Given a probability distribution $\mathcal{D}$ over the non-negative integers, a $\mathcal{D}$-repeat channel acts on an input symbol by repeating it a number of times distributed as $\mathcal{D}$. For example, the binary deletion channel ($\mathcal{D}=Bernoulli$) and the Poisson repeat channel ($\mathcal{D}=Poisson$) are special cases. We say a $\mathcal{D}$-repeat channel is square-integrable if $\mathcal{D}$ has finite first and second moments. In this paper, we construct explicit codes for all square-integrable $\mathcal{D}$-repeat channels with rate arbitrarily close to the capacity, that are encodable and decodable in linear and quasi-linear time, respectively. We also consider possible extensions to the repeat channel model, and illustrate how our construction can be extended to an even broader class of channels capturing insertions, deletions, and substitutions. Our work offers an alternative, simplified, and more general construction to the recent work of Rubinstein (arXiv:2111.00261), who attains similar results to ours in the cases of the deletion channel and the Poisson repeat channel. It also slightly improves the runtime and decoding failure probability of the polar codes constructions of Tal et al. (ISIT 2019) and of Pfister and Tal (arXiv:2102.02155) for the deletion channel and certain insertion/deletion/substitution channels. Our techniques follow closely the approaches of Guruswami and Li (IEEEToIT 2019) and Con and Shpilka (IEEEToIT 2020); what sets apart our work is that we show that a capacity-achieving code can be assumed to have an "approximate balance" in the frequency of zeros and ones of all sufficiently long substrings of all codewords. This allows us to attain near-capacity-achieving codes in a general setting. We consider this "approximate balance" result to be of independent interest, as it can be cast in much greater generality than repeat channels.
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Learning Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the presence of the adversary is a challenging problem in reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, we study RL in episodic MDPs with adversarial reward and full information feedback, where the unknown transition probability function is a linear function of a given feature mapping, and the reward function can change arbitrarily episode by episode. We propose an optimistic policy optimization algorithm POWERS and show that it can achieve $\tilde{O}(dH\sqrt{T})$ regret, where $H$ is the length of the episode, $T$ is the number of interactions with the MDP, and $d$ is the dimension of the feature mapping. Furthermore, we also prove a matching lower bound of $\tilde{\Omega}(dH\sqrt{T})$ up to logarithmic factors. Our key technical contributions are two-fold: (1) a new value function estimator based on importance weighting; and (2) a tighter confidence set for the transition kernel. They together lead to the nearly minimax optimal regret.
Specifications of complex, large scale, computer software and hardware systems can be radically simplified by using simple maps from input sequences to output values. These "state machine maps" provide an alternative representation of classical Moore type state machines. Composition of state machine maps corresponds to state machine products and can be used to specify essentially any type of interconnection as well as parallel and distributed computation. State machine maps can also specify abstract properties of systems and are significantly more concise and scalable than traditional representations of automata. Examples included here include specifications of producer/consumer software, network distributed consensus, real-time digital circuits, and operating system scheduling. The motivation for this work comes from experience designing and developing operating systems and real-time software where weak methods for understanding and exploring designs is a well known handicap. The methods introduced here are based on ordinary discrete mathematics, primitive recursive functions and deterministic state machines and are intended, initially, to aid the intuition and understanding of the system developers. Staying strictly within the boundaries of classical deterministic state machines anchors the methods to the algebraic structures of automata and semigroups, obviates any need for axiomatic deduction systems, "formal methods", or extensions to the model, and makes the specifications more faithful to engineering practice. While state machine maps are obvious representations of state machines, the techniques introduced here for defining and composing them are novel.
