The additive hazards model specifies the effect of covariates on the hazard in an additive way, in contrast to the popular Cox model, in which it is multiplicative. As non-parametric model, it offers a very flexible way of modeling time-varying covariate effects. It is most commonly estimated by ordinary least squares. In this paper we consider the case where covariates are bounded, and derive the maximum likelihood estimator under the constraint that the hazard is non-negative for all covariate values in their domain. We describe an efficient algorithm to find the maximum likelihood estimator. The method is contrasted with the ordinary least squares approach in a simulation study, and the method is illustrated on a realistic data set.
Runtime verification or runtime monitoring equips safety-critical cyber-physical systems to augment design assurance measures and ensure operational safety and security. Cyber-physical systems have interaction failures, attack surfaces, and attack vectors resulting in unanticipated hazards and loss scenarios. These interaction failures pose challenges to runtime verification regarding monitoring specifications and monitoring placements for in-time detection of hazards. We develop a well-formed workflow model that connects system theoretic process analysis, commonly referred to as STPA, hazard causation information to lower-level runtime monitoring to detect hazards at the operational phase. Specifically, our model follows the DepDevOps paradigm to provide evidence and insights to runtime monitoring on what to monitor, where to monitor, and the monitoring context. We demonstrate and evaluate the value of multilevel monitors by injecting hazards on an autonomous emergency braking system model.
We introduce the package "GraphicalModelsMLE" for computing the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) of a Gaussian graphical model in the computer algebra system Macaulay2. This package allows the computation of MLEs for the class of loopless mixed graphs. Additional functionality allows the user to explore the underlying algebraic structure of the model, such as its maximum likelihood degree and the ideal of score equations.
Covariance estimation for matrix-valued data has received an increasing interest in applications. Unlike previous works that rely heavily on matrix normal distribution assumption and the requirement of fixed matrix size, we propose a class of distribution-free regularized covariance estimation methods for high-dimensional matrix data under a separability condition and a bandable covariance structure. Under these conditions, the original covariance matrix is decomposed into a Kronecker product of two bandable small covariance matrices representing the variability over row and column directions. We formulate a unified framework for estimating bandable covariance, and introduce an efficient algorithm based on rank one unconstrained Kronecker product approximation. The convergence rates of the proposed estimators are established, and the derived minimax lower bound shows our proposed estimator is rate-optimal under certain divergence regimes of matrix size. We further introduce a class of robust covariance estimators and provide theoretical guarantees to deal with heavy-tailed data. We demonstrate the superior finite-sample performance of our methods using simulations and real applications from a gridded temperature anomalies dataset and a S&P 500 stock data analysis.
Many recent state-of-the-art (SOTA) optical flow models use finite-step recurrent update operations to emulate traditional algorithms by encouraging iterative refinements toward a stable flow estimