The Shapley value equals a player's contribution to the potential of a game. The potential is a most natural one-number summary of a game, which can be computed as the expected accumulated worth of a random partition of the players. This computation integrates the coalition formation of all players and readily extends to games with externalities. We investigate those potential functions for games with externalities that can be computed this way. It turns out that the potential that corresponds to the MPW solution introduced by Macho-Stadler et al. (2007, J. Econ. Theory 135, 339-356), is unique in the following sense. It is obtained as a the expected accumulated worth of a random partition, it generalizes the potential for games without externalities, and it induces a solution that satisfies the null player property even in the presence of externalities.
We obtain essentially matching upper and lower bounds for the expected max-sliced 1-Wasserstein distance between a probability measure on a separable Hilbert space and its empirical distribution from $n$ samples. By proving a Banach space version of this result, we also obtain an upper bound, that is sharp up to a log factor, for the expected max-sliced 2-Wasserstein distance between a symmetric probability measure $\mu$ on a Euclidean space and its symmetrized empirical distribution in terms of the norm of the covariance matrix of $\mu$ and the diameter of the support of $\mu$.
Generative diffusion models have achieved spectacular performance in many areas of generative modeling. While the fundamental ideas behind these models come from non-equilibrium physics, variational inference and stochastic calculus, in this paper we show that many aspects of these models can be understood using the tools of equilibrium statistical mechanics. Using this reformulation, we show that generative diffusion models undergo second-order phase transitions corresponding to symmetry breaking phenomena. We show that these phase-transitions are always in a mean-field universality class, as they are the result of a self-consistency condition in the generative dynamics. We argue that the critical instability that arises from the phase transitions lies at the heart of their generative capabilities, which are characterized by a set of mean field critical exponents. Furthermore, using the statistical physics of disordered systems, we show that memorization can be understood as a form of critical condensation corresponding to a disordered phase transition. Finally, we show that the dynamic equation of the generative process can be interpreted as a stochastic adiabatic transformation that minimizes the free energy while keeping the system in thermal equilibrium.
We study general coordinate-wise MCMC schemes (such as Metropolis-within-Gibbs samplers), which are commonly used to fit Bayesian non-conjugate hierarchical models. We relate their convergence properties to the ones of the corresponding (potentially not implementable) Gibbs sampler through the notion of conditional conductance. This allows us to study the performances of popular Metropolis-within-Gibbs schemes for non-conjugate hierarchical models, in high-dimensional regimes where both number of datapoints and parameters increase. Given random data-generating assumptions, we establish dimension-free convergence results, which are in close accordance with numerical evidences. Applications to Bayesian models for binary regression with unknown hyperparameters and discretely observed diffusions are also discussed. Motivated by such statistical applications, auxiliary results of independent interest on approximate conductances and perturbation of Markov operators are provided.
In logistic regression modeling, Firth's modified estimator is widely used to address the issue of data separation, which results in the nonexistence of the maximum likelihood estimate. Firth's modified estimator can be formulated as a penalized maximum likelihood estimator in which Jeffreys' prior is adopted as the penalty term. Despite its widespread use in practice, the formal verification of the corresponding estimate's existence has not been established. In this study, we establish the existence theorem of Firth's modified estimate in binomial logistic regression models, assuming only the full column rankness of the design matrix. We also discuss other binomial regression models obtained through alternating link functions and prove the existence of similar penalized maximum likelihood estimates for such models.
Principal stratification is a popular framework for causal inference in the presence of an intermediate outcome. While the principal average treatment effects have traditionally been the default target of inference, it may not be sufficient when the interest lies in the relative favorability of one potential outcome over the other within the principal stratum. We thus introduce the principal generalized causal effect estimands, which extend the principal average causal effects to accommodate nonlinear contrast functions. Under principal ignorability, we expand the theoretical results in Jiang et. al. (2022) to a much wider class of causal estimands in the presence of a binary intermediate variable. We develop identification formulas and derive the efficient influence functions of the generalized estimands for principal stratification analyses. These efficient influence functions motivate a set of multiply robust estimators and lay the ground for obtaining efficient debiased machine learning estimators via cross-fitting based on $U$-statistics. The proposed methods are illustrated through simulations and the analysis of a data example.
