Optimal Gaussian noise mechanisms achieve nearly optimal error in unbiased mean estimation.
problem Efficiently estimating the mean of high-dimensional data while preserving privacy.
method Differential privacy mechanisms with Gaussian noise, focusing on optimal covariance.
result Gaussian noise mechanisms achieve nearly optimal error among all private unbiased mean estimation mechanisms.
Develops new instance-optimality concepts in differential privacy.
problem Improving privacy guarantees in statistical estimation.
method Introduces local minimax risk and unbiased mechanisms, and develops inverse sensitivity mechanisms.
result Inverse sensitivity mechanisms are nearly instance optimal for a wide range of functions.
In this paper, we introduce a new approach to constructing unbiased estimators when computing expectations of path functionals associated with stochastic differential equations (SDEs). Our randomization idea is closely related to multi-level Monte Carlo and provides a simple mechanism for constructing a finite variance…
Human decision-makers often receive assistance from data-driven algorithmic systems that provide a score for evaluating objects, including individuals. The scores are generated by a function (mechanism) that takes a set of features as input and generates a score.The scoring functions are either machine-learned or human…
A new method for approximating softmax and Gaussian kernels with reduced error.
problem Approximating softmax and Gaussian kernels with low error.
method Simplex Random Features (SimRFs) and SimRFs+.
result SimRFs provide the smallest MSE among weight-independent geometrically-coupled PRF mechanisms.
LLMs detect market patterns through causal reasoning, not just temporal association.
problem Detecting structural market patterns in financial data.
method Obfuscation testing using the WHO-WHOM-WHAT framework.
result LLMs achieve 71.5% detection rate of market patterns without temporal context.
In this comment on "Solving Statistical Mechanics Using Variational Autoregressive Networks" by Wu et al., we propose a subtle yet powerful modification of their approach. We show that the inherent sampling error of their method can be corrected by using neural network-based MCMC or importance sampling which leads to a…
Framework improves self-play for cooperative multi-agent learning.
problem Evolutionary learning converges to bad local optima in multi-agent RL.
method Add imaginary rewards using peer prediction method to elicit truthful signals.
result State-of-the-art performance in predator prey, traffic junction and StarCraft tasks.
Proposes a new IPW-based ranking metric for two-sided markets.
problem Addressing bias in implicit user feedback in two-sided markets.
method Extends IPW estimator to two-sided markets, addressing position bias.
result Proposed estimator is unbiased for ground-truth ranking metric.
Computing equilibrium states in condensed-matter many-body systems, such as solvated proteins, is a long-standing challenge. Lacking methods for generating statistically independent equilibrium samples in "one shot", vast computational effort is invested for simulating these system in small steps, e.g., using Molecular…
EF21 improves convergence in distributed machine learning models.
problem Improving convergence in distributed machine learning models.
method Proposes EF21, a new error feedback mechanism.
result EF21 achieves a fast O(1/T) convergence rate for smooth nonconvex problems. Repelling random walks improve graph-based sampling efficiency.
problem Efficient graph-based sampling and statistical estimation.
method Induces correlations between trajectories of an ensemble of walkers on a graph, maintaining unbiasedness.
result Improves concentration of statistical estimators on graphs.
Synthetic construction of 3D complex bases.
problem Creating a complete set of unbiased bases in 3D complex space.
method Synthetic construction using complex projective trigonometry.
result Synthetic construction of mutually unbiased bases in C^3.
Unbiased wealth exchanges always lead to inequality.
problem Understanding wealth distribution in unbiased binary exchange systems.
method Analytical demonstration of unbiased binary exchanges leading to perfect inequality.
result Any system driven by unbiased binary exchanges will reach perfect inequality and zero mobility.
We propose a method for solving statistical mechanics problems defined on sparse graphs. It extracts a small Feedback Vertex Set (FVS) from the sparse graph, converting the sparse system to a much smaller system with many-body and dense interactions with an effective energy on every configuration of the FVS, then learn…
New Performer model tackles long-sequence protein modeling.
problem Challenges of training complex Transformer models for long sequences.
method Linearly scalable long-context Transformer architecture, Performer.
result Performer provides strong theoretical guarantees and is effective for protein sequence modeling.
