We give a characterization of those sets of graphs that are both definable in Counting Monadic Second Order Logic (CMS) and context-free, i.e., least solutions of Hyperedge-Replacement (HR)-grammars introduced by Courcelle and Engelfriet. We give the following equivalent characterizations: (a) a set of graphs is recognizable (in the algebra that consists of all graphs and HR-operations) and has bounded tree-width; further, we refine this condition and show equivalence with recognizability in a finite-sort subalgebra of the graph algebra; (b) the set is parsable, i.e., there is an MS-definable transduction from graphs to a set of derivation trees labelled by HR-operations, such that the set of graphs is the image of this set of trees under the evaluation of the HR-operations; (c) the set of graphs is the image of unranked recognizable set of trees under an MS-definable transduction whose inverse is also MS-definable. The main goal of this paper is to present the above characterization, of which several directions are already known, in an accessible and unified way. We rely on a novel connection between two seminal results, a logical characterization of context-free graph languages in terms of tree to graph MS-definable transductions, by Courcelle and Engelfriet~, and a proof that an optimal-width tree decomposition of a graph can be built by an MS-definable transduction, by Bojanczyk and Pilipczuk.
This paper addresses the training of Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (neural ODEs), and in particular explores the interplay between numerical integration techniques, stability regions, step size, and initialization techniques. It is shown how the choice of integration technique implicitly regularizes the learned model, and how the solver's corresponding stability region affects training and prediction performance. From this analysis, a stability-informed parameter initialization technique is introduced. The effectiveness of the initialization method is displayed across several learning benchmarks and industrial applications.
We propose a theory for matrix completion that goes beyond the low-rank structure commonly considered in the literature and applies to general matrices of low description complexity. Specifically, complexity of the sets of matrices encompassed by the theory is measured in terms of Hausdorff and upper Minkowski dimensions. Our goal is the characterization of the number of linear measurements, with an emphasis on rank-$1$ measurements, needed for the existence of an algorithm that yields reconstruction, either perfect, with probability 1, or with arbitrarily small probability of error, depending on the setup. Concretely, we show that matrices taken from a set $\mathcal{U}$ such that $\mathcal{U}-\mathcal{U}$ has Hausdorff dimension $s$ can be recovered from $k>s$ measurements, and random matrices supported on a set $\mathcal{U}$ of Hausdorff dimension $s$ can be recovered with probability 1 from $k>s$ measurements. What is more, we establish the existence of recovery mappings that are robust against additive perturbations or noise in the measurements. Concretely, we show that there are $\beta$-H\"older continuous mappings recovering matrices taken from a set of upper Minkowski dimension $s$ from $k>2s/(1-\beta)$ measurements and, with arbitrarily small probability of error, random matrices supported on a set of upper Minkowski dimension $s$ from $k>s/(1-\beta)$ measurements. The numerous concrete examples we consider include low-rank matrices, sparse matrices, QR decompositions with sparse R-components, and matrices of fractal nature.
We initiate the study of utilizing Quantum Langevin Dynamics (QLD) to solve optimization problems, particularly those non-convex objective functions that present substantial obstacles for traditional gradient descent algorithms. Specifically, we examine the dynamics of a system coupled with an infinite heat bath. This interaction induces both random quantum noise and a deterministic damping effect to the system, which nudge the system towards a steady state that hovers near the global minimum of objective functions. We theoretically prove the convergence of QLD in convex landscapes, demonstrating that the average energy of the system can approach zero in the low temperature limit with an exponential decay rate correlated with the evolution time. Numerically, we first show the energy dissipation capability of QLD by retracing its origins to spontaneous emission. Furthermore, we conduct detailed discussion of the impact of each parameter. Finally, based on the observations when comparing QLD with classical Fokker-Plank-Smoluchowski equation, we propose a time-dependent QLD by making temperature and $\hbar$ time-dependent parameters, which can be theoretically proven to converge better than the time-independent case and also outperforms a series of state-of-the-art quantum and classical optimization algorithms in many non-convex landscapes.
Gaussian Process Networks (GPNs) are a class of directed graphical models which employ Gaussian processes as priors for the conditional expectation of each variable given its parents in the network. The model allows the description of continuous joint distributions in a compact but flexible manner with minimal parametric assumptions on the dependencies between variables. Bayesian structure learning of GPNs requires computing the posterior over graphs of the network and is computationally infeasible even in low dimensions. This work implements Monte Carlo and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to sample from the posterior distribution of network structures. As such, the approach follows the Bayesian paradigm, comparing models via their marginal likelihood and computing the posterior probability of the GPN features. Simulation studies show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms in recovering the graphical structure of the network and provides an accurate approximation of its posterior distribution.
Extreme quantiles are critical for understanding the behavior of data in the tail region of a distribution. It is challenging to estimate extreme quantiles, particularly when dealing with limited data in the tail. In such cases, extreme value theory offers a solution by approximating the tail distribution using the Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD). This allows for the extrapolation beyond the range of observed data, making it a valuable tool for various applications. However, when it comes to conditional cases, where estimation relies on covariates, existing methods may require computationally expensive GPD fitting for different observations. This computational burden becomes even more problematic as the volume of observations increases, sometimes approaching infinity. To address this issue, we propose an interpolation-based algorithm named EMI. EMI facilitates the online prediction of extreme conditional quantiles with finite offline observations. Combining quantile regression and GPD-based extrapolation, EMI formulates as a bilevel programming problem, efficiently solvable using classic optimization methods. Once estimates for offline observations are obtained, EMI employs B-spline interpolation for covariate-dependent variables, enabling estimation for online observations with finite GPD fitting. Simulations and real data analysis demonstrate the effectiveness of EMI across various scenarios.
