlation Coefficient, etc…
How can we explain the predictions of a black-box model? In this paper, we use influence functions -- a classic technique from robust statistics -- to trace a model's prediction through the learning algorithm and back to its training data, thereby identifying training points most responsible for a given prediction. To …
Recent advances in derivative-free optimization allow efficient approximation of the global-optimal solutions of sophisticated functions, such as functions with many local optima, non-differentiable and non-continuous functions. This article describes the ZOOpt (Zeroth Order Optimization) toolbox that provides efficien…