PBM mechanism improves privacy and accuracy in federated learning.
problem Secure and private federated learning with limited privacy budget.
method Poisson Binomial mechanism for discrete differential privacy.
result Achieves same privacy-accuracy trade-offs as Gaussian mechanism.
MUSE provides unbiased stopping estimates for optimal problems.
problem Estimating the utility of optimal stopping problems.
method Backward recursive construction of the Multilevel Unbiased Stopping Estimator (MUSE).
result MUSE achieves ε-accuracy with O(1/ε^2) computational cost.
Positive-Unlabeled (PU) learning is an analog to supervised binary classification for the case when only the positive sample is clean, while the negative sample is contaminated with latent instances of positive class and hence can be considered as an unlabeled mixture. The objectives are to classify the unlabeled sampl…
Transformers with linear space and time complexity for accurate attention estimation.
problem Efficiently estimating attention in large-scale tasks without relying on priors.
method Performers use Fast Attention Via positive Orthogonal Random features (FAVOR+) for linear approximation of softmax attention.
result Performers achieve competitive results on various tasks, demonstrating the effectiveness of their attention-learning approach.
Randomized trials, also known as A/B tests, are used to select between two policies: a control and a treatment. Given a corresponding set of features, we can ideally learn an optimized policy P that maps the A/B test data features to action space and optimizes reward. However, although A/B testing provides an unbiased …
Authentication is a task aiming to confirm the truth between data instances and personal identities. Typical authentication applications include face recognition, person re-identification, authentication based on mobile devices and so on. The recently-emerging data-driven authentication process may encounter undesired …
Paper proposes mechanism learning to reverse causal inference in ML.
problem Machine learning models learn associational, not causal, relationships.
method Causally weighted Gaussian mixture models (CW-GMMs).
result CW-GMMs can deconfound observational data for reverse causal inference.
New framework improves differential privacy for asymmetric datasets.
problem Improving differential privacy for asymmetric datasets.
method Adapts inverse sensitivity mechanism with sparse vector technique.
result Efficiently estimates general functions with improved privacy.
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.
Proposes unbiased estimators for training mixture of experts models.
problem Efficiently training large-scale mixture of experts models on modern hardware.
method Two unbiased estimators based on principled stochastic assignment procedures.
result Both estimators are more effective and robust than biased alternatives.
SUMO provides unbiased log marginal likelihood estimation for latent variable models.
problem Biased estimates of log marginal likelihood in latent variable models.
method Randomized truncation of infinite series for unbiased estimation.
result Models trained with SUMO give better test-set likelihoods than standard methods.
Unbiased methods for alpha-divergence minimization struggle in high dimensions.
problem The difficulty of unbiased alpha-divergence minimization in high dimensions.
method Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) analysis of gradient estimators.
result The SNR of the gradient estimator worsens exponentially with dimensionality.
New RFs reduce kernel approximation variance and improve Transformer performance.
problem Efficient approximation of Gaussian and softmax kernels for kernel methods and Transformers.
method Parameterized, positive, non-trigonometric RFs optimized for variance reduction.
result Significant variance reduction in practice, outperforming previous methods.
Unbiased gradient estimation for Markov chains
problem Estimating gradients of stationary means in Markov chains
method Propose new unbiased estimators
result Improves efficiency for slow mixing Markov chains
Estimates network causal effects considering contagion and latent confounding.
problem Determining if correlations in network studies are due to contagion or latent confounding.
method Segregated graph representation, likelihood ratio tests, network causal effect estimation strategies.
result Proposes methods to estimate network causal effects under full interference scenarios.
New unbiased gradient estimators for complex optimization problems.
problem Unbiased and variance-limited gradient estimation for conditional stochastic optimization.
method Developed multilevel Monte Carlo gradient estimators for conditional stochastic optimization problems.
result Unbiased and finite variance gradient estimators for conditional stochastic optimization problems.
Extends unbiased simulation method to Asian options.
problem Simulating path-dependent dynamics for Asian options.
method Extension of unbiased simulation method for SDEs to path-dependent dynamics.
result Extension applies to numerical resolution of path-dependent PDEs.