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are state-of-the-art models for performing prediction tasks on graphs. While existing GNNs have shown great performance on various tasks related to graphs, little attention has been paid to the scenario where out-of-distribution (OOD) nodes exist in the graph during training and inference. Borrowing the concept from CV and NLP, we define OOD nodes as nodes with labels unseen from the training set. Since a lot of networks are automatically constructed by programs, real-world graphs are often noisy and may contain nodes from unknown distributions. In this work, we define the problem of graph learning with out-of-distribution nodes. Specifically, we aim to accomplish two tasks: 1) detect nodes which do not belong to the known distribution and 2) classify the remaining nodes to be one of the known classes. We demonstrate that the connection patterns in graphs are informative for outlier detection, and propose Out-of-Distribution Graph Attention Network (OODGAT), a novel GNN model which explicitly models the interaction between different kinds of nodes and separate inliers from outliers during feature propagation. Extensive experiments show that OODGAT outperforms existing outlier detection methods by a large margin, while being better or comparable in terms of in-distribution classification.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown excellent generalization capabilities that have led to the development of numerous models. These models propose various new architectures, tweaking existing architectures with refined training strategies, increasing context length, using high-quality training data, and increasing training time to outperform baselines. Analyzing new developments is crucial for identifying changes that enhance training stability and improve generalization in LLMs. This survey paper comprehensively analyses the LLMs architectures and their categorization, training strategies, training datasets, and performance evaluations and discusses future research directions. Moreover, the paper also discusses the basic building blocks and concepts behind LLMs, followed by a complete overview of LLMs, including their important features and functions. Finally, the paper summarizes significant findings from LLM research and consolidates essential architectural and training strategies for developing advanced LLMs. Given the continuous advancements in LLMs, we intend to regularly update this paper by incorporating new sections and featuring the latest LLM models.
We consider the problem of explaining the predictions of graph neural networks (GNNs), which otherwise are considered as black boxes. Existing methods invariably focus on explaining the importance of graph nodes or edges but ignore the substructures of graphs, which are more intuitive and human-intelligible. In this work, we propose a novel method, known as SubgraphX, to explain GNNs by identifying important subgraphs. Given a trained GNN model and an input graph, our SubgraphX explains its predictions by efficiently exploring different subgraphs with Monte Carlo tree search. To make the tree search more effective, we propose to use Shapley values as a measure of subgraph importance, which can also capture the interactions among different subgraphs. To expedite computations, we propose efficient approximation schemes to compute Shapley values for graph data. Our work represents the first attempt to explain GNNs via identifying subgraphs explicitly and directly. Experimental results show that our SubgraphX achieves significantly improved explanations, while keeping computations at a reasonable level.
An effective and efficient architecture performance evaluation scheme is essential for the success of Neural Architecture Search (NAS). To save computational cost, most of existing NAS algorithms often train and evaluate intermediate neural architectures on a small proxy dataset with limited training epochs. But it is difficult to expect an accurate performance estimation of an architecture in such a coarse evaluation way. This paper advocates a new neural architecture evaluation scheme, which aims to determine which architecture would perform better instead of accurately predict the absolute architecture performance. Therefore, we propose a \textbf{relativistic} architecture performance predictor in NAS (ReNAS). We encode neural architectures into feature tensors, and further refining the representations with the predictor. The proposed relativistic performance predictor can be deployed in discrete searching methods to search for the desired architectures without additional evaluation. Experimental results on NAS-Bench-101 dataset suggests that, sampling 424 ($0.1\%$ of the entire search space) neural architectures and their corresponding validation performance is already enough for learning an accurate architecture performance predictor. The accuracies of our searched neural architectures on NAS-Bench-101 and NAS-Bench-201 datasets are higher than that of the state-of-the-art methods and show the priority of the proposed method.
Knowledge graph embedding, which aims to represent entities and relations as low dimensional vectors (or matrices, tensors, etc.), has been shown to be a powerful technique for predicting missing links in knowledge graphs. Existing knowledge graph embedding models mainly focus on modeling relation patterns such as symmetry/antisymmetry, inversion, and composition. However, many existing approaches fail to model semantic hierarchies, which are common in real-world applications. To address this challenge, we propose a novel knowledge graph embedding model---namely, Hierarchy-Aware Knowledge Graph Embedding (HAKE)---which maps entities into the polar coordinate system. HAKE is inspired by the fact that concentric circles in the polar coordinate system can naturally reflect the hierarchy. Specifically, the radial coordinate aims to model entities at different levels of the hierarchy, and entities with smaller radii are expected to be at higher levels; the angular coordinate aims to distinguish entities at the same level of the hierarchy, and these entities are expected to have roughly the same radii but different angles. Experiments demonstrate that HAKE can effectively model the semantic hierarchies in knowledge graphs, and significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods on benchmark datasets for the link prediction task.