We apply the Charge Simulation Method (CSM) in order to compute the logarithmic capacity of compact sets consisting of (infinitely) many "small" components. This application allows to use just a single charge point for each component. The resulting method therefore is significantly more efficient than methods based on discretizations of the boundaries (for example, our own method presented in [Liesen, S\`ete, Nasser, 2017]), while maintaining a very high level of accuracy. We study properties of the linear algebraic systems that arise in the CSM, and show how these systems can be solved efficiently using preconditioned iterative methods, where the matrix-vector products are computed using the Fast Multipole Method. We illustrate the use of the method on generalized Cantor sets and the Cantor dust.
Isogeometric analysis with the boundary element method (IGABEM) has recently gained interest. In this paper, the approximability of IGABEM on 3D acoustic scattering problems will be investigated and a new improved BeTSSi submarine will be presented as a benchmark example. Both Galerkin and collocation are considered in combination with several boundary integral equations (BIE). In addition to the conventional BIE, regularized versions of this BIE will be considered. Moreover, the hyper-singular BIE and the Burton--Miller formulation are also considered. A new adaptive integration routine is presented, and the numerical examples show the importance of the integration procedure in the boundary element method. The numerical examples also include comparison between standard BEM and IGABEM, which again verifies the higher accuracy obtained from the increased inter-element continuity of the spline basis functions. One of the main objectives in this paper is benchmarking acoustic scattering problems, and the method of manufactured solution will be used frequently in this regard.
The perfectly matched layer (PML) formulation is a prominent way of handling radiation problems in unbounded domain and has gained interest due to its simple implementation in finite element codes. However, its simplicity can be advanced further using the isogeometric framework. This work presents a spline based PML formulation which avoids additional coordinate transformation as the formulation is based on the same space in which the numerical solution is sought. The procedure can be automated for any convex artificial boundary. This removes restrictions on the domain construction using PML and can therefore reduce computational cost and improve mesh quality. The usage of spline basis functions with higher continuity also improves the accuracy of the numerical solution.
Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a general-purpose optimization-based sampling algorithm that has recently exploded in popularity, but is limited by two issues: it is known to produce biased samples, and it can be slow to converge on complicated distributions. A recently proposed stochastic variant of SVGD (sSVGD) addresses the first issue, producing unbiased samples by incorporating a special noise into the SVGD dynamics such that asymptotic convergence is guaranteed. Meanwhile, Stein variational Newton (SVN), a Newton-like extension of SVGD, dramatically accelerates the convergence of SVGD by incorporating Hessian information into the dynamics, but also produces biased samples. In this paper we derive, and provide a practical implementation of, a stochastic variant of SVN (sSVN) which is both asymptotically correct and converges rapidly. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm on a difficult class of test problems -- the Hybrid Rosenbrock density -- and show that sSVN converges using three orders of magnitude fewer gradient evaluations of the log likelihood than its stochastic SVGD counterpart. Our results show that sSVN is a promising approach to accelerating high-precision Bayesian inference tasks with modest-dimension, $d\sim\mathcal{O}(10)$.
We extend the Deep Galerkin Method (DGM) introduced in Sirignano and Spiliopoulos (2018)} to solve a number of partial differential equations (PDEs) that arise in the context of optimal stochastic control and mean field games. First, we consider PDEs where the function is constrained to be positive and integrate to unity, as is the case with Fokker-Planck equations. Our approach involves reparameterizing the solution as the exponential of a neural network appropriately normalized to ensure both requirements are satisfied. This then gives rise to nonlinear a partial integro-differential equation (PIDE) where the integral appearing in the equation is handled by a novel application of importance sampling. Secondly, we tackle a number of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations that appear in stochastic optimal control problems. The key contribution is that these equations are approached in their unsimplified primal form which includes an optimization problem as part of the equation. We extend the DGM algorithm to solve for the value function and the optimal control \simultaneously by characterizing both as deep neural networks. Training the networks is performed by taking alternating stochastic gradient descent steps for the two functions, a technique inspired by the policy improvement algorithms (PIA).
In this article we suggest two discretization methods based on isogeometric analysis (IGA) for planar linear elasticity. On the one hand, we apply the well-known ansatz of weakly imposed symmetry for the stress tensor and obtain a well-posed mixed formulation. Such modified mixed problems have been already studied by different authors. But we concentrate on the exploitation of IGA results to handle also curved boundary geometries. On the other hand, we consider the more complicated situation of strong symmetry, i.e. we discretize the mixed weak form determined by the so-called Hellinger-Reissner variational principle. We show the existence of suitable approximate fields leading to an inf-sup stable saddle-point problem. For both discretization approaches we prove convergence statements and in case of weak symmetry we illustrate the approximation behavior by means of several numerical experiments.