Developed unbiased estimators for Heston model with stochastic interest rates.
problem Estimating the Heston model with stochastic interest rates.
method Combined unbiased estimators with the Heston model and developed a semi-exact log-Euler scheme.
result Convergence rate of O(h) in the L2 norm for a wide range of models. New method for unbiased regression reduces excess risk.
problem Least squares regression with optimal solution and Hessian matrix.
method Averaged stochastic gradient descent with time-average estimator.
result Unbiased estimator with O(1/k) expected excess risk.
Computing partition functions, the normalizing constants of probability distributions, is often hard. Variants of importance sampling give unbiased estimates of a normalizer Z, however, unbiased estimates of the reciprocal 1/Z are harder to obtain. Unbiased estimates of 1/Z allow Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling of "d…
We consider the approximation of expectations with respect to the distribution of a latent Markov process given noisy measurements. This is known as the smoothing problem and is often approached with particle and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. These methods provide consistent but biased estimators when run fo…
Paper proposes unbiased learning for recommendation causal effects.
problem Estimating the causal effect of recommendation when the ground truth is unobservable.
method Inverse propensity scoring technique to construct unbiased estimators, followed by empirical risk minimization with propensity capping.
result The proposed method outperforms other biased learning methods in various settings.
This paper tackles unbiased loss functions for multilabel classification with missing labels.
problem Missing labels in multilabel classification tasks, especially in extreme multi-label classification (XMC).
method Derives unbiased estimators for multilabel reductions, including non-decomposable ones, and addresses increased variance with convex upper-bounds.
result Switching to unbiased estimators can alter the bias-variance trade-off and may require stronger regularization.
Stochastic bridges are commonly used to impute missing data with a lower sampling rate to generate data with a higher sampling rate, while preserving key properties of the dynamics involved in an unbiased way. While the generation of Brownian bridges and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck bridges is well understood, unbiased generatio…
New theory of sensitivity for unbiased estimators using Wasserstein geometry.
problem Estimating the instability of estimators under small perturbations.
method Developed a new theory based on Wasserstein geometry, analogous to classical Cramér-Rao theory.
result Wasserstein-Cramér-Rao lower bound for sensitivity of unbiased estimators.
Attention improves edge prediction in e-commerce graphs.
problem Predicting edges in graphs from node attributes in e-commerce.
method Used attention mechanism in simple feedforward networks, derived analytically tractable model AttEST.
result Attention network outperforms LSTM architectures by over 20% on F-1 score.
New method reduces deep learning training costs by approximating vector-jacobian products.
problem Efficiently training deep neural networks with reduced computational and memory costs.
method Randomized, unbiased approximations of vector-jacobian products during backpropagation.
result Validated potential for reducing deep learning training costs through unbiased estimates.
A new model shows fairness mechanisms can improve selection utility even without implicit bias.
problem Improving selection fairness without introducing a utility trade-off.
method A model with latent quality and group-dependent variance, comparing fairness mechanisms to group-oblivious selection.
result Demographic parity always increases selection utility, while γ-rules weakly increase it. To backpropagate the gradients through stochastic binary layers, we propose the augment-REINFORCE-merge (ARM) estimator that is unbiased, exhibits low variance, and has low computational complexity. Exploiting variable augmentation, REINFORCE, and reparameterization, the ARM estimator achieves adaptive variance reducti…
Recent neural network and language models rely on softmax distributions with an extremely large number of categories. Since calculating the softmax normalizing constant in this context is prohibitively expensive, there is a growing literature of efficiently computable but biased estimates of the softmax. In this paper …
A number of optimization approaches have been proposed for optimizing nonconvex objectives (e.g. deep learning models), such as batch gradient descent, stochastic gradient descent and stochastic variance reduced gradient descent. Theory shows these optimization methods can converge by using an unbiased gradient estimat…
Paper develops unbiased gradient estimator for continuous-time models.
problem Estimating unbiased gradient of log-likelihood for continuous-time models.
method Doubly randomized scheme with coupled conditional particle filter (CCPF).
result Unbiased gradient estimate facilitates gradient-based algorithms.