The paper tackles bandit problems with biased offline data by using causal methods.
problem Improving bandit algorithms with biased offline data that includes confounding and selection biases.
method Formalizes the problem from a causal perspective, categorizes biases, and derives robust bounds for each arm.
result Causal bounds can guide the bandit agent to learn a nearly-optimal decision policy and consistently reduce asymptotic regret.
Gradient-based methods can be biased by distributional asymmetries in bivariate categorical data.
problem Gradient-based causal discovery methods can be biased by distributional asymmetries in bivariate categorical data.
method Identified and examined two distributional biases: Marginal Distribution Asymmetry and Marginal Distribution Shift Asymmetry. Employed two simple models to demonstrate and control these biases.
result Gradient-based methods can be biased by distributional asymmetries, and these biases can be controlled.
A new biased gradient descent method for conditional stochastic optimization.
problem Challenges in constructing unbiased gradient estimators for conditional stochastic optimization.
method Proposes a biased stochastic gradient descent (BSGD) algorithm and analyzes its sample complexities.
result Establishes sample complexities of BSGD for various objectives and shows that BSpiderBoost matches the lower bound complexity.
New method finds unbiased subnetworks in biased models for better OOD performance.
problem How to improve out-of-distribution generalization in deep models.
method Functional modular probing method and Modular Risk Minimization.
result Even in biased models, there are unbiased subnetworks that can achieve better OOD performance.
This paper identifies and analyzes biases in risk-adjusted index weighting methods, affecting social welfare and market fairness.
problem Biases in risk-adjusted index weighting methods lead to tracking errors and fraud in indices and ETFs.
method Characterizes and analyzes the biases and adverse effects of risk-adjusted index weighting methods.
result These biases reduce social welfare and can enable harmful arbitrage activities.
We study the convergence rate of stochastic optimization of exact (NP-hard) objectives, for which only biased estimates of the gradient are available. We motivate this problem in the context of learning the structure and parameters of Ising models. We first provide a convergence-rate analysis of deterministic errors fo…
Algorithm improves binary classification of biased grouped data.
problem Improving binary classification for biased, grouped data.
method Assumes partition-projected class-conditional invariance across groups and derives a semi-supervised algorithm to learn a group-aware classifier.
result Demonstrates improved area under the ROC curve compared to baselines.
New approach relaxes inductive biases of physics-inspired NNs for better performance.
problem Challenges in applying physics-inspired NNs to real-world systems.
method Examined and relaxed inductive biases of Hamiltonian NNs, improving performance on non-conservative systems.
result Improved performance on practical, non-conservative systems by relaxing inductive biases.
The paper analyzes time-dependent streaming data with biased gradient estimates and proposes improved stochastic optimization methods.
problem Stochastic optimization in a streaming setting with time-dependent and biased gradient estimates.
method Analysis of several first-order methods including SGD, mini-batch SGD, and time-varying mini-batch SGD, along with their Polyak-Ruppert averages.
result Time-varying mini-batch SGD methods can break long- and short-range dependence structures, and biased SGD methods can achieve comparable performance to their unbiased counterparts.
SA-GFN corrects biases in GFlowNets due to graph symmetries.
problem Systematic biases in state transition probability computations.
method Incorporates symmetry corrections into the learning process through reward scaling.
result Eliminates need for explicit state transition computations.
Randomly initialized transformers show extreme token preferences.
problem Structural biases in randomly initialized transformers.
method Dissection of transformer architecture at initialization.
result Initialization-induced biases persist throughout training.
Estimates social network structure from random walk subgraphs.
problem Recovering population structure from random walk subgraphs in stochastic block models.
method Maximum likelihood estimation, SAEM algorithm, de-biasing techniques.
result New de-biased estimator provides more accurate recovery of network structure.
Strong inductive biases prevent harmless interpolation in overparameterized models.
problem Understanding the conditions under which overparameterized models can interpolate noise without overfitting.
method Theoretical analysis of high-dimensional kernel regression and deep neural networks, focusing on the role of inductive biases.
result The strength of an estimator's inductive bias determines whether interpolation is harmless or requires fitting noise for good generalization.
Theoretical study on how model architecture affects contrastive learning performance.
problem Understanding the role of model architecture in self-supervised learning.
method Theoretical analysis of contrastive learning, focusing on model capacity and clustering structures.
result Contrastive representations have lower dimensionality than the number of clusters in the data distribution.
Financial LLMs need explicit bias consideration to avoid invalid results.
problem Finance-specific biases inflate performance and contaminate backtests.
method Identified five recurring biases and proposed a Structural Validity Framework.
result Explicit bias consideration is necessary for valid deployment claims.