Emulators that can bypass computationally expensive scientific calculations with high accuracy and speed can enable new studies of fundamental science as well as more potential applications. In this work we discuss solving a system of constraint equations efficiently using a self-learning emulator. A self-learning emulator is an active learning protocol that can be used with any emulator that faithfully reproduces the exact solution at selected training points. The key ingredient is a fast estimate of the emulator error that becomes progressively more accurate as the emulator is improved, and the accuracy of the error estimate can be corrected using machine learning. We illustrate with three examples. The first uses cubic spline interpolation to find the solution of a transcendental equation with variable coefficients. The second example compares a spline emulator and a reduced basis method emulator to find solutions of a parameterized differential equation. The third example uses eigenvector continuation to find the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of a large Hamiltonian matrix that depends on several control parameters.
A new numerical method for mean field games (MFGs) is proposed. The target MFGs are derived from optimal control problems for multidimensional systems with advection terms, which are difficult to solve numerically with existing methods. For such MFGs, linearization using the Cole-Hopf transformation and iterative computation using fictitious play are introduced. This leads to an implementation-friendly algorithm that iteratively solves explicit schemes. The convergence properties of the proposed scheme are mathematically proved by tracking the error of the variable through iterations. Numerical calculations show that the proposed method works stably for both one- and two-dimensional control problems.
There are many important high dimensional function classes that have fast agnostic learning algorithms when strong assumptions on the distribution of examples can be made, such as Gaussianity or uniformity over the domain. But how can one be sufficiently confident that the data indeed satisfies the distributional assumption, so that one can trust in the output quality of the agnostic learning algorithm? We propose a model by which to systematically study the design of tester-learner pairs $(\mathcal{A},\mathcal{T})$, such that if the distribution on examples in the data passes the tester $\mathcal{T}$ then one can safely trust the output of the agnostic learner $\mathcal{A}$ on the data. To demonstrate the power of the model, we apply it to the classical problem of agnostically learning halfspaces under the standard Gaussian distribution and present a tester-learner pair with a combined run-time of $n^{\tilde{O}(1/\epsilon^4)}$. This qualitatively matches that of the best known ordinary agnostic learning algorithms for this task. In contrast, finite sample Gaussian distribution testers do not exist for the $L_1$ and EMD distance measures. A key step in the analysis is a novel characterization of concentration and anti-concentration properties of a distribution whose low-degree moments approximately match those of a Gaussian. We also use tools from polynomial approximation theory. In contrast, we show strong lower bounds on the combined run-times of tester-learner pairs for the problems of agnostically learning convex sets under the Gaussian distribution and for monotone Boolean functions under the uniform distribution over $\{0,1\}^n$. Through these lower bounds we exhibit natural problems where there is a dramatic gap between standard agnostic learning run-time and the run-time of the best tester-learner pair.
Behaviors of the synthetic characters in current military simulations are limited since they are generally generated by rule-based and reactive computational models with minimal intelligence. Such computational models cannot adapt to reflect the experience of the characters, resulting in brittle intelligence for even the most effective behavior models devised via costly and labor-intensive processes. Observation-based behavior model adaptation that leverages machine learning and the experience of synthetic entities in combination with appropriate prior knowledge can address the issues in the existing computational behavior models to create a better training experience in military training simulations. In this paper, we introduce a framework that aims to create autonomous synthetic characters that can perform coherent sequences of believable behavior while being aware of human trainees and their needs within a training simulation. This framework brings together three mutually complementary components. The first component is a Unity-based simulation environment - Rapid Integration and Development Environment (RIDE) - supporting One World Terrain (OWT) models and capable of running and supporting machine learning experiments. The second is Shiva, a novel multi-agent reinforcement and imitation learning framework that can interface with a variety of simulation environments, and that can additionally utilize a variety of learning algorithms. The final component is the Sigma Cognitive Architecture that will augment the behavior models with symbolic and probabilistic reasoning capabilities. We have successfully created proof-of-concept behavior models leveraging this framework on realistic terrain as an essential step towards bringing machine learning into military simulations.
Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have recently achieved great success in many visual recognition tasks. However, existing deep neural network models are computationally expensive and memory intensive, hindering their deployment in devices with low memory resources or in applications with strict latency requirements. Therefore, a natural thought is to perform model compression and acceleration in deep networks without significantly decreasing the model performance. During the past few years, tremendous progress has been made in this area. In this paper, we survey the recent advanced techniques for compacting and accelerating CNNs model developed. These techniques are roughly categorized into four schemes: parameter pruning and sharing, low-rank factorization, transferred/compact convolutional filters, and knowledge distillation. Methods of parameter pruning and sharing will be described at the beginning, after that the other techniques will be introduced. For each scheme, we provide insightful analysis regarding the performance, related applications, advantages, and drawbacks etc. Then we will go through a few very recent additional successful methods, for example, dynamic capacity networks and stochastic depths networks. After that, we survey the evaluation matrix, the main datasets used for evaluating the model performance and recent benchmarking efforts. Finally, we conclude this paper, discuss remaining challenges and possible directions on this topic.