Data constraints are fundamental for practical data modelling, and a verifiable conformance of a data instance to a safety-critical constraint (satisfaction relation) is a corner-stone of safety assurance. Diagrammatic constraints are important as both a theoretical concepts and a practically convenient device. The paper shows that basic formal constraint management can well be developed within a finitely complete category (hence the reference to Cartesianity in the title). In the data modelling context, objects of such a category can be thought of as graphs, while their morphisms play two roles: of data instances and (when being additionally labelled) of constraints. Specifically, a generalized sketch $S$ consists of a graph $G_S$ and a set of constraints $C_S$ declared over $G_S$, and appears as a pattern for typical data schemas (in databases, XML, and UML class diagrams). Interoperability of data modelling frameworks (and tools based on them) very much depends on the laws regulating the transformation of satisfaction relations between data instances and schemas when the schema graph changes: then constraints are translated co- whereas instances contra-variantly. Investigation of this transformation pattern is the main mathematical subject of the paper
Medical studies for chronic disease are often interested in the relation between longitudinal risk factor profiles and individuals' later life disease outcomes. These profiles may typically be subject to intermediate structural changes due to treatment or environmental influences. Analysis of such studies may be handled by the joint model framework. However, current joint modeling does not consider structural changes in the residual variability of the risk profile nor consider the influence of subject-specific residual variability on the time-to-event outcome. In the present paper, we extend the joint model framework to address these two heterogeneous intra-individual variabilities. A Bayesian approach is used to estimate the unknown parameters and simulation studies are conducted to investigate the performance of the method. The proposed joint model is applied to the Framingham Heart Study to investigate the influence of anti-hypertensive medication on the systolic blood pressure variability together with its effect on the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. We show that anti-hypertensive medication is associated with elevated systolic blood pressure variability and increased variability elevates risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
The distributed task allocation problem, as one of the most interesting distributed optimization challenges, has received considerable research attention recently. Previous works mainly focused on the task allocation problem in a population of individuals, where there are no constraints for affording task amounts. The latter condition, however, cannot always be hold. In this paper, we study the task allocation problem with constraints of task allocation in a game-theoretical framework. We assume that each individual can afford different amounts of task and the cost function is convex. To investigate the problem in the framework of population games, we construct a potential game and calculate the fitness function for each individual. We prove that when the Nash equilibrium point in the potential game is in the feasible solutions for the limited task allocation problem, the Nash equilibrium point is the unique globally optimal solution. Otherwise, we also derive analytically the unique globally optimal solution. In addition, in order to confirm our theoretical results, we consider the exponential and quadratic forms of cost function for each agent. Two algorithms with the mentioned representative cost functions are proposed to numerically seek the optimal solution to the limited task problems. We further perform Monte Carlo simulations which provide agreeing results with our analytical calculations.
Due to its computational complexity, graph cuts for cluster detection and identification are used mostly in the form of convex relaxations. We propose to utilize the original graph cuts such as Ratio, Normalized or Cheeger Cut in order to detect clusters in weighted undirected graphs by restricting the graph cut minimization to the subset of $st$-MinCut partitions. Incorporating a vertex selection technique and restricting optimization to tightly connected clusters, we therefore combine the efficient computability of $st$-MinCuts and the intrinsic properties of Gomory-Hu trees with the cut quality of the original graph cuts, leading to linear runtime in the number of vertices and quadratic in the number of edges. Already in simple scenarios, the resulting algorithm Xist is able to approximate graph cut values better empirically than spectral clustering or comparable algorithms, even for large network datasets. We showcase its applicability by segmenting images from cell biology and provide empirical studies of runtime and classification rate.
In the context of finite sums minimization, variance reduction techniques are widely used to improve the performance of state-of-the-art stochastic gradient methods. Their practical impact is clear, as well as their theoretical properties. Stochastic proximal point algorithms have been studied as an alternative to stochastic gradient algorithms since they are more stable with respect to the choice of the stepsize but a proper variance reduced version is missing. In this work, we propose the first study of variance reduction techniques for stochastic proximal point algorithms. We introduce a stochastic proximal version of SVRG, SAGA, and some of their variants for smooth and convex functions. We provide several convergence results for the iterates and the objective function values. In addition, under the Polyak-{\L}ojasiewicz (PL) condition, we obtain linear convergence rates for the iterates and the function values. Our numerical experiments demonstrate the advantages of the proximal variance reduction methods over their gradient counterparts, especially about the stability with respect to the choice of the step size.