Extract symbolic models from deep learning with inductive biases.
problem Interpreting and discovering physical principles from deep neural networks.
method Introduce strong inductive biases in GNNs, encourage sparse latent representations, apply symbolic regression.
result Extracted symbolic equations from neural networks, including known force laws and new analytic formulas.
New algorithm finds unbiased subnetworks in biased datasets.
problem Finding unbiased subnetworks in biased neural networks.
method Debiased Contrastive Weight Pruning (DCWP) algorithm.
result DCWP significantly outperforms state-of-the-art debiasing methods.
Paper explores how knowledge distillation transfers inductive biases between models.
problem Transferring inductive biases between models for tasks with limited data.
method Knowledge distillation applied to models with different inductive biases (LSTMs vs. Transformers, CNNs vs. MLPs).
result Effect of inductive biases is transferred through knowledge distillation, impacting both performance and solution characteristics.
Chinchilla Approach 2 biases neural scaling law estimates, leading to unnecessary compute costs.
problem Systematic biases in Chinchilla Approach 2's parabolic fits of neural scaling laws.
method Analyzes three sources of error: IsoFLOP sampling grid width, uncentered sampling, and loss surface asymmetry.
result Chinchilla Approach 3 largely eliminates these biases, offering a more convenient or scalable alternative.
Survival trees exhibit end-cut preference, leading to biased splits.
problem End-cut preference in survival trees causes biased splits and poor interpretability.
method Proposed a smooth sigmoid surrogate (SSS) approach to replace hard-threshold indicator function.
result Smooth sigmoid surrogate (SSS) effectively mitigates end-cut preference in survival trees.
New algorithms reduce bias in federated learning for non-i.i.d. data.
problem Client and block biases in federated learning with non-i.i.d. data.
method Multi-model parallel SGD (MM-PSGD) and multi-chain parallel SGD (MC-PSGD) algorithms.
result Achieve a linear speedup with convergence rate O ( 1 / N T ) O(1/\sqrt{NT}) O ( 1/ N T ) . Free Random Projection enhances reinforcement learning by naturally incorporating hierarchical structure.
problem Improving reinforcement learning algorithms for better generalization and adaptability.
method Introduces Free Random Projection, a method that uses free probability theory to create random orthogonal matrices encoding hierarchical structure.
result Empirically shows consistent improvement in generalization over standard methods on multi-environment benchmarks.
Analyze SGD with biased gradients, improving convergence rates and accuracy.
problem Analyzing the convergence of SGD with biased gradients.
method Derive convergence results for smooth non-convex functions and quantify the impact of bias magnitude.
result Improved rates under the Polyak-Lojasiewicz condition and insights into how bias magnitude affects accuracy and convergence.
EMFs combine deep learning and probabilistic models for better density estimation.
problem Combining domain-specific knowledge with general-purpose deep learning.
method Alternating transformations with structured layers that embed domain-specific inductive biases.
result EMFs induce desirable properties like multimodality and hierarchical coupling.
Many machine learning algorithms are trained and evaluated by splitting data from a single source into training and test sets. While such focus on in-distribution learning scenarios has led to interesting advancement, it has not been able to tell if models are relying on dataset biases as shortcuts for successful predi…
Framework learns physics-informed continuum models from molecular data.
problem Discovering accurate and robust data-driven continuum models from molecular simulation data.
method Operator regression framework using neural networks in modal space with physical inductive biases.
result Learned operators generalize to unseen system characteristics.
Introduces recency bias to improve time-series forecasting.
problem Lack of recency bias in standard Transformer attention for time-series data.
method Reweights attention scores with a smooth heavy-tailed decay to emphasize nearby observations.
result Recency-biased attention consistently improves sequential modeling and achieves competitive performance on time-series forecasting benchmarks.
Study shows statistical biases can mislead transformer models, impairing their generalization.
problem Statistical biases in transformers affect their ability to generalize.
method Evaluated transformer models on synthetic algorithmic tasks with varying statistical biases.
result Statistical biases lead to overestimation of transformer models' generalization capabilities.
Machine learning models learn what we teach them to learn. Machine learning is at the heart of recommender systems. If a machine learning model is trained on biased data, the resulting recommender system may reflect the biases in its recommendations. Biases arise at different stages in a recommender system, from existi…
Despite an explosion in the number of experimentally determined, atomically detailed structures of biomolecules, many critical tasks in structural biology remain data-limited. Whether performance in such tasks can be improved by using large repositories of tangentially related structural data remains an open question. …
New method models aptamer libraries as Boltzmann-weighted graph ensembles for better affinity predictions.
problem Anomalous candidates in SELEX datasets obscure true aptamer-ligand affinity.
method Boltzmann graph ensemble embeddings for thermodynamically parameterized exponential-family random graphs.
result Proposed embedding enables robust community detection and subgraph-level explanations for aptamer ligand affinity.
