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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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48 results for skill composition

Transformers learn to solve modular arithmetic tasks by in-context learning and skill composition.

problem Understanding how large language models generalize to unseen tasks in modular arithmetic.
method Pre-training on a set of modular arithmetic tasks and evaluating out-of-distribution performance.
result Transformers require two transformer blocks for out-of-distribution generalization, and deeper models exhibit transient out-of-distribution performance.

The composition of elementary behaviors to solve challenging transfer learning problems is one of the key elements in building intelligent machines. To date, there has been plenty of work on learning task-specific policies or skills but almost no focus on composing necessary, task-agnostic skills to find a solution to …

2019-05-25abs ↗pdf ↗

Researchers study how skills are learned in neural networks using physics principles.

problem Understanding how skills are sequentially learned in neural networks.
method Abstract and simplify the problem using physics principles, proposing three models: Geometry, Resource, and Domino.
result Models reveal insights into neural scaling laws, learning dynamics, and the benefits of modularity.

An important property for lifelong-learning agents is the ability to combine existing skills to solve unseen tasks. In general, however, it is unclear how to compose skills in a principled way. We provide a "recipe" for optimal value function composition in entropy-regularised reinforcement learning (RL) and then exten…

2018-07-12abs ↗pdf ↗

Autonomous agents situated in real-world environments must be able to master large repertoires of skills. While a single short skill can be learned quickly, it would be impractical to learn every task independently. Instead, the agent should share knowledge across behaviors such that each task can be learned efficientl…

2019-10-30abs ↗pdf ↗

Paper tackles multi-object reinforcement learning, improving skill extrapolation.

problem Learning robust manipulation tasks in multi-object settings.
method Introduces a linear relation network module to enhance skill generalization.
result Agents can extrapolate and generalize to any new object number, scaling linearly.

Three methods detect informed trading on prediction markets, each focusing on different aspects.

problem Detecting informed trading in decentralized prediction markets.
method Composite screen, event-level sign-randomization test, and Information Leakage Score (ILS) framework.
result Different methods detect informed trading on prediction markets, each focusing on different aspects.

The ability to compose learned skills to solve new tasks is an important property of lifelong-learning agents. In this work, we formalise the logical composition of tasks as a Boolean algebra. This allows us to formulate new tasks in terms of the negation, disjunction and conjunction of a set of base tasks. We then sho…

2020-01-06abs ↗pdf ↗

Study shows how transformers learn to combine simple tasks into complex ones.

problem Understanding how transformers learn to perform complex tasks not seen during training.
method Controlled setting involving variable assignment and modular addition; partitioned training data analysis.
result Small transformers can generalize to unseen combinations of variables and numbers.

Employers actively look for talents having not only specific hard skills but also various soft skills. To analyze the soft skill demands on the job market, it is important to be able to detect soft skill phrases from job advertisements automatically. However, a naive matching of soft skill phrases can lead to false pos…

2018-07-20abs ↗pdf ↗

Training on mixed distributions improves test performance even when components are unrelated.

problem Improving test performance with mismatched training and test distributions.
method Analyzing mixture distributions with different training and test proportions.
result Distribution shift can be beneficial, improving test performance even when components are unrelated.

We introduce the Adaptive Skills, Adaptive Partitions (ASAP) framework that (1) learns skills (i.e., temporally extended actions or options) as well as (2) where to apply them. We believe that both (1) and (2) are necessary for a truly general skill learning framework, which is a key building block needed to scale up t…

2016-02-10abs ↗pdf ↗

The paper explains how language models acquire complex skills through scaling laws and statistical analysis.

problem Understanding how language models acquire new skills as their size and training data increase.
method Statistical framework and mathematical analysis of scaling laws.
result Language models can learn complex skills efficiently due to a strong inductive bias.

Multimodal analysis assesses job interview performance and provides feedback.

problem Assessing candidate performance in interviews for professional roles.
method Multimodal analytical framework using video, audio, and text data.
result The proposed methodology achieved promising results in predicting behavioral cues.

