Analysis-suitable $G^1$ (AS-$G^1$) multi-patch spline surfaces [4] are particular $G^1$-smooth multi-patch spline surfaces, which are needed to ensure the construction of $C^1$-smooth multi-patch spline spaces with optimal polynomial reproduction properties [16]. We present a novel local approach for the design of AS-$G^1$ multi-patch spline surfaces, which is based on the use of Lagrange multipliers. The presented method is simple and generates an AS-$G^1$ multi-patch spline surface by approximating a given $G^1$-smooth but non-AS-$G^1$ multi-patch surface. Several numerical examples demonstrate the potential of the proposed technique for the construction of AS-$G^1$ multi-patch spline surfaces and show that these surfaces are especially suited for applications in isogeometric analysis by solving the biharmonic problem, a particular fourth order partial differential equation, over them.
This paper addresses the problem of designing the {\it continuous-discrete} unscented Kalman filter (UKF) implementation methods. More precisely, the aim is to propose the MATLAB-based UKF algorithms for {\it accurate} and {\it robust} state estimation of stochastic dynamic systems. The accuracy of the {\it continuous-discrete} nonlinear filters heavily depends on how the implementation method manages the discretization error arisen at the filter prediction step. We suggest the elegant and accurate implementation framework for tracking the hidden states by utilizing the MATLAB built-in numerical integration schemes developed for solving ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The accuracy is boosted by the discretization error control involved in all MATLAB ODE solvers. This keeps the discretization error below the tolerance value provided by users, automatically. Meanwhile, the robustness of the UKF filtering methods is examined in terms of the stability to roundoff. In contrast to the pseudo-square-root UKF implementations established in engineering literature, which are based on the one-rank Cholesky updates, we derive the stable square-root methods by utilizing the $J$-orthogonal transformations for calculating the Cholesky square-root factors.
This paper proposes a novel signed $\beta$-model for directed signed network, which is frequently encountered in application domains but largely neglected in literature. The proposed signed $\beta$-model decomposes a directed signed network as the difference of two unsigned networks and embeds each node with two latent factors for in-status and out-status. The presence of negative edges leads to a non-concave log-likelihood, and a one-step estimation algorithm is developed to facilitate parameter estimation, which is efficient both theoretically and computationally. We also develop an inferential procedure for pairwise and multiple node comparisons under the signed $\beta$-model, which fills the void of lacking uncertainty quantification for node ranking. Theoretical results are established for the coverage probability of confidence interval, as well as the false discovery rate (FDR) control for multiple node comparison. The finite sample performance of the signed $\beta$-model is also examined through extensive numerical experiments on both synthetic and real-life networks.
We present a multigrid algorithm to solve efficiently the large saddle-point systems of equations that typically arise in PDE-constrained optimization under uncertainty. The algorithm is based on a collective smoother that at each iteration sweeps over the nodes of the computational mesh, and solves a reduced saddle-point system whose size depends on the number $N$ of samples used to discretized the probability space. We show that this reduced system can be solved with optimal $O(N)$ complexity. We test the multigrid method on three problems: a linear-quadratic problem, possibly with a local or a boundary control, for which the multigrid method is used to solve directly the linear optimality system; a nonsmooth problem with box constraints and $L^1$-norm penalization on the control, in which the multigrid scheme is used within a semismooth Newton iteration; a risk-adverse problem with the smoothed CVaR risk measure where the multigrid method is called within a preconditioned Newton iteration. In all cases, the multigrid algorithm exhibits excellent performances and robustness with respect to the parameters of interest.
We consider Gibbs distributions, which are families of probability distributions over a discrete space $\Omega$ with probability mass function 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 of these distributions are the log partition ratio $q = \log \tfrac{Z(\beta_{\max})}{Z(\beta_{\min})}$ and the counts $c_x = |H^{-1}(x)|$. These are correlated with system parameters in a number of physical applications and sampling algorithms. Our first main result is to estimate the counts $c_x$ using roughly $\tilde O( \frac{q}{\varepsilon^2})$ samples for general Gibbs distributions and $\tilde O( \frac{n^2}{\varepsilon^2} )$ samples for integer-valued distributions (ignoring some second-order terms and parameters), and we show this is optimal up to logarithmic factors. We illustrate with improved algorithms for counting connected subgraphs, independent sets, and perfect matchings. As a key subroutine, we also develop algorithms to compute the partition function $Z$ using $\tilde O(\frac{q}{\varepsilon^2})$ samples for general Gibbs distributions and using $\tilde O(\frac{n^2}{\varepsilon^2})$ samples for integer-valued distributions.
The dichromatic number $\vec{\chi}(D)$ of a digraph $D$ is the least integer $k$ for which $D$ has a coloring with $k$ colors such that there is no monochromatic directed cycle in $D$. The digraphs considered here are finite and may have antiparallel arcs, but no parallel arcs. A digraph $D$ is called $k$-critical if each proper subdigraph $D'$ of $D$ satisfies $\vec{\chi}(D')<\vec{\chi}(D)=k$. For integers $k$ and $n$, let $\overrightarrow{\mathrm{ext}}(k,n)$ denote the minimum number of arcs possible in a $k$-critical digraph of order $n$. It is easy to show that $\overrightarrow{\mathrm{ext}}(2,n)=n$ for all $n\geq 2$, and $\overrightarrow{\mathrm{ext}}(3,n)\geq 2n$ for all possible $n$, where equality holds if and only if $n$ is odd and $n\geq 3$. As a main result we prove that if $n, k$ and $p$ are integers with $n=k+p$ and $2\leq p \leq k-1$, then $\overrightarrow{\mathrm{ext}}(k,n)=2({\binom{n}{2}} - (p^2+1))$, and we give an exact characterisation of $k$-critical digraphs for which equality holds. This generalizes a result about critical graphs obtained in 1963 by Tibor Gallai.
