We provide improved differentially private algorithms for identity testing of high-dimensional distributions. Specifically, for $d$-dimensional Gaussian distributions with known covariance $\Sigma$, we can test whether the distribution comes from $\mathcal{N}(\mu^*, \Sigma)$ for some fixed $\mu^*$ or from some $\mathcal{N}(\mu, \Sigma)$ with total variation distance at least $\alpha$ from $\mathcal{N}(\mu^*, \Sigma)$ with $(\varepsilon, 0)$-differential privacy, using only \[\tilde{O}\left(\frac{d^{1/2}}{\alpha^2} + \frac{d^{1/3}}{\alpha^{4/3} \cdot \varepsilon^{2/3}} + \frac{1}{\alpha \cdot \varepsilon}\right)\] samples if the algorithm is allowed to be computationally inefficient, and only \[\tilde{O}\left(\frac{d^{1/2}}{\alpha^2} + \frac{d^{1/4}}{\alpha \cdot \varepsilon}\right)\] samples for a computationally efficient algorithm. We also provide a matching lower bound showing that our computationally inefficient algorithm has optimal sample complexity. We also extend our algorithms to various related problems, including mean testing of Gaussians with bounded but unknown covariance, uniformity testing of product distributions over $\{-1, 1\}^d$, and tolerant testing. Our results improve over the previous best work of Canonne et al.~\cite{CanonneKMUZ20} for both computationally efficient and inefficient algorithms, and even our computationally efficient algorithm matches the optimal \emph{non-private} sample complexity of $O\left(\frac{\sqrt{d}}{\alpha^2}\right)$ in many standard parameter settings. In addition, our results show that, surprisingly, private identity testing of $d$-dimensional Gaussians can be done with fewer samples than private identity testing of discrete distributions over a domain of size $d$ \cite{AcharyaSZ18}, which refutes a conjectured lower bound of~\cite{CanonneKMUZ20}.
Leave-one-out cross-validation (LOO-CV) is a popular method for estimating out-of-sample predictive accuracy. However, computing LOO-CV criteria can be computationally expensive due to the need to fit the model multiple times. In the Bayesian context, importance sampling provides a possible solution but classical approaches can easily produce estimators whose variance is infinite, making them potentially unreliable. Here we propose and analyze a novel mixture estimator to compute Bayesian LOO-CV criteria. Our method retains the simplicity and computational convenience of classical approaches, while guaranteeing finite variance of the resulting estimators. Both theoretical and numerical results are provided to illustrate the improved robustness and efficiency. The computational benefits are particularly significant in high-dimensional problems, allowing to perform Bayesian LOO-CV for a broader range of models. The proposed methodology is easily implementable in standard probabilistic programming software and has a computational cost roughly equivalent to fitting the original model once.
This paper studies the impact of bootstrap procedure on the eigenvalue distributions of the sample covariance matrix under the high-dimensional factor structure. We provide asymptotic distributions for the top eigenvalues of bootstrapped sample covariance matrix under mild conditions. After bootstrap, the spiked eigenvalues which are driven by common factors will converge weakly to Gaussian limits via proper scaling and centralization. However, the largest non-spiked eigenvalue is mainly determined by order statistics of bootstrap resampling weights, and follows extreme value distribution. Based on the disparate behavior of the spiked and non-spiked eigenvalues, we propose innovative methods to test the number of common factors. According to the simulations and a real data example, the proposed methods are the only ones performing reliably and convincingly under the existence of both weak factors and cross-sectionally correlated errors. Our technical details contribute to random matrix theory on spiked covariance model with convexly decaying density and unbounded support, or with general elliptical distributions.
Mixtures of experts (MoE) models are a popular framework for modeling heterogeneity in data, for both regression and classification problems in statistics and machine learning, due to their flexibility and the abundance of available statistical estimation and model choice tools. Such flexibility comes from allowing the mixture weights (or gating functions) in the MoE model to depend on the explanatory variables, along with the experts (or component densities). This permits the modeling of data arising from more complex data generating processes when compared to the classical finite mixtures and finite mixtures of regression models, whose mixing parameters are independent of the covariates. The use of MoE models in a high-dimensional setting, when the number of explanatory variables can be much larger than the sample size, is challenging from a computational point of view, and in particular from a theoretical point of view, where the literature is still lacking results for dealing with the curse of dimensionality, for both the statistical estimation and feature selection problems. We consider the finite MoE model with soft-max gating functions and Gaussian experts for high-dimensional regression on heterogeneous data, and its $l_1$-regularized estimation via the Lasso. We focus on the Lasso estimation properties rather than its feature selection properties. We provide a lower bound on the regularization parameter of the Lasso function that ensures an $l_1$-oracle inequality satisfied by the Lasso estimator according to the Kullback--Leibler loss.
Parameter learning for high-dimensional, partially observed, and nonlinear stochastic processes is a methodological challenge. Spatiotemporal disease transmission systems provide examples of such processes giving rise to open inference problems. We propose the iterated block particle filter (IBPF) algorithm for learning high-dimensional parameters over graphical state space models with general state spaces, measures, transition densities and graph structure. Theoretical performance guarantees are obtained on beating the curse of dimensionality (COD), algorithm convergence, and likelihood maximization. Experiments on a highly nonlinear and non-Gaussian spatiotemporal model for measles transmission reveal that the iterated ensemble Kalman filter algorithm (Li et al. (2020)) is ineffective and the iterated filtering algorithm (Ionides et al. (2015)) suffers from the COD, while our IBPF algorithm beats COD consistently across various experiments with different metrics.