The paper examines skill estimation and variance under model misspecification in IRT.

problem Underestimation and overestimation of skills when non-compensatory model is misspecified as compensatory.
method Theoretical approach to analyze underestimation and overestimation of skills and variance.
result Overestimation of skills occurs around the origin and asymptotic variance differs under model misspecification.

Acquiring new robot motor skills is cumbersome, as learning a skill from scratch and without prior knowledge requires the exploration of a large space of motor configurations. Accordingly, for learning a new task, time could be saved by restricting the parameter search space by initializing it with the solution of a si…

2019-08-11abs ↗pdf ↗

A planning approach learns skills from interactions, balancing exploration and exploitation.

problem Learning robust high-level skills in noisy environments with unknown pre-conditions.
method Formulates skills as high-level policies, learns plans via bandit problems, balances exploration and exploitation.
result A planner capable of learning robust high-level skills in high-dimensional state spaces.

New algorithm trains neural nets on simple skills to learn complex tasks faster.

problem Learning complex tasks through simple imitation.
method Train neural networks on simple, easy-to-learn skills to accelerate learning of complex, hard-to-learn tasks.
result Consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baseline in training speed and performance.

EDL discovers state-covering skills without relying on task rewards.

problem Discovering skills in reinforcement learning without a task-oriented reward function.
method EDL optimizes information-theoretic objective using different machinery to address coverage problem.
result EDL discovers state-covering skills more effectively than existing methods.

Composing previously mastered skills to solve novel tasks promises dramatic improvements in the data efficiency of reinforcement learning. Here, we analyze two recent works composing behaviors represented in the form of action-value functions and show that they perform poorly in some situations. As part of this analysi…

2018-12-05abs ↗pdf ↗

Sloth predicts LLM performance using latent skills across families.

problem Variations in benchmark performance due to differences in training configurations and data processing across model families.
method Sloth uses publicly available benchmark data and assumes LLM performance is driven by latent skills influenced by model size and training tokens. It exploits correlations across benchmarks to provide accurate predictions.
result Sloth predicts LLM performance accurately and offers insights into scaling behaviors for complex tasks.

The paper presents a method for personalized exercise recommendations that improves learner skill gain.

problem Adapting to individual needs in large, diverse groups of learners in digital environments.
method Contextual Thompson Sampling to select exercises that advance learner skill.
result The method recommends exercises associated with greater skill improvement and adapts to learner differences.

We introduce a method for constructing skills capable of solving tasks drawn from a distribution of parameterized reinforcement learning problems. The method draws example tasks from a distribution of interest and uses the corresponding learned policies to estimate the topology of the lower-dimensional piecewise-smooth…

2012-06-27abs ↗pdf ↗

Hierarchical reinforcement learning is a promising approach to tackle long-horizon decision-making problems with sparse rewards. Unfortunately, most methods still decouple the lower-level skill acquisition process and the training of a higher level that controls the skills in a new task. Leaving the skills fixed can le…

2019-06-13abs ↗pdf ↗

The paper offers algorithms for managing freelancers and in-house workers in online labor markets.

problem Managing freelancers and in-house workers in online labor markets efficiently.
method Developed algorithms for team formation with outsourcing in an online setting.
result Efficient online algorithms for minimizing costs in hiring and outsourcing.

Conventionally, model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) aims to learn a global model for the dynamics of the environment. A good model can potentially enable planning algorithms to generate a large variety of behaviors and solve diverse tasks. However, learning an accurate model for complex dynamical systems is diffi…

2019-07-02abs ↗pdf ↗

New method automates asymmetric choice for better skill transfer in reinforcement learning.

problem Improving sample efficiency and transferability of reinforcement learning agents.
method Attentive Priors for Expressive and Transferable Skills (APES) using hierarchical KL-regularization.
result APES automates asymmetric choice, leading to better skill transfer across sequential tasks.