High-dimensional data sets are often available in genome-enabled predictions. Such data sets include nonlinear relationships with complex dependence structures. For such situations, vine copula based (quantile) regression is an important tool. However, the current vine copula based regression approaches do not scale up to high and ultra-high dimensions. To perform high-dimensional sparse vine copula based regression, we propose two methods. First, we show their superiority regarding computational complexity over the existing methods. Second, we define relevant, irrelevant, and redundant explanatory variables for quantile regression. Then we show our method's power in selecting relevant variables and prediction accuracy in high-dimensional sparse data sets via simulation studies. Next, we apply the proposed methods to the high-dimensional real data, aiming at the genomic prediction of maize traits. Some data-processing and feature extraction steps for the real data are further discussed. Finally, we show the advantage of our methods over linear models and quantile regression forests in simulation studies and real data applications.
We describe a `discretize-then-relax' strategy to globally minimize integral functionals over functions $u$ in a Sobolev space satisfying prescribed Dirichlet boundary conditions. The strategy applies whenever the integral functional depends polynomially on $u$ and its derivatives, even if it is nonconvex. The `discretize' step uses a bounded finite-element scheme to approximate the integral minimization problem with a convergent hierarchy of polynomial optimization problems over a compact feasible set, indexed by the decreasing size $h$ of the finite-element mesh. The `relax' step employs sparse moment-SOS relaxations to approximate each polynomial optimization problem with a hierarchy of convex semidefinite programs, indexed by an increasing relaxation order $\omega$. We prove that, as $\omega\to\infty$ and $h\to 0$, solutions of such semidefinite programs provide approximate minimizers that converge in $L^p$ to the global minimizer of the original integral functional if this is unique. We also report computational experiments that show our numerical strategy works well even when technical conditions required by our theoretical analysis are not satisfied.
Recently established, directed dependence measures for pairs $(X,Y)$ of random variables build upon the natural idea of comparing the conditional distributions of $Y$ given $X=x$ with the marginal distribution of $Y$. They assign pairs $(X,Y)$ values in $[0,1]$, the value is $0$ if and only if $X,Y$ are independent, and it is $1$ exclusively for $Y$ being a function of $X$. Here we show that comparing randomly drawn conditional distributions with each other instead or, equivalently, analyzing how sensitive the conditional distribution of $Y$ given $X=x$ is on $x$, opens the door to constructing novel families of dependence measures $\Lambda_\varphi$ induced by general convex functions $\varphi: \mathbb{R} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$, containing, e.g., Chatterjee's coefficient of correlation as special case. After establishing additional useful properties of $\Lambda_\varphi$ we focus on continuous $(X,Y)$, translate $\Lambda_\varphi$ to the copula setting, consider the $L^p$-version and establish an estimator which is strongly consistent in full generality. A real data example and a simulation study illustrate the chosen approach and the performance of the estimator. Complementing the afore-mentioned results, we show how a slight modification of the construction underlying $\Lambda_\varphi$ can be used to define new measures of explainability generalizing the fraction of explained variance.
Selective inference methods are developed for group lasso estimators for use with a wide class of distributions and loss functions. The method includes the use of exponential family distributions, as well as quasi-likelihood modeling for overdispersed count data, for example, and allows for categorical or grouped covariates as well as continuous covariates. A randomized group-regularized optimization problem is studied. The added randomization allows us to construct a post-selection likelihood which we show to be adequate for selective inference when conditioning on the event of the selection of the grouped covariates. This likelihood also provides a selective point estimator, accounting for the selection by the group lasso. Confidence regions for the regression parameters in the selected model take the form of Wald-type regions and are shown to have bounded volume. The selective inference method for grouped lasso is illustrated on data from the national health and nutrition examination survey while simulations showcase its behaviour and favorable comparison with other methods.
The application of deep learning to non-stationary temporal datasets can lead to overfitted models that underperform under regime changes. In this work, we propose a modular machine learning pipeline for ranking predictions on temporal panel datasets which is robust under regime changes. The modularity of the pipeline allows the use of different models, including Gradient Boosting Decision Trees (GBDTs) and Neural Networks, with and without feature engineering. We evaluate our framework on financial data for stock portfolio prediction, and find that GBDT models with dropout display high performance, robustness and generalisability with reduced complexity and computational cost. We then demonstrate how online learning techniques, which require no retraining of models, can be used post-prediction to enhance the results. First, we show that dynamic feature projection improves robustness by reducing drawdown in regime changes. Second, we demonstrate that dynamical model ensembling based on selection of models with good recent performance leads to improved Sharpe and Calmar ratios of out-of-sample predictions. We also evaluate the robustness of our pipeline across different data splits and random seeds with good reproducibility.
