We present an extensible, mathematically-structured algebraic simplification library design. We structure the library using universal algebraic concepts: a free algebra -- fral -- and a free extension -- frex -- of an algebra by a set of variables. The library's dependently-typed API guarantees simplification modules, even user-defined ones, are terminating, sound, and complete with respect to a well-specified class of equations. Completeness offers intangible benefits in practice -- our main contribution is the novel design. Cleanly separating between the interface and implementation of simplification modules provides two new modularity axes. First, simplification modules share thousands of lines of infrastructure code dealing with term-representation, pretty-printing, certification, and macros/reflection. Second, new simplification modules can reuse existing ones. We demonstrate this design by developing simplification modules for monoid varieties: ordinary, commutative, and involutive. We implemented this design in the new Idris2 dependently-typed programming language, and in Agda.
The forecasting and computation of the stability of chaotic systems from partial observations are tasks for which traditional equation-based methods may not be suitable. In this computational paper, we propose data-driven methods to (i) infer the dynamics of unobserved (hidden) chaotic variables (full-state reconstruction); (ii) time forecast the evolution of the full state; and (iii) infer the stability properties of the full state. The tasks are performed with long short-term memory (LSTM) networks, which are trained with observations (data) limited to only part of the state: (i) the low-to-high resolution LSTM (LH-LSTM), which takes partial observations as training input, and requires access to the full system state when computing the loss; and (ii) the physics-informed LSTM (PI-LSTM), which is designed to combine partial observations with the integral formulation of the dynamical system's evolution equations. First, we derive the Jacobian of the LSTMs. Second, we analyse a chaotic partial differential equation, the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky (KS), and the Lorenz-96 system. We show that the proposed networks can forecast the hidden variables, both time-accurately and statistically. The Lyapunov exponents and covariant Lyapunov vectors, which characterize the stability of the chaotic attractors, are correctly inferred from partial observations. Third, the PI-LSTM outperforms the LH-LSTM by successfully reconstructing the hidden chaotic dynamics when the input dimension is smaller or similar to the Kaplan-Yorke dimension of the attractor. This work opens new opportunities for reconstructing the full state, inferring hidden variables, and computing the stability of chaotic systems from partial data.
Sparse regression has emerged as a popular technique for learning dynamical systems from temporal data, beginning with the SINDy (Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics) framework proposed by arXiv:1509.03580. Quantifying the uncertainty inherent in differential equations learned from data remains an open problem, thus we propose leveraging recent advances in statistical inference for sparse regression to address this issue. Focusing on systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs), SINDy assumes that each equation is a parsimonious linear combination of a few candidate functions, such as polynomials, and uses methods such as sequentially-thresholded least squares or the Lasso to identify a small subset of these functions that govern the system's dynamics. We instead employ bias-corrected versions of the Lasso and ridge regression estimators, as well as an empirical Bayes variable selection technique known as SEMMS, to estimate each ODE as a linear combination of terms that are statistically significant. We demonstrate through simulations that this approach allows us to recover the functional terms that correctly describe the dynamics more often than existing methods that do not account for uncertainty.
A primary challenge of physics-informed machine learning (PIML) is its generalization beyond the training domain, especially when dealing with complex physical problems represented by partial differential equations (PDEs). This paper aims to enhance the generalization capabilities of PIML, facilitating practical, real-world applications where accurate predictions in unexplored regions are crucial. We leverage the inherent causality and temporal sequential characteristics of PDE solutions to fuse PIML models with recurrent neural architectures based on systems of ordinary differential equations, referred to as neural oscillators. Through effectively capturing long-time dependencies and mitigating the exploding and vanishing gradient problem, neural oscillators foster improved generalization in PIML tasks. Extensive experimentation involving time-dependent nonlinear PDEs and biharmonic beam equations demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed approach. Incorporating neural oscillators outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods on benchmark problems across various metrics. Consequently, the proposed method improves the generalization capabilities of PIML, providing accurate solutions for extrapolation and prediction beyond the training data.
The goal of inductive logic programming is to induce a logic program (a set of logical rules) that generalises training examples. Inducing programs with many rules and literals is a major challenge. To tackle this challenge, we introduce an approach where we learn small non-separable programs and combine them. We implement our approach in a constraint-driven ILP system. Our approach can learn optimal and recursive programs and perform predicate invention. Our experiments on multiple domains, including game playing and program synthesis, show that our approach can drastically outperform existing approaches in terms of predictive accuracies and learning times, sometimes reducing learning times from over an hour to a few seconds.