A $(a,b)$-coloring of a graph $G$ associates to each vertex a $b$-subset of a set of $a$ colors in such a way that the color-sets of adjacent vertices are disjoint. We define general reduction tools for $(a,b)$-coloring of graphs for $2\le a/b\le 3$. In particular, using necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a $(a,b)$-coloring of a path with prescribed color-sets on its end-vertices, more complex $(a,b)$-colorability reductions are presented. The utility of these tools is exemplified on finite triangle-free induced subgraphs of the triangular lattice for which McDiarmid-Reed's conjecture asserts that they are all $(9,4)$-colorable. Computations on millions of such graphs generated randomly show that our tools allow to find a $(9,4)$-coloring for each of them except for one specific regular shape of graphs (that can be $(9,4)$-colored by an easy ad-hoc process). We thus obtain computational evidence towards the conjecture of McDiarmid\&Reed.
Given a sample of size $N$, it is often useful to select a subsample of smaller size $n<N$ to be used for statistical estimation or learning. Such a data selection step is useful to reduce the requirements of data labeling and the computational complexity of learning. We assume to be given $N$ unlabeled samples $\{{\boldsymbol x}_i\}_{i\le N}$, and to be given access to a `surrogate model' that can predict labels $y_i$ better than random guessing. Our goal is to select a subset of the samples, to be denoted by $\{{\boldsymbol x}_i\}_{i\in G}$, of size $|G|=n<N$. We then acquire labels for this set and we use them to train a model via regularized empirical risk minimization. By using a mixture of numerical experiments on real and synthetic data, and mathematical derivations under low- and high- dimensional asymptotics, we show that: $(i)$~Data selection can be very effective, in particular beating training on the full sample in some cases; $(ii)$~Certain popular choices in data selection methods (e.g. unbiased reweighted subsampling, or influence function-based subsampling) can be substantially suboptimal.
Let $G$ be an undirected graph, and $s,t$ distinguished vertices of $G$. A minimal $s,t$-separator is an inclusion-wise minimal vertex-set whose removal places $s$ and $t$ in distinct connected components. We present an algorithm for listing the minimal $s,t$-separators of a graph, whose cardinality is at most $k$, with FPT-delay, where the parameter depends only on $k$. This problem finds applications in various algorithms parameterized by treewidth, which include query evaluation in relational databases, probabilistic inference, and many more. We also present a simple algorithm that enumerates all of the (not necessarily minimal) $s,t$-separators of a graph in ranked order by size.
We present a new algorithm for amortized inference in sparse probabilistic graphical models (PGMs), which we call $\Delta$-amortized inference ($\Delta$-AI). Our approach is based on the observation that when the sampling of variables in a PGM is seen as a sequence of actions taken by an agent, sparsity of the PGM enables local credit assignment in the agent's policy learning objective. This yields a local constraint that can be turned into a local loss in the style of generative flow networks (GFlowNets) that enables off-policy training but avoids the need to instantiate all the random variables for each parameter update, thus speeding up training considerably. The $\Delta$-AI objective matches the conditional distribution of a variable given its Markov blanket in a tractable learned sampler, which has the structure of a Bayesian network, with the same conditional distribution under the target PGM. As such, the trained sampler recovers marginals and conditional distributions of interest and enables inference of partial subsets of variables. We illustrate $\Delta$-AI's effectiveness for sampling from synthetic PGMs and training latent variable models with sparse factor structure.
In the context of the Cobb-Douglas productivity model we consider the $N \times N$ input-output linkage matrix $W$ for a network of $N$ firms $f_1, f_2, \cdots, f_N$. The associated influence vector $v_w$ of $W$ is defined in terms of the Leontief inverse $L_W$ of $W$ as $v_W = \frac{\alpha}{N} L_W \vec{\mathbf{1}}$ where $L_W = (I - (1-\alpha) W')^{-1}$, $W'$ denotes the transpose of $W$ and $I$ is the identity matrix. Here $\vec{\mathbf{1}}$ is the $N \times 1$ vector whose entries are all one. The influence vector is a metric of the importance for the firms in the production network. Under the realistic assumption that the data to compute the influence vector is incomplete, we prove bounds on the worst-case error for the influence vector that are sharp up to a constant factor. We also consider the situation where the missing data is binomially distributed and contextualize the bound on the influence vector accordingly. We also investigate how far off the influence vector can be when we only have data on nodes and connections that are within distance $k$ of some source node. A comparison of our results is juxtaposed against PageRank analogues. We close with a discussion on a possible extension beyond Cobb-Douglas to the Constant Elasticity of Substitution model, as well as the possibility of considering other probability distributions for missing data.