Magnitude and (co)weightings are quite general constructions in enriched categories, yet they have been developed almost exclusively in the context of Lawvere metric spaces. We construct a meaningful notion of magnitude for flow graphs based on the observation that topological entropy provides a suitable map into the max-plus semiring, and we outline its utility. Subsequently, we identify a separate point of contact between magnitude and topological entropy in digraphs that yields an analogue of volume entropy for geodesic flows. Finally, we sketch the utility of this construction for feature engineering in downstream applications with generic digraphs.
Fractional (hyper-)graph theory is concerned with the specific problems that arise when fractional analogues of otherwise integer-valued (hyper-)graph invariants are considered. The focus of this paper is on fractional edge covers of hypergraphs. Our main technical result generalizes and unifies previous conditions under which the size of the support of fractional edge covers is bounded independently of the size of the hypergraph itself. This allows us to extend previous tractability results for checking if the fractional hypertree width of a given hypergraph is $\leq k$ for some constant $k$. We also show how our results translate to fractional vertex covers.
Social choice functions help aggregate individual preferences while differentially private mechanisms provide formal privacy guarantees to release answers of queries operating on sensitive data. However, preserving differential privacy requires introducing noise to the system, and therefore may lead to undesired byproducts. Does an increase in the level of differential privacy for releasing the outputs of social choice functions increase or decrease the level of influence and welfare, and at what rate? In this paper, we mainly address this question in more precise terms in a referendum setting with two candidates when the celebrated randomized response mechanism is used. We show that there is an inversely-proportional relation between welfare and privacy, and also influence and privacy.
The estimation of cumulative distribution functions (CDF) and probability density functions (PDF) is a fundamental practice in applied statistics. However, challenges often arise when dealing with data arranged in grouped intervals. In this paper, we discuss a suitable and highly flexible non-parametric density estimation approach for binned distributions, based on cubic monotonicity-preserving splines - known as cubic spline interpolation. Results from simulation studies demonstrate that this approach outperforms many widely used heuristic methods. Additionally, the application of this method to a dataset of train delays in Germany and micro census data on distance and travel time to work yields both meaningful but also some questionable results.
Out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization is indispensable for learning models in the wild, where testing distribution typically unknown and different from the training. Recent methods derived from causality have shown great potential in achieving OOD generalization. However, existing methods mainly focus on the invariance property of causes, while largely overlooking the property of \textit{sufficiency} and \textit{necessity} conditions. Namely, a necessary but insufficient cause (feature) is invariant to distribution shift, yet it may not have required accuracy. By contrast, a sufficient yet unnecessary cause (feature) tends to fit specific data well but may have a risk of adapting to a new domain. To capture the information of sufficient and necessary causes, we employ a classical concept, the probability of sufficiency and necessary causes (PNS), which indicates the probability of whether one is the necessary and sufficient cause. To associate PNS with OOD generalization, we propose PNS risk and formulate an algorithm to learn representation with a high PNS value. We theoretically analyze and prove the generalizability of the PNS risk. Experiments on both synthetic and real-world benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The details of the implementation can be found at the GitHub repository: //github.com/ymy4323460/CaSN.
Recent experiments have shown that, often, when training a neural network with gradient descent (GD) with a step size $\eta$, the operator norm of the Hessian of the loss grows until it approximately reaches $2/\eta$, after which it fluctuates around this value. The quantity $2/\eta$ has been called the "edge of stability" based on consideration of a local quadratic approximation of the loss. We perform a similar calculation to arrive at an "edge of stability" for Sharpness-Aware Minimization (SAM), a variant of GD which has been shown to improve its generalization. Unlike the case for GD, the resulting SAM-edge depends on the norm of the gradient. Using three deep learning training tasks, we see empirically that SAM operates on the edge of stability identified by this analysis.
This work is devoted to the study of the probability of immunity, i.e. the effect occurs whether exposed or not. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for non-immunity and $\epsilon$-bounded immunity, i.e. the probability of immunity is zero and $\epsilon$-bounded, respectively. The former allows us to estimate the probability of benefit (i.e., the effect occurs if and only if exposed) from a randomized controlled trial, and the latter allows us to produce bounds of the probability of benefit that are tighter than the existing ones. We also introduce the concept of indirect immunity (i.e., through a mediator) and repeat our previous analysis for it. Finally, we propose a method for sensitivity analysis of the probability of immunity under unmeasured confounding.
Previous work has axiomatised the cardinality operation in relation algebras, which counts the number of edges of an unweighted graph. We generalise the cardinality axioms to Stone relation algebras, which model weighted graphs, and study the relationships between various axioms for cardinality. This results in simpler cardinality axioms also for relation algebras. We give sufficient conditions for the representation of Stone relation algebras and for Stone relation algebras to be relation algebras.
Data analysis often involves the comparison of complex objects. With the ever increasing amounts and complexity of data, the demand for systems to help with these comparisons is also growing. Increasingly, information visualization tools support such comparisons explicitly, beyond simply allowing a viewer to examine each object individually. In this paper, we argue that the design of information visualizations of complex objects can, and should, be studied in general, that is independently of what those objects are. As a first step in developing this general understanding of comparison, we propose a general taxonomy of visual designs for comparison that groups designs into three basic categories, which can be combined. To clarify the taxonomy and validate its completeness, we provide a survey of work in information visualization related to comparison. Although we find a great diversity of systems and approaches, we see that all designs are assembled from the building blocks of juxtaposition, superposition and explicit encodings. This initial exploration shows the power of our model, and suggests future challenges in developing a general understanding of comparative visualization and facilitating the development of more comparative visualization tools.
Predictive algorithms are often trained by optimizing some loss function, to which regularization functions are added to impose a penalty for violating constraints. As expected, the addition of such regularization functions can change the minimizer of the objective. It is not well-understood which regularizers change the minimizer of the loss, and, when the minimizer does change, how it changes. We use property elicitation to take first steps towards understanding the joint relationship between the loss and regularization functions and the optimal decision for a given problem instance. In particular, we give a necessary and sufficient condition on loss and regularizer pairs for when a property changes with the addition of the regularizer, and examine some regularizers satisfying this condition standard in the fair machine learning literature. We empirically demonstrate how algorithmic decision-making changes as a function of both data distribution changes and hardness of the constraints.
As artificial intelligence (AI) models continue to scale up, they are becoming more capable and integrated into various forms of decision-making systems. For models involved in moral decision-making, also known as artificial moral agents (AMA), interpretability provides a way to trust and understand the agent's internal reasoning mechanisms for effective use and error correction. In this paper, we provide an overview of this rapidly-evolving sub-field of AI interpretability, introduce the concept of the Minimum Level of Interpretability (MLI) and recommend an MLI for various types of agents, to aid their safe deployment in real-world settings.