The paper presents error estimates within a unified abstract framework for the analysis of FEM for boundary value problems with linear diffusion-convection-reaction equations and boundary conditions of mixed type. Since neither conformity nor consistency properties are assumed, the method is called completely discrete. We investigate two different stabilized discretizations and obtain stability and optimal error estimates in energy-type norms and, by generalizing the Aubin-Nitsche technique, optimal error estimates in weaker norms.
A stochastic-gradient-based interior-point algorithm for minimizing a continuously differentiable objective function (that may be nonconvex) subject to bound constraints is presented, analyzed, and demonstrated through experimental results. The algorithm is unique from other interior-point methods for solving smooth (nonconvex) optimization problems since the search directions are computed using stochastic gradient estimates. It is also unique in its use of inner neighborhoods of the feasible region -- defined by a positive and vanishing neighborhood-parameter sequence -- in which the iterates are forced to remain. It is shown that with a careful balance between the barrier, step-size, and neighborhood sequences, the proposed algorithm satisfies convergence guarantees in both deterministic and stochastic settings. The results of numerical experiments show that in both settings the algorithm can outperform a projected-(stochastic)-gradient method.
In this paper we obtain complexity bounds for computational problems on algebraic power series over several commuting variables. The power series are specified by systems of polynomial equations: a formalism closely related to weighted context-free grammars. We focus on three problems -- decide whether a given algebraic series is identically zero, determine whether all but finitely many coefficients are zero, and compute the coefficient of a specific monomial. We relate these questions to well-known computational problems on arithmetic circuits and thereby show that all three problems lie in the counting hierarchy. Our main result improves the best known complexity bound on deciding zeroness of an algebraic series. This problem is known to lie in PSPACE by reduction to the decision problem for the existential fragment of the theory of real closed fields. Here we show that the problem lies in the counting hierarchy by reduction to the problem of computing the degree of a polynomial given by an arithmetic circuit. As a corollary we obtain new complexity bounds on multiplicity equivalence of context-free grammars restricted to a bounded language, language inclusion of a nondeterministic finite automaton in an unambiguous context-free grammar, and language inclusion of a non-deterministic context-free grammar in an unambiguous finite automaton.
Discrete Differential Equations (DDEs) are functional equations that relate polynomially a power series $F(t,u)$ in $t$ with polynomial coefficients in a "catalytic" variable $u$ and the specializations, say at $u=1$, of $F(t,u)$ and of some of its partial derivatives in $u$. DDEs occur frequently in combinatorics, especially in map enumeration. If a DDE is of fixed-point type then its solution $F(t,u)$ is unique, and a general result by Popescu (1986) implies that $F(t,u)$ is an algebraic power series. Constructive proofs of algebraicity for solutions of fixed-point type DDEs were proposed by Bousquet-M\'elou and Jehanne (2006). Bostan et. al (2022) initiated a systematic algorithmic study of such DDEs of order 1. We generalize this study to DDEs of arbitrary order. First, we propose nontrivial extensions of algorithms based on polynomial elimination and on the guess-and-prove paradigm. Second, we design two brand-new algorithms that exploit the special structure of the underlying polynomial systems. Last, but not least, we report on implementations that are able to solve highly challenging DDEs with a combinatorial origin.
Choreographic programming is a paradigm where a concurrent or distributed system is developed in a top-down fashion. Programs, called choreographies, detail the desired interactions between processes, and can be compiled to distributed implementations based on message passing. Choreographic languages usually guarantee deadlock-freedom and provide an operational correspondence between choreographies and their compiled implementations, but until now little work has been done on verifying other properties. This paper presents a Hoare-style logic for reasoning about the behaviour of choreographies, and illustrate its usage in representative examples. We show that this logic is sound and complete, and discuss decidability of its judgements. Using existing results from choreographic programming, we show that any functional correctness property proven for a choreography also holds for its compiled implementation.
This paper investigates the mean square error (MSE)-optimal conditional mean estimator (CME) in one-bit quantized systems in the context of channel estimation with jointly Gaussian inputs. We analyze the relationship of the generally nonlinear CME to the linear Bussgang estimator, a well-known method based on Bussgang's theorem. We highlight a novel observation that the Bussgang estimator is equal to the CME for different special cases, including the case of univariate Gaussian inputs and the case of multiple pilot signals in the absence of additive noise prior to the quantization. For the general cases we conduct numerical simulations to quantify the gap between the Bussgang estimator and the CME. This gap increases for higher dimensions and longer pilot sequences. We propose an optimal pilot sequence, motivated by insights from the CME, and derive a novel closed-form expression of the MSE for that case. Afterwards, we find a closed-form limit of the MSE in the asymptotically large number of pilots regime that also holds for the Bussgang estimator. Lastly, we present numerical experiments for various system parameters and for different performance metrics which illuminate the behavior of the optimal channel estimator in the quantized regime. In this context, the well-known stochastic resonance effect that appears in quantized systems can be quantified.
In this article, we study the semi discrete and fully discrete formulations for a Kirchhoff type quasilinear integro-differential equation involving time-fractional derivative of order $\alpha \in (0,1) $. For the semi discrete formulation of the equation under consideration, we discretize the space domain using a conforming FEM and keep the time variable continuous. We modify the standard Ritz-Volterra projection operator to carry out error analysis for the semi discrete formulation of the considered equation. In general, solutions of the time-fractional partial differential equations (PDEs) have a weak singularity near time $t=0$. Taking this singularity into account, we develop a new linearized fully discrete numerical scheme for the considered equation on a graded mesh in time. We derive a priori bounds on the solution of this fully discrete numerical scheme using a new weighted $H^{1}(\Omega)$ norm. We prove that the developed numerical scheme has an accuracy rate of $O(P^{-1}+N^{-(2-\alpha)})$ in $L^{\infty}(0,T;L^{2}(\Omega))$ as well as in $L^{\infty}(0,T;H^{1}_{0}(\Omega))$, where $P$ and $N$ are degrees of freedom in the space and time directions respectively. The robustness and efficiency of the proposed numerical scheme are demonstrated by some numerical examples.
Sparse model identification enables nonlinear dynamical system discovery from data. However, the control of false discoveries for sparse model identification is challenging, especially in the low-data and high-noise limit. In this paper, we perform a theoretical study on ensemble sparse model discovery, which shows empirical success in terms of accuracy and robustness to noise. In particular, we analyse the bootstrapping-based sequential thresholding least-squares estimator. We show that this bootstrapping-based ensembling technique can perform a provably correct variable selection procedure with an exponential convergence rate of the error rate. In addition, we show that the ensemble sparse model discovery method can perform computationally efficient uncertainty estimation, compared to expensive Bayesian uncertainty quantification methods via MCMC. We demonstrate the convergence properties and connection to uncertainty quantification in various numerical studies on synthetic sparse linear regression and sparse model discovery. The experiments on sparse linear regression support that the bootstrapping-based sequential thresholding least-squares method has better performance for sparse variable selection compared to LASSO, thresholding least-squares, and bootstrapping-based LASSO. In the sparse model discovery experiment, we show that the bootstrapping-based sequential thresholding least-squares method can provide valid uncertainty quantification, converging to a delta measure centered around the true value with increased sample sizes. Finally, we highlight the improved robustness to hyperparameter selection under shifting noise and sparsity levels of the bootstrapping-based sequential thresholding least-squares method compared to other sparse regression methods.
Implementing accurate Distribution System State Estimation (DSSE) faces several challenges, among which the lack of observability and the high density of the distribution system. While data-driven alternatives based on Machine Learning models could be a choice, they suffer in DSSE because of the lack of labeled data. In fact, measurements in the distribution system are often noisy, corrupted, and unavailable. To address these issues, we propose the Deep Statistical Solver for Distribution System State Estimation (DSS$^2$), a deep learning model based on graph neural networks (GNNs) that accounts for the network structure of the distribution system and for the physical governing power flow equations. DSS$^2$ leverages hypergraphs to represent the heterogeneous components of the distribution systems and updates their latent representations via a node-centric message-passing scheme. A weakly supervised learning approach is put forth to train the DSS$^2$ in a learning-to-optimize fashion w.r.t. the Weighted Least Squares loss with noisy measurements and pseudomeasurements. By enforcing the GNN output into the power flow equations and the latter into the loss function, we force the DSS$^2$ to respect the physics of the distribution system. This strategy enables learning from noisy measurements, acting as an implicit denoiser, and alleviating the need for ideal labeled data. Extensive experiments with case studies on the IEEE 14-bus, 70-bus, and 179-bus networks showed the DSS$^2$ outperforms by a margin the conventional Weighted Least Squares algorithm in accuracy, convergence, and computational time, while being more robust to noisy, erroneous, and missing measurements. The DSS$^2$ achieves a competing, yet lower, performance compared with the supervised models that rely on the unrealistic assumption of having all the true labels.
In this paper we analyze a homogeneous parabolic problem with initial data in the space of regular Borel measures. The problem is discretized in time with a discontinuous Galerkin scheme of arbitrary degree and in space with continuous finite elements of orders one or two. We show parabolic smoothing results for the continuous, semidiscrete and fully discrete problems. Our main results are interior $L^\infty$ error estimates for the evaluation at the endtime, in cases where the initial data is supported in a subdomain. In order to obtain these, we additionally show interior $L^\infty$ error estimates for $L^2$ initial data and quadratic finite elements, which extends the corresponding result previously established by the authors for linear finite elements.
In this note, we propose polynomial-time algorithms solving the Monge and Kantorovich formulations of the $\infty$-optimal transport problem in the discrete and finite setting. It is the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that efficient numerical methods for these problems have been proposed.