A central problem in computational statistics is to convert a procedure for sampling combinatorial from an objects into a procedure for counting those objects, and vice versa. Weconsider sampling problems coming from *Gibbs distributions*, which are probability distributions of the form $\mu^\Omega_\beta(\omega) \propto e^{\beta H(\omega)}$ for $\beta$ in an interval $[\beta_\min, \beta_\max]$ and $H( \omega ) \in \{0 \} \cup [1, n]$. The *partition function* is the normalization factor $Z(\beta)=\sum_{\omega \in\Omega}e^{\beta H(\omega)}$. Two important parameters are the log partition ratio $q = \log \tfrac{Z(\beta_\max)}{Z(\beta_\min)}$ and the vector of counts $c_x = |H^{-1}(x)|$. Our first result is an algorithm to estimate the counts $c_x$ using roughly $\tilde O( \frac{q}{\epsilon^2})$ samples for general Gibbs distributions and $\tilde O( \frac{n^2}{\epsilon^2} )$ samples for integer-valued distributions (ignoring some second-order terms and parameters). We show this is optimal up to logarithmic factors. We illustrate with improved algorithms for counting connected subgraphs and perfect matchings in a graph. We develop a key subroutine for global estimation of the partition function. Specifically, we produce a data structure to estimate $Z(\beta)$ for \emph{all} values $\beta$, without further samples. Constructing the data structure requires $O(\frac{q \log n}{\epsilon^2})$ samples for general Gibbs distributions and $O(\frac{n^2 \log n}{\epsilon^2} + n \log q)$ samples for integer-valued distributions. This improves over a prior algorithm of Kolmogorov (2018) which computes the single point estimate $Z(\beta_\max)$ using $\tilde O(\frac{q}{\epsilon^2})$ samples. We also show that this complexity is optimal as a function of $n$ and $q$ up to logarithmic terms.
This paper develops power series expansions of a general class of moment functions, including transition densities and option prices, of continuous-time Markov processes, including jump--diffusions. The proposed expansions extend the ones in Kristensen and Mele (2011) to cover general Markov processes. We demonstrate that the class of expansions nests the transition density and option price expansions developed in Yang, Chen, and Wan (2019) and Wan and Yang (2021) as special cases, thereby connecting seemingly different ideas in a unified framework. We show how the general expansion can be implemented for fully general jump--diffusion models. We provide a new theory for the validity of the expansions which shows that series expansions are not guaranteed to converge as more terms are added in general. Thus, these methods should be used with caution. At the same time, the numerical studies in this paper demonstrate good performance of the proposed implementation in practice when a small number of terms are included.
We analyze the dynamics of streaming stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in the high-dimensional limit when applied to generalized linear models and multi-index models (e.g. logistic regression, phase retrieval) with general data-covariance. In particular, we demonstrate a deterministic equivalent of SGD in the form of a system of ordinary differential equations that describes a wide class of statistics, such as the risk and other measures of sub-optimality. This equivalence holds with overwhelming probability when the model parameter count grows proportionally to the number of data. This framework allows us to obtain learning rate thresholds for stability of SGD as well as convergence guarantees. In addition to the deterministic equivalent, we introduce an SDE with a simplified diffusion coefficient (homogenized SGD) which allows us to analyze the dynamics of general statistics of SGD iterates. Finally, we illustrate this theory on some standard examples and show numerical simulations which give an excellent match to the theory.
Optimal transport has gained much attention in image processing field, such as computer vision, image interpolation and medical image registration. Recently, Bredies et al. (ESAIM:M2AN 54:2351-2382, 2020) and Schmitzer et al. (IEEE T MED IMAGING 39:1626-1635, 2019) established the framework of optimal transport regularization for dynamic inverse problems. In this paper, we incorporate Wasserstein distance, together with total variation, into static inverse problems as a prior regularization. The Wasserstein distance formulated by Benamou-Brenier energy measures the similarity between the given template and the reconstructed image. Also, we analyze the existence of solutions of such variational problem in Radon measure space. Moreover, the first-order primal-dual algorithm is constructed for solving this general imaging problem in a specific grid strategy. Finally, numerical experiments for undersampled MRI reconstruction are presented which show that our proposed model can recover images well with high quality and structure preservation.
We consider distributed recursive estimation of consensus+innovations type in the presence of heavy-tailed sensing and communication noises. We allow that the sensing and communication noises are mutually correlated while independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) in time, and that they may both have infinite moments of order higher than one (hence having infinite variances). Such heavy-tailed, infinite-variance noises are highly relevant in practice and are shown to occur, e.g., in dense internet of things (IoT) deployments. We develop a consensus+innovations distributed estimator that employs a general nonlinearity in both consensus and innovations steps to combat the noise. We establish the estimator's almost sure convergence, asymptotic normality, and mean squared error (MSE) convergence. Moreover, we establish and explicitly quantify for the estimator a sublinear MSE convergence rate. We then quantify through analytical examples the effects of the nonlinearity choices and the noises correlation on the system performance. Finally, numerical examples corroborate our findings and verify that the proposed method works in the simultaneous heavy-tail communication-sensing noise setting, while existing methods fail under the same noise conditions.
Artificial neural networks thrive in solving the classification problem for a particular rigid task, acquiring knowledge through generalized learning behaviour from a distinct training phase. The resulting network resembles a static entity of knowledge, with endeavours to extend this knowledge without targeting the original task resulting in a catastrophic forgetting. Continual learning shifts this paradigm towards networks that can continually accumulate knowledge over different tasks without the need to retrain from scratch. We focus on task incremental classification, where tasks arrive sequentially and are delineated by clear boundaries. Our main contributions concern 1) a taxonomy and extensive overview of the state-of-the-art, 2) a novel framework to continually determine the stability-plasticity trade-off of the continual learner, 3) a comprehensive experimental comparison of 11 state-of-the-art continual learning methods and 4 baselines. We empirically scrutinize method strengths and weaknesses on three benchmarks, considering Tiny Imagenet and large-scale unbalanced iNaturalist and a sequence of recognition datasets. We study the influence of model capacity, weight decay and dropout regularization, and the order in which the tasks are presented, and qualitatively compare methods in terms of required memory, computation time, and storage.