This paper studies model checking for general parametric regression models having no dimension reduction structures on the predictor vector. Using any U-statistic type test as an initial test, this paper combines the sample-splitting and conditional studentization approaches to construct a COnditionally Studentized Test (COST). Whether the initial test is global or local smoothing-based; the dimension of the predictor vector and the number of parameters are fixed or diverge at a certain rate, the proposed test always has a normal weak limit under the null hypothesis. When the dimension of the predictor vector diverges to infinity at faster rate than the number of parameters, even the sample size, these results are still available under some conditions. This shows the potential of our method to handle higher dimensional problems. Further, the test can detect the local alternatives distinct from the null hypothesis at the fastest possible rate of convergence in hypothesis testing. We also discuss the optimal sample splitting in power performance. The numerical studies offer information on its merits and limitations in finite sample cases including the setting where the dimension of predictor vector equals the sample size. As a generic methodology, it could be applied to other testing problems.
Interpreting a seemingly-simple function word like "or", "behind", or "more" can require logical, numerical, and relational reasoning. How are such words learned by children? Prior acquisition theories have often relied on positing a foundation of innate knowledge. Yet recent neural-network based visual question answering models apparently can learn to use function words as part of answering questions about complex visual scenes. In this paper, we study what these models learn about function words, in the hope of better understanding how the meanings of these words can be learnt by both models and children. We show that recurrent models trained on visually grounded language learn gradient semantics for function words requiring spacial and numerical reasoning. Furthermore, we find that these models can learn the meanings of logical connectives "and" and "or" without any prior knowledge of logical reasoning, as well as early evidence that they can develop the ability to reason about alternative expressions when interpreting language. Finally, we show that word learning difficulty is dependent on frequency in models' input. Our findings offer evidence that it is possible to learn the meanings of function words in visually grounded context by using non-symbolic general statistical learning algorithms, without any prior knowledge of linguistic meaning.
We present SCQPTH: a differentiable first-order splitting method for convex quadratic programs. The SCQPTH framework is based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) and the software implementation is motivated by the state-of-the art solver OSQP: an operating splitting solver for convex quadratic programs (QPs). The SCQPTH software is made available as an open-source python package and contains many similar features including efficient reuse of matrix factorizations, infeasibility detection, automatic scaling and parameter selection. The forward pass algorithm performs operator splitting in the dimension of the original problem space and is therefore suitable for large scale QPs with $100-1000$ decision variables and thousands of constraints. Backpropagation is performed by implicit differentiation of the ADMM fixed-point mapping. Experiments demonstrate that for large scale QPs, SCQPTH can provide a $1\times - 10\times$ improvement in computational efficiency in comparison to existing differentiable QP solvers.
Most state-of-the-art machine learning techniques revolve around the optimisation of loss functions. Defining appropriate loss functions is therefore critical to successfully solving problems in this field. We present a survey of the most commonly used loss functions for a wide range of different applications, divided into classification, regression, ranking, sample generation and energy based modelling. Overall, we introduce 33 different loss functions and we organise them into an intuitive taxonomy. Each loss function is given a theoretical backing and we describe where it is best used. This survey aims to provide a reference of the most essential loss functions for both beginner and advanced machine learning practitioners.
We derive information-theoretic generalization bounds for supervised learning algorithms based on the information contained in predictions rather than in the output of the training algorithm. These bounds improve over the existing information-theoretic bounds, are applicable to a wider range of algorithms, and solve two key challenges: (a) they give meaningful results for deterministic algorithms and (b) they are significantly easier to estimate. We show experimentally that the proposed bounds closely follow the generalization gap in practical scenarios for deep learning.
The remarkable practical success of deep learning has revealed some major surprises from a theoretical perspective. In particular, simple gradient methods easily find near-optimal solutions to non-convex optimization problems, and despite giving a near-perfect fit to training data without any explicit effort to control model complexity, these methods exhibit excellent predictive accuracy. We conjecture that specific principles underlie these phenomena: that overparametrization allows gradient methods to find interpolating solutions, that these methods implicitly impose regularization, and that overparametrization leads to benign overfitting. We survey recent theoretical progress that provides examples illustrating these principles in simpler settings. We first review classical uniform convergence results and why they fall short of explaining aspects of the behavior of deep learning methods. We give examples of implicit regularization in simple settings, where gradient methods lead to minimal norm functions that perfectly fit the training data. Then we review prediction methods that exhibit benign overfitting, focusing on regression problems with quadratic loss. For these methods, we can decompose the prediction rule into a simple component that is useful for prediction and a spiky component that is useful for overfitting but, in a favorable setting, does not harm prediction accuracy. We focus specifically on the linear regime for neural networks, where the network can be approximated by a linear model. In this regime, we demonstrate the success of gradient flow, and we consider benign overfitting with two-layer networks, giving an exact asymptotic analysis that precisely demonstrates the impact of overparametrization. We conclude by highlighting the key challenges that arise in extending these insights to realistic deep learning settings.