By combining a logarithm transformation with a corrected Milstein-type method, the present article proposes an explicit, unconditional boundary and dynamics preserving scheme for the stochastic susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) epidemic model that takes value in (0,N). The scheme applied to the model is first proved to have a strong convergence rate of order one. Further, the dynamic behaviors are analyzed for the numerical approximations and it is shown that the scheme can unconditionally preserve both the domain and the dynamics of the model. More precisely, the proposed scheme gives numerical approximations living in the domain (0,N) and reproducing the extinction and persistence properties of the original model for any time discretization step-size h > 0, without any additional requirements on the model parameters. Numerical experiments are presented to verify our theoretical results.
We study self-regulating processes modeling biological transportation networks as presented in \cite{portaro2023}. In particular, we focus on the 1D setting for Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. We prove an existence and uniqueness result under the assumption of positivity of the diffusivity $D$. We explore systematically various scenarios and gain insights into the behavior of $D$ and its impact on the studied system. This involves analyzing the system with a signed measure distribution of sources and sinks. Finally, we perform several numerical tests in which the solution $D$ touches zero, confirming the previous hints of local existence in particular cases.
A variant of the standard notion of branching bisimilarity for processes with discrete relative timing is proposed which is coarser than the standard notion. Using a version of ACP (Algebra of Communicating Processes) with abstraction for processes with discrete relative timing, it is shown that the proposed variant allows of both the functional correctness and the performance properties of the PAR (Positive Acknowledgement with Retransmission) protocol to be analyzed. In the version of ACP concerned, the difference between the standard notion of branching bisimilarity and its proposed variant is characterized by a single axiom schema.
Large datasets are often affected by cell-wise outliers in the form of missing or erroneous data. However, discarding any samples containing outliers may result in a dataset that is too small to accurately estimate the covariance matrix. Moreover, most robust procedures designed to address this problem are not effective on high-dimensional data as they rely crucially on invertibility of the covariance operator. In this paper, we propose an unbiased estimator for the covariance in the presence of missing values that does not require any imputation step and still achieves minimax statistical accuracy with the operator norm. We also advocate for its use in combination with cell-wise outlier detection methods to tackle cell-wise contamination in a high-dimensional and low-rank setting, where state-of-the-art methods may suffer from numerical instability and long computation times. To complement our theoretical findings, we conducted an experimental study which demonstrates the superiority of our approach over the state of the art both in low and high dimension settings.
A new information theoretic condition is presented for reconstructing a discrete random variable $X$ based on the knowledge of a set of discrete functions of $X$. The reconstruction condition is derived from Shannon's 1953 lattice theory with two entropic metrics of Shannon and Rajski. Because such a theoretical material is relatively unknown and appears quite dispersed in different references, we first provide a synthetic description (with complete proofs) of its concepts, such as total, common and complementary informations. Definitions and properties of the two entropic metrics are also fully detailed and shown compatible with the lattice structure. A new geometric interpretation of such a lattice structure is then investigated that leads to a necessary (and sometimes sufficient) condition for reconstructing the discrete random variable $X$ given a set $\{ X_1,\ldots,X_{n} \}$ of elements in the lattice generated by $X$. Finally, this condition is illustrated in five specific examples of perfect reconstruction problems: reconstruction of a symmetric random variable from the knowledge of its sign and absolute value, reconstruction of a word from a set of linear combinations, reconstruction of an integer from its prime signature (fundamental theorem of arithmetic) and from its remainders modulo a set of coprime integers (Chinese remainder theorem), and reconstruction of the sorting permutation of a list from a minimal set of pairwise comparisons.
Hashing has been widely used in approximate nearest search for large-scale database retrieval for its computation and storage efficiency. Deep hashing, which devises convolutional neural network architecture to exploit and extract the semantic information or feature of images, has received increasing attention recently. In this survey, several deep supervised hashing methods for image retrieval are evaluated and I conclude three main different directions for deep supervised hashing methods. Several comments are made at the end. Moreover, to break through the bottleneck of the existing hashing methods, I propose a Shadow Recurrent Hashing(SRH) method as a try. Specifically, I devise a CNN architecture to extract the semantic features of images and design a loss function to encourage similar images projected close. To this end, I propose a concept: shadow of the CNN output. During optimization process, the CNN output and its shadow are guiding each other so as to achieve the optimal solution as much as possible. Several experiments on dataset CIFAR-10 show the satisfying performance of SRH.