New oracles improve stochastic optimization with noisy or biased measurements.
problem Optimizing functions with noisy or biased measurements.
method Introduced biased gradient oracles for stochastic optimization, analyzed RSG and SGD algorithms with these oracles.
result Derived non-asymptotic bounds for convergence rates of algorithms with biased gradient oracles.
PGNs dynamically infer and use graph structures to improve model generalization.
problem Static graph structures inferred by machine learning practitioners are often suboptimal for tasks.
method PGNs augment graphs with dynamically inferred pointers for improved model generalization.
result PGNs outperform unrestricted GNNs and Deep Sets on dynamic graph connectivity tasks.
Study identifies and measures biases in legal case data.
problem Addressing representation biases and sentencing disparities in legal case data.
method Utilizes two regression models: a baseline and a fair judge model.
result Quantifies biases across demographic groups in criminal data from Cook County (Illinois).
RPPs improve deep learning models with soft equivariance constraints.
problem Balancing expressiveness and inductive biases in deep learning.
method Introducing Residual Pathway Priors (RPPs) to convert hard constraints into soft priors.
result RPPs enable models to learn structured solutions while retaining flexibility.
Study reveals biases in ImageNet models are not sufficient for generalization.
problem Understanding and improving generalization of image classification models.
method Large-scale study of 48 ImageNet models trained via various methods.
result Biases identified in ImageNet models do not fully explain generalization.
We study high-dimensional Gaussian mixture classification using statistical physics methods.
problem Classifying high-dimensional Gaussian mixture with general covariance matrices.
method Replica method from statistical physics for asymptotic analysis of convex classifiers.
result Construction and validation of a de-biased estimator for variable selection.
New method improves model robustness to biased data.
problem Learning unbiased models from biased datasets.
method Developed epsilon-SupInfoNCE and FairKL losses.
result Improved performance on biased datasets.
New method learns collective variables using autoencoders for molecular simulations.
problem Learning low-dimensional slow degrees of freedom (collective variables) for molecular simulations.
method Iterative method involving CV learning with autoencoders and reweighting scheme.
result Achieves convergence of learned collective variables.
The monotonic linear interpolation in deep networks often leads to plateaus, revealing biases in optimization.
problem Plateaus in the optimization landscape of deep networks during monotonic linear interpolation.
method Investigated monotonic linear interpolation on deep neural networks, focusing on biases in weights and biases.
result Interpolating weights and biases differently can lead to significant differences in loss and accuracy, revealing biases in optimization.
In many applications, one has side information, e.g., labels that are provided in a semi-supervised manner, about a specific target region of a large data set, and one wants to perform machine learning and data analysis tasks "nearby" that prespecified target region. For example, one might be interested in the clusteri…
This paper debiases KG embeddings by filtering sensitive attributes.
problem Social and cultural biases in KG representations.
method Exploring and filtering popularity and gender biases in KGE.
result Sensitivity of KG embeddings to sensitive attributes like gender.
Paper compares Bayesian and de-biased estimators for low-rank matrix completion.
problem Predict missing entries in partially observed matrices.
method Bayesian and de-biased estimators comparison.
result De-biased estimator performs similarly to Bayesian estimators but is more stable and can outperform in small samples.
Paper analyzes biases in video QA datasets, showing models can answer 37-48% questions correctly without multimodal context.
problem Question answering biases in video QA datasets can lead to model overfitting and poor generalization.
method Analyzed popular video question answering datasets, conducted ablation studies on biases from annotators and question types.
result Pretrained language models can answer 37-48% questions correctly without multimodal context, far exceeding random guess baseline.
Analyzes biased random walks and corrupted intervals in adversarial settings.
problem Learning thresholds and intervals in adversarial conditions.
method Analyzes biased random walks and corrupted intervals under adversarial design.
result Analyzes the expected behavior of biased random walks and corrupted intervals.
Variational inference struggles with weight symmetries in neural networks, leading to biased posteriors.
problem Weight space symmetries in neural networks cause multimodal posteriors, challenging variational inference.
method Developed a symmetrization mechanism to create permutation invariant variational posteriors.
result Symmetrized variational posteriors have a better fit to the true posterior and improved predictive performance.
The paper tackles sampling biases by ensuring minority groups are adequately represented in training data.
problem Sampling biases in training data lead to algorithmic biases in machine learning systems.
method The paper presents adaptive sampling methods to determine if it's possible to assemble a representative dataset from given data sources.
result The methods presented can determine with high confidence if a representative dataset can be assembled from given data sources.
The paper explores methods to better estimate treatment effects by leveraging shared structure in potential outcomes.
problem Estimating treatment effects when outcomes may vary widely and existing methods often assume heterogeneity.
method Investigates and compares three learning strategies: regularization, reparametrization, and a multi-task architecture.
result All three approaches improve upon existing baselines, providing insights into their relative strengths.