Among the many estimators of first order Sobol indices that have been proposed in the literature, the so-called rank-based estimator is arguably the simplest to implement. This estimator can be viewed as the empirical auto-correlation of the response variable sample obtained upon reordering the data by increasing values of the inputs. This simple idea can be extended to higher lags of autocorrelation, thus providing several competing estimators of the same parameter. We show that these estimators can be combined in a simple manner to achieve the theoretical variance efficiency bound asymptotically.
Sequential fundraising in two sided online platforms enable peer to peer lending by sequentially bringing potential contributors, each of whose decisions impact other contributors in the market. However, understanding the dynamics of sequential contributions in online platforms for peer lending has been an open ended research question. The centralized investment mechanism in these platforms makes it difficult to understand the implicit competition that borrowers face from a single lender at any point in time. Matching markets are a model of pairing agents where the preferences of agents from both sides in terms of their preferred pairing for transactions can allow to decentralize the market. We study investment designs in two sided platforms using matching markets when the investors or lenders also face restrictions on the investments based on borrower preferences. This situation creates an implicit competition among the lenders in addition to the existing borrower competition, especially when the lenders are uncertain about their standing in the market and thereby the probability of their investments being accepted or the borrower loan requests for projects reaching the reserve price. We devise a technique based on sequential decision making that allows the lenders to adjust their choices based on the dynamics of uncertainty from competition over time. We simulate two sided market matchings in a sequential decision framework and show the dynamics of the lender regret amassed compared to the optimal borrower-lender matching and find that the lender regret depends on the initial preferences set by the lenders which could affect their learning over decision making steps.
We examine the last-iterate convergence rate of Bregman proximal methods - from mirror descent to mirror-prox and its optimistic variants - as a function of the local geometry induced by the prox-mapping defining the method. For generality, we focus on local solutions of constrained, non-monotone variational inequalities, and we show that the convergence rate of a given method depends sharply on its associated Legendre exponent, a notion that measures the growth rate of the underlying Bregman function (Euclidean, entropic, or other) near a solution. In particular, we show that boundary solutions exhibit a stark separation of regimes between methods with a zero and non-zero Legendre exponent: the former converge at a linear rate, while the latter converge, in general, sublinearly. This dichotomy becomes even more pronounced in linearly constrained problems where methods with entropic regularization achieve a linear convergence rate along sharp directions, compared to convergence in a finite number of steps under Euclidean regularization.
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are becoming increasingly popular due to their superior performance in critical graph-related tasks. While quantization is widely used to accelerate GNN computation, quantized training faces unprecedented challenges. Current quantized GNN training systems often have longer training times than their full-precision counterparts for two reasons: (i) addressing the accuracy challenge leads to excessive overhead, and (ii) the optimization potential exposed by quantization is not adequately leveraged. This paper introduces Tango which re-thinks quantization challenges and opportunities for graph neural network training on GPUs with three contributions: Firstly, we introduce efficient rules to maintain accuracy during quantized GNN training. Secondly, we design and implement quantization-aware primitives and inter-primitive optimizations that can speed up GNN training. Finally, we integrate Tango with the popular Deep Graph Library (DGL) system and demonstrate its superior performance over state-of-the-art approaches on various GNN models and datasets.
While black-box variational inference is widely used, there is no proof that its stochastic optimization succeeds. We suggest this is due to a theoretical gap in existing stochastic optimization proofs-namely the challenge of gradient estimators with unusual noise bounds, and a composite non-smooth objective. For dense Gaussian variational families, we observe that existing gradient estimators based on reparameterization satisfy a quadratic noise bound and give novel convergence guarantees for proximal and projected stochastic gradient descent using this bound. This provides the first rigorous guarantee that black-box variational inference converges for realistic inference problems.
Online science dissemination has quickly become crucial in promoting scholars' work. Recent literature has demonstrated a lack of visibility for women's research, where women's articles receive fewer academic citations than men's. The informetric and scientometric community has briefly examined gender-based inequalities in online visibility. However, the link between online sharing of scientific work and citation impact for teams with different gender compositions remains understudied. Here we explore whether online visibility is helping women overcome the gender-based citation penalty. Our analyses cover the three broad research areas of Computer Science, Engineering, and Social Sciences, which have different gender representation, adoption of online science dissemination practices, and citation culture. We create a quasi-experimental setting by applying Coarsened Exact Matching, which enables us to isolate the effects of team gender composition and online visibility on the number of citations. We find that online visibility positively affects citations across research areas, while team gender composition interacts differently with visibility in these research areas. Our results provide essential insights into gendered citation patterns and online visibility, inviting informed discussions about decreasing the citation gap.
