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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.

168,657 papers · 148 categories

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57113170226 · Jun 202019922001200920172026
48 results for variational preferences

Optimal hedging framework with variational preferences under convex risk measures.

problem Optimal hedging with variational preferences under convex risk measures.
method Theoretical hedging optimization framework with dual representation of risk measures and utilities.
result Derivation of optimality and indifference pricing conditions.

Variational autoencoders were proven successful in domains such as computer vision and speech processing. Their adoption for modeling user preferences is still unexplored, although recently it is starting to gain attention in the current literature. In this work, we propose a model which extends variational autoencoder…

2018-11-25abs ↗pdf ↗

Investigates optimal strategies for behavioral control problems with finite variation controls.

problem Behavioral singular stochastic control problems with finite variation controls.
method Abstract framework, applied to storage management and portfolio investment problems, using CPT preferences and Skorokhod representation theorem.
result Existence of optimal strategies for various goal functionals, including CPT preferences.

PIPA aligns preferences without reinforcement learning, improving language model performance.

problem Aligning preferences in language models efficiently and without reinforcement learning.
method Formulates preference alignment as a Maximum Likelihood Estimation problem with prior constraints.
result PIPA algorithms achieve up to 10% performance improvement on benchmarks.

Mitigates biases in reward models using variational inference.

problem Spurious correlations in reward models that align large language models with human preferences.
method Formulates data-generating process, identifies non-spurious latent variables, and uses variational inference to recover them.
result Effective mitigation of spurious correlation issues, yielding more robust reward models.

Bayesian model identifies three types of travelers adapting to feedback.

problem Capturing adaptive, feedback-driven travel behavior in heterogeneous individuals.
method Latent Class Reinforcement Learning (LCRL) model with Variational Bayes estimation.
result Three distinct traveler classes identified: context-dependent, persistent exploitative, and exploratory.

JoVA combines two VAEs to learn user and item representations for better recommendation.

problem Collaborative filtering with implicit feedback.
method Joint Variational Autoencoders (JoVA) with a hinge-based pairwise loss function (JoVA-Hinge).
result JoVA-Hinge outperforms state-of-the-art methods in top-k recommendation.

Paper shows equivalence between two dividend preference models.

problem Understanding investor and firm preferences for dividends.
method Formulated Epstein-Zin preference, proved equivalence with Maenhout's model.
result Robust dividend policy is equivalent to a threshold strategy based on surplus process.

New theory extends rank-dependent utility for risk and ambiguity.

problem Modeling decision-making under risk and ambiguity.
method Axiomatizes a new preference relation with ambiguity index, probability weighting, and utility function.
result Extends rank-dependent utility to risk and ambiguity, reducing to existing models under specific conditions.

Variational Optimization forms a differentiable upper bound on an objective. We show that approaches such as Natural Evolution Strategies and Gaussian Perturbation, are special cases of Variational Optimization in which the expectations are approximated by Gaussian sampling. These approaches are of particular interest …

2018-09-13abs ↗pdf ↗

Study asset pricing with reference-dependent preferences, finding matching equity premia.

problem Understanding asset pricing under reference-dependent preferences.
method Discrete-time consumption-based capital asset pricing model with reference-dependent preferences.
result Models can generate equity premia matching empirical estimates, showing procyclical price-dividend ratio and countercyclical equity premium.

We propose a scalable Bayesian preference learning method for jointly predicting the preferences of individuals as well as the consensus of a crowd from pairwise labels. Peoples' opinions often differ greatly, making it difficult to predict their preferences from small amounts of personal data. Individual biases also m…

2019-12-04abs ↗pdf ↗

We study natural variations of the G2 structure σ_0 \in Λ^3_+ existing on the unit tangent sphere bundle SM of any oriented Riemannian 4-manifold M. We find a circle of structures for which the induced metric is the usual one, the so-called Sasaki metric, and prove how the original structure has a preferred role in the…

2011-07-26abs ↗pdf ↗

Study optimal consumption and investment for investors with Epstein-Zin preferences.

problem Optimal consumption and investment for investors with Epstein-Zin preferences in an incomplete market.
method Variational characterisation and direct method to prove existence of optimal policies.
result Existence and uniqueness of optimal consumption and investment policies.

New formulations capture aversion to ambiguity about volatility.

problem Capturing aversion to ambiguity about unknown and time-varying volatility.
method Introduces novel preference formulations and compares them with existing models.
result Illustrates the impact of ambiguity aversion in static and dynamic models.

We develop a framework for interacting with uncertain environments in reinforcement learning (RL) by leveraging preferences in the form of utility functions. We claim that there is value in considering different risk measures during learning. In this framework, the preference for risk can be tuned by variation of the p…

2019-06-14abs ↗pdf ↗

Proposes a new framework for resource-limited recommendation.

problem Resource constraints affect user choices in recommendation tasks.
method Interest-behavior multiplicative network with MRRNNs and resource-limited branch.
result Framework effectively predicts user interactions considering resource limitations.