We consider the offline constrained reinforcement learning (RL) problem, in which the agent aims to compute a policy that maximizes expected return while satisfying given cost constraints, learning only from a pre-collected dataset. This problem setting is appealing in many real-world scenarios, where direct interaction with the environment is costly or risky, and where the resulting policy should comply with safety constraints. However, it is challenging to compute a policy that guarantees satisfying the cost constraints in the offline RL setting, since the off-policy evaluation inherently has an estimation error. In this paper, we present an offline constrained RL algorithm that optimizes the policy in the space of the stationary distribution. Our algorithm, COptiDICE, directly estimates the stationary distribution corrections of the optimal policy with respect to returns, while constraining the cost upper bound, with the goal of yielding a cost-conservative policy for actual constraint satisfaction. Experimental results show that COptiDICE attains better policies in terms of constraint satisfaction and return-maximization, outperforming baseline algorithms.
Approximate-message passing (AMP) algorithms have become an important element of high-dimensional statistical inference, mostly due to their adaptability and concentration properties, the state evolution (SE) equations. This is demonstrated by the growing number of new iterations proposed for increasingly complex problems, ranging from multi-layer inference to low-rank matrix estimation with elaborate priors. In this paper, we address the following questions: is there a structure underlying all AMP iterations that unifies them in a common framework? Can we use such a structure to give a modular proof of state evolution equations, adaptable to new AMP iterations without reproducing each time the full argument ? We propose an answer to both questions, showing that AMP instances can be generically indexed by an oriented graph. This enables to give a unified interpretation of these iterations, independent from the problem they solve, and a way of composing them arbitrarily. We then show that all AMP iterations indexed by such a graph admit rigorous SE equations, extending the reach of previous proofs, and proving a number of recent heuristic derivations of those equations. Our proof naturally includes non-separable functions and we show how existing refinements, such as spatial coupling or matrix-valued variables, can be combined with our framework.
Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane, the $k$-center problem is to find $k$ congruent disks of minimum possible radius such that their union covers all the points in $P$. The $2$-center problem is a special case of the $k$-center problem that has been extensively studied in the recent past \cite{CAHN,HT,SH}. In this paper, we consider a generalized version of the $2$-center problem called \textit{proximity connected} $2$-center (PCTC) problem. In this problem, we are also given a parameter $\delta\geq 0$ and we have the additional constraint that the distance between the centers of the disks should be at most $\delta$. Note that when $\delta=0$, the PCTC problem is reduced to the $1$-center(minimum enclosing disk) problem and when $\delta$ tends to infinity, it is reduced to the $2$-center problem. The PCTC problem first appeared in the context of wireless networks in 1992 \cite{ACN0}, but obtaining a nontrivial deterministic algorithm for the problem remained open. In this paper, we resolve this open problem by providing a deterministic $O(n^2\log n)$ time algorithm for the problem.
Certain simplicial complexes are used to construct a subset $D$ of $\mathbb{F}_{2^n}^m$ and $D$, in turn, defines the linear code $C_{D}$ over $\mathbb{F}_{2^n}$ that consists of $(v\cdot d)_{d\in D}$ for $v\in \mathbb{F}_{2^n}^m$. Here we deal with the case $n=3$, that is, when $C_{D}$ is an octanary code. We establish a relation between $C_{D}$ and its binary subfield code $C_{D}^{(2)}$ with the help of a generator matrix. For a given length and dimension, a code is called distance optimal if it has the highest possible distance. With respect to the Griesmer bound, five infinite families of distance optimal codes are obtained, and sufficient conditions for certain linear codes to be minimal are established.