We give a semidefinite programming characterization of the Crawford number. We show that the computation of the Crawford number within $\varepsilon$ precision is computable in polynomial time in the data and $|\log \varepsilon |$.
We show that the known list-decoding algorithms for univariate multiplicity and folded Reed-Solomon codes can be made to run in $\tilde{O}(n)$ time. Univariate multiplicity codes and FRS codes are natural variants of Reed-Solomon codes that were discovered and studied for their applications to list decoding. It is known that for every $\epsilon>0$, and rate $r \in (0,1)$, there exist explicit families of these codes that have rate $r$ and can be list decoded from a $(1-r-\epsilon)$ fraction of errors with constant list size in polynomial time (Guruswami & Wang (IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory 2013) and Kopparty, Ron-Zewi, Saraf & Wootters (SIAM J. Comput. 2023)). In this work, we present randomized algorithms that perform the above list-decoding tasks in $\tilde{O}(n)$, where $n$ is the block-length of the code. Our algorithms have two main components. The first component builds upon the lattice-based approach of Alekhnovich (IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 2005), who designed a $\tilde{O}(n)$ time list-decoding algorithm for Reed-Solomon codes approaching the Johnson radius. As part of the second component, we design $\tilde{O}(n)$ time algorithms for two natural algebraic problems: given a $(m+2)$-variate polynomial $Q(x,y_0,\dots,y_m) = \tilde{Q}(x) + \sum_{i=0}^m Q_i(x)\cdot y_i$ the first algorithm solves order-$m$ linear differential equations of the form $Q\left(x, f(x), \frac{df}{dx}, \dots,\frac{d^m f}{dx^m}\right) \equiv 0$ while the second solves functional equations of the form $Q\left(x, f(x), f(\gamma x), \dots,f(\gamma^m x)\right) \equiv 0$, where $m$ is an arbitrary constant and $\gamma$ is a field element of sufficiently high order. These algorithms can be viewed as generalizations of classical $\tilde{O}(n)$ time algorithms of Sieveking (Computing 1972) and Kung (Numer. Math. 1974) for computing the modular inverse of a power series, and might be of independent interest.
Testing the equality of mean vectors across $g$ different groups plays an important role in many scientific fields. In regular frameworks, likelihood-based statistics under the normality assumption offer a general solution to this task. However, the accuracy of standard asymptotic results is not reliable when the dimension $p$ of the data is large relative to the sample size $n_i$ of each group. We propose here an exact directional test for the equality of $g$ normal mean vectors with identical unknown covariance matrix, provided that $\sum_{i=1}^g n_i \ge p+g+1$. In the case of two groups ($g=2$), the directional test is equivalent to the Hotelling's $T^2$ test. In the more general situation where the $g$ independent groups may have different unknown covariance matrices, although exactness does not hold, simulation studies show that the directional test is more accurate than most commonly used likelihood based solutions. Robustness of the directional approach and its competitors under deviation from multivariate normality is also numerically investigated.
We establish a coding theorem and a matching converse theorem for separate encodings and joint decoding of individual sequences using finite-state machines. The achievable rate region is characterized in terms of the Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexities, the conditional LZ complexities and the joint LZ complexity of the two source sequences. An important feature that is needed to this end, which may be interesting on its own right, is a certain asymptotic form of a chain rule for LZ complexities, which we establish in this work. The main emphasis in the achievability scheme is on the universal decoder and its properties. We then show that the achievable rate region is universally attainable by a modified version of Draper's universal incremental Slepian-Wolf (SW) coding scheme, provided that there exists a low-rate reliable feedback link.
The Bell regression model (BRM) is a statistical model that is often used in the analysis of count data that exhibits overdispersion. In this study, we propose a Bayesian analysis of the BRM and offer a new perspective on its application. Specifically, we introduce a G-prior distribution for Bayesian inference in BRM, in addition to a flat-normal prior distribution. To compare the performance of the proposed prior distributions, we conduct a simulation study and demonstrate that the G-prior distribution provides superior estimation results for the BRM. Furthermore, we apply the methodology to real data and compare the BRM to the Poisson regression model using various model selection criteria. Our results provide valuable insights into the use of Bayesian methods for estimation and inference of the BRM and highlight the importance of considering the choice of prior distribution in the analysis of count data.