Discrete choice models are commonly used by applied statisticians in numerous fields, such as marketing, economics, finance, and operations research. When agents in discrete choice models are assumed to have differing preferences, exact inference is often intractable. Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques make approximat…

2007-12-15abs ↗pdf ↗

Model-based collaborative filtering analyzes user-item interactions to infer latent factors that represent user preferences and item characteristics in order to predict future interactions. Most collaborative filtering algorithms assume that these latent factors are static, although it has been shown that user preferen…

2016-08-17abs ↗pdf ↗

The perception of facial beauty is a complex phenomenon depending on many, detailed and global facial features influencing each other. In the machine learning community this problem is typically tackled as a problem of supervised inference. However, it has been conjectured that this approach does not capture the comple…

2019-10-30abs ↗pdf ↗

The variational autoencoder (VAE) is a popular model for density estimation and representation learning. Canonically, the variational principle suggests to prefer an expressive inference model so that the variational approximation is accurate. However, it is often overlooked that an overly-expressive inference model ca…

2018-05-23abs ↗pdf ↗

Proposes a new method to selectively access privileged information in reinforcement learning.

problem Selective compression of privileged information in reinforcement learning.
method Formulates a variational bandwidth bottleneck to decide stochastically whether to access privileged information.
result Improves generalization and reduces access to costly information in reinforcement learning experiments.

The paper shows how curated synthetic data can optimize human preferences in generative models.

problem Contamination of web-scale datasets by synthetic data affects future model training.
method Theoretical study of iterated retraining of generative models with curated synthetic data.
result Data curation can be seen as an implicit preference optimization mechanism, maximizing expected reward.

Unified framework for planning under uncertainty using variational inference.

problem Planning under uncertainty with separate objectives for exploration and exploitation.
method Variational inference on a generative model augmented with priors.
result EFE-based planning emerges as variational inference, enabling scalable, resource-aware policies.

New method adapts to user preferences dynamically, improving recommendation models.

problem Current recommendation models lack dynamic adaptation to changing user preferences.
method Preference Discerning with LLM-Enhanced Generative Retrieval
result Mender achieves state-of-the-art performance in adapting to evolving user preferences.

We present a novel, scalable and Bayesian approach to modelling the occurrence of pairs of symbols (i,j) drawn from a large vocabulary. Observed pairs are assumed to be generated by a simple popularity based selection process followed by censoring using a preference function. By basing inference on the well-founded pri…

2014-09-09abs ↗pdf ↗

This paper develops a learning framework for optimal strategies in multi-stage decentralized matching markets.

problem Optimal strategies in multi-stage decentralized matching markets with uncertain preferences.
method Nonparametric statistical approach and variational analysis.
result Participants can be better off with multi-stage matching compared to single-stage matching.

Many real-world engineering problems rely on human preferences to guide their design and optimization. We present PrefOpt, an open source package to simplify sequential optimization tasks that incorporate human preference feedback. Our approach extends an existing latent variable model for binary preferences to allow f…

2018-01-09abs ↗pdf ↗

Bayesian optimization learns DM preferences for multi-outcome experiments.

problem Optimizing expensive experiments with unknown utility functions and multiple outcomes.
method Alternates preference learning and Bayesian optimization, using pairwise comparisons.
result Preference exploration strategies improve Bayesian optimization performance.

New study shows personalized content recommendations can lead to polarization of user preferences.

problem Personalized content recommendations can alter user preferences, leading to polarization.
method Used a model of preference dynamics to explore how personalized content affects user preferences.
result Standard reward maximization algorithms achieve only constant regret in personalized recommendation environments.

Bayesian optimization agent learns user preferences from pairwise comparisons.

problem Learning user preferences from unknown and infinite choices.
method Sequential Bayesian optimization with pairwise comparisons.
result Optimal agent strategy minimizes remaining system uncertainty.

New RLHF framework handles general preference oracles without reward functions.

problem Handling general preference oracles without assuming a reward function.
method Developed a minimax game between two LLMs for RLHF under a general preference oracle, focusing on KL-regularized preference.
result Proposed algorithms for efficient offline and online RLHF learning.

In preference-based reinforcement learning (RL), an agent interacts with the environment while receiving preferences instead of absolute feedback. While there is increasing research activity in preference-based RL, the design of formal frameworks that admit tractable theoretical analysis remains an open challenge. Buil…

2019-08-04abs ↗pdf ↗

Study on identifying most preferred policy in bandits with vector-valued rewards.

problem Identifying the most preferred policy in bandits with vector-valued rewards.
method Derive a novel lower bound on sample complexity, design the Preference-based Track and Stop (PreTS) algorithm, and derive a new concentration inequality.
result The sample complexity of PreTS is asymptotically tight.