We show that the first-order theory of Sturmian words over Presburger arithmetic is decidable. Using a general adder recognizing addition in Ostrowski numeration systems by Baranwal, Schaeffer and Shallit, we prove that the first-order expansions of Presburger arithmetic by a single Sturmian word are uniformly $\omega$-automatic, and then deduce the decidability of the theory of the class of such structures. Using an implementation of this decision algorithm called Pecan, we automatically reprove classical theorems about Sturmian words in seconds, and are able to obtain new results about antisquares and antipalindromes in characteristic Sturmian words.
I derive the probability that a vote cast in an Instant Runoff Voting election will change the election winner. I phrase that probability in terms of the candidates' expected vote totals, and then I estimate its magnitude for different distributions of voter preferences. The result is very similar to the probability of casting a pivotal vote in a Single-Member District Plurality election, which suggests that Instant Runoff Voting does not actually increase or decrease voters' incentives to vote strategically. The derivation uncovers a counter-intuitive phenomenon that I call "indirect pivotality", in which a voter can cause one candidate to win by ranking some other candidate on their ballot.
Stabbing Planes (also known as Branch and Cut) is a proof system introduced very recently which, informally speaking, extends the DPLL method by branching on integer linear inequalities instead of single variables. The techniques known so far to prove size and depth lower bounds for Stabbing Planes are generalizations of those used for the Cutting Planes proof system. For size lower bounds these are established by monotone circuit arguments, while for depth these are found via communication complexity and protection. As such these bounds apply for lifted versions of combinatorial statements. Rank lower bounds for Cutting Planes are also obtained by geometric arguments called protection lemmas. In this work we introduce two new geometric approaches to prove size/depth lower bounds in Stabbing Planes working for any formula: (1) the antichain method, relying on Sperner's Theorem and (2) the covering method which uses results on essential coverings of the boolean cube by linear polynomials, which in turn relies on Alon's combinatorial Nullenstellensatz. We demonstrate their use on classes of combinatorial principles such as the Pigeonhole principle, the Tseitin contradictions and the Linear Ordering Principle. By the first method we prove almost linear size lower bounds and optimal logarithmic depth lower bounds for the Pigeonhole principle and analogous lower bounds for the Tseitin contradictions over the complete graph and for the Linear Ordering Principle. By the covering method we obtain a superlinear size lower bound and a logarithmic depth lower bound for Stabbing Planes proof of Tseitin contradictions over a grid graph.
In this paper, we consider decentralized optimization problems where agents have individual cost functions to minimize subject to subspace constraints that require the minimizers across the network to lie in low-dimensional subspaces. This constrained formulation includes consensus or single-task optimization as special cases, and allows for more general task relatedness models such as multitask smoothness and coupled optimization. In order to cope with communication constraints, we propose and study an adaptive decentralized strategy where the agents employ differential randomized quantizers to compress their estimates before communicating with their neighbors. The analysis shows that, under some general conditions on the quantization noise, and for sufficiently small step-sizes $\mu$, the strategy is stable both in terms of mean-square error and average bit rate: by reducing $\mu$, it is possible to keep the estimation errors small (on the order of $\mu$) without increasing indefinitely the bit rate as $\mu\rightarrow 0$. Simulations illustrate the theoretical findings and the effectiveness of the proposed approach, revealing that decentralized learning is achievable at the expense of only a few bits.
Human interactions create social networks forming the backbone of societies. Individuals adjust their opinions by exchanging information through social interactions. Two recurrent questions are whether social structures promote opinion polarisation or consensus in societies and whether polarisation can be avoided, particularly on social media. In this paper, we hypothesise that not only network structure but also the timings of social interactions regulate the emergence of opinion clusters. We devise a temporal version of the Deffuant opinion model where pairwise interactions follow temporal patterns and show that burstiness alone is sufficient to refrain from consensus and polarisation by promoting the reinforcement of local opinions. Individuals self-organise into a multi-partisan society due to network clustering, but the diversity of opinion clusters further increases with burstiness, particularly when individuals have low tolerance and prefer to adjust to similar peers. The emergent opinion landscape is well-balanced regarding clusters' size, with a small fraction of individuals converging to extreme opinions. We thus argue that polarisation is more likely to emerge in social media than offline social networks because of the relatively low social clustering observed online. Counter-intuitively, strengthening online social networks by increasing social redundancy may be a venue to reduce polarisation and promote opinion diversity.