We construct quantum algorithms to compute the solution and/or physical observables of nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and nonlinear Hamilton-Jacobi equations (HJE) via linear representations or exact mappings between nonlinear ODEs/HJE and linear partial differential equations (the Liouville equation and the Koopman-von Neumann equation). The connection between the linear representations and the original nonlinear system is established through the Dirac delta function or the level set mechanism. We compare the quantum linear systems algorithms based methods and the quantum simulation methods arising from different numerical approximations, including the finite difference discretisations and the Fourier spectral discretisations for the two different linear representations, with the result showing that the quantum simulation methods usually give the best performance in time complexity. We also propose the Schr\"odinger framework to solve the Liouville equation for the HJE, since it can be recast as the semiclassical limit of the Wigner transform of the Schr\"odinger equation. Comparsion between the Schr\"odinger and the Liouville framework will also be made.
The paper studies non-stationary high-dimensional vector autoregressions of order $k$, VAR($k$). Additional deterministic terms such as trend or seasonality are allowed. The number of time periods, $T$, and number of coordinates, $N$, are assumed to be large and of the same order. Under such regime the first-order asymptotics of the Johansen likelihood ratio (LR), Pillai-Barlett, and Hotelling-Lawley tests for cointegration is derived: Test statistics converge to non-random integrals. For more refined analysis, the paper proposes and analyzes a modification of the Johansen test. The new test for the absence of cointegration converges to the partial sum of the Airy$_1$ point process. Supporting Monte Carlo simulations indicate that the same behavior persists universally in many situations beyond our theorems. The paper presents an empirical implementation of the approach to the analysis of stocks in S$\&$P$100$ and of cryptocurrencies. The latter example has strong presence of multiple cointegrating relationships, while the former is consistent with the null of no cointegration.
As a special infinite-order vector autoregressive (VAR) model, the vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) model can capture much richer temporal patterns than the widely used finite-order VAR model. However, its practicality has long been hindered by its non-identifiability, computational intractability, and relative difficulty of interpretation. This paper introduces a novel infinite-order VAR model which, with only a little sacrifice of generality, inherits the essential temporal patterns of the VARMA model but avoids all of the above drawbacks. As another attractive feature, the temporal and cross-sectional dependence structures of this model can be interpreted separately, since they are characterized by different sets of parameters. For high-dimensional time series, this separation motivates us to impose sparsity on the parameters determining the cross-sectional dependence. As a result, greater statistical efficiency and interpretability can be achieved, while no loss of temporal information is incurred by the imposed sparsity. We introduce an $\ell_1$-regularized estimator for the proposed model and derive the corresponding nonasymptotic error bounds. An efficient block coordinate descent algorithm and a consistent model order selection method are developed. The merit of the proposed approach is supported by simulation studies and a real-world macroeconomic data analysis.
This work considers Gaussian process interpolation with a periodized version of the Mat{\'e}rn covariance function (Stein, 1999, Section 6.7) with Fourier coefficients $\phi$($\alpha$^2 + j^2)^(--$\nu$--1/2). Convergence rates are studied for the joint maximum likelihood estimation of $\nu$ and $\phi$ when the data is sampled according to the model. The mean integrated squared error is also analyzed with fixed and estimated parameters, showing that maximum likelihood estimation yields asymptotically the same error as if the ground truth was known. Finally, the case where the observed function is a ''deterministic'' element of a continuous Sobolev space is also considered, suggesting that bounding assumptions on some parameters can lead to different estimates.
Propose-Test-Release (PTR) is a differential privacy framework that works with local sensitivity of functions, instead of their global sensitivity. This framework is typically used for releasing robust statistics such as median or trimmed mean in a differentially private manner. While PTR is a common framework introduced over a decade ago, using it in applications such as robust SGD where we need many adaptive robust queries is challenging. This is mainly due to the lack of Renyi Differential Privacy (RDP) analysis, an essential ingredient underlying the moments accountant approach for differentially private deep learning. In this work, we generalize the standard PTR and derive the first RDP bound for it when the target function has bounded global sensitivity. We show that our RDP bound for PTR yields tighter DP guarantees than the directly analyzed $(\eps, \delta)$-DP. We also derive the algorithm-specific privacy amplification bound of PTR under subsampling. We show that our bound is much tighter than the general upper bound and close to the lower bound. Our RDP bounds enable tighter privacy loss calculation for the composition of many adaptive runs of PTR. As an application of our analysis, we show that PTR and our theoretical results can be used to design differentially private variants for byzantine robust training algorithms that use robust statistics for gradients aggregation. We conduct experiments on the settings of label, feature, and gradient corruption across different datasets and architectures. We show that PTR-based private and robust training algorithm significantly improves the utility compared with the baseline.
Point process models are of great importance in real world applications. In certain critical applications, estimation of point process models involves large amounts of sensitive personal data from users. Privacy concerns naturally arise which have not been addressed in the existing literature. To bridge this glaring gap, we propose the first general differentially private estimation procedure for point process models. Specifically, we take the Hawkes process as an example, and introduce a rigorous definition of differential privacy for event stream data based on a discretized representation of the Hawkes process. We then propose two differentially private optimization algorithms, which can efficiently estimate Hawkes process models with the desired privacy and utility guarantees under two different settings. Experiments are provided to back up our theoretical analysis.