In the storied Colonel Blotto game, two colonels allocate $a$ and $b$ troops, respectively, to $k$ distinct battlefields. A colonel wins a battle if they assign more troops to that particular battle, and each colonel seeks to maximize their total number of victories. Despite the problem's formulation in 1921, the first polynomial-time algorithm to compute Nash equilibrium (NE) strategies for this game was discovered only quite recently. In 2016, \citep{ahmadinejad_dehghani_hajiaghayi_lucier_mahini_seddighin_2019} formulated a breakthrough algorithm to compute NE strategies for the Colonel Blotto game\footnote{To the best of our knowledge, the algorithm from \citep{ahmadinejad_dehghani_hajiaghayi_lucier_mahini_seddighin_2019} has computational complexity $O(k^{14}\max\{a,b\}^{13})$}, receiving substantial media coverage (e.g. \citep{Insider}, \citep{NSF}, \citep{ScienceDaily}). In this work, we present the first known $\epsilon$-approximation algorithm to compute NE strategies in the two-player Colonel Blotto game in runtime $\widetilde{O}(\epsilon^{-4} k^8 \max\{a,b\}^2)$ for arbitrary settings of these parameters. Moreover, this algorithm computes approximate coarse correlated equilibrium strategies in the multiplayer (continuous and discrete) Colonel Blotto game (when there are $\ell > 2$ colonels) with runtime $\widetilde{O}(\ell \epsilon^{-4} k^8 n^2 + \ell^2 \epsilon^{-2} k^3 n (n+k))$, where $n$ is the maximum troop count. Before this work, no polynomial-time algorithm was known to compute exact or approximate equilibrium (in any sense) strategies for multiplayer Colonel Blotto with arbitrary parameters. Our algorithm computes these approximate equilibria by a novel (to the author's knowledge) sampling technique with which we implicitly perform multiplicative weights update over the exponentially many strategies available to each player.
Extracting non-Gaussian information from the non-linear regime of structure formation is key to fully exploiting the rich data from upcoming cosmological surveys probing the large-scale structure of the universe. However, due to theoretical and computational complexities, this remains one of the main challenges in analyzing observational data. We present a set of summary statistics for cosmological matter fields based on 3D wavelets to tackle this challenge. These statistics are computed as the spatial average of the complex modulus of the 3D wavelet transform raised to a power $q$ and are therefore known as invariant wavelet moments. The 3D wavelets are constructed to be radially band-limited and separable on a spherical polar grid and come in three types: isotropic, oriented, and harmonic. In the Fisher forecast framework, we evaluate the performance of these summary statistics on matter fields from the Quijote suite, where they are shown to reach state-of-the-art parameter constraints on the base $\Lambda$CDM parameters, as well as the sum of neutrino masses. We show that we can improve constraints by a factor 5 to 10 in all parameters with respect to the power spectrum baseline.
While the theoretical analysis of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) has made significant progress for pseudo-Boolean optimization problems in the last 25 years, only sporadic theoretical results exist on how EAs solve permutation-based problems. To overcome the lack of permutation-based benchmark problems, we propose a general way to transfer the classic pseudo-Boolean benchmarks into benchmarks defined on sets of permutations. We then conduct a rigorous runtime analysis of the permutation-based $(1+1)$ EA proposed by Scharnow, Tinnefeld, and Wegener (2004) on the analogues of the \textsc{LeadingOnes} and \textsc{Jump} benchmarks. The latter shows that, different from bit-strings, it is not only the Hamming distance that determines how difficult it is to mutate a permutation $\sigma$ into another one $\tau$, but also the precise cycle structure of $\sigma \tau^{-1}$. For this reason, we also regard the more symmetric scramble mutation operator. We observe that it not only leads to simpler proofs, but also reduces the runtime on jump functions with odd jump size by a factor of $\Theta(n)$. Finally, we show that a heavy-tailed version of the scramble operator, as in the bit-string case, leads to a speed-up of order $m^{\Theta(m)}$ on jump functions with jump size~$m$.%
We demonstrate that merely analog transmissions and match filtering can realize the function of an edge server in federated learning (FL). Therefore, a network with massively distributed user equipments (UEs) can achieve large-scale FL without an edge server. We also develop a training algorithm that allows UEs to continuously perform local computing without being interrupted by the global parameter uploading, which exploits the full potential of UEs' processing power. We derive convergence rates for the proposed schemes to quantify their training efficiency. The analyses reveal that when the interference obeys a Gaussian distribution, the proposed algorithm retrieves the convergence rate of a server-based FL. But if the interference distribution is heavy-tailed, then the heavier the tail, the slower the algorithm converges. Nonetheless, the system run time can be largely reduced by enabling computation in parallel with communication, whereas the gain is particularly pronounced when communication latency is high. These findings are corroborated via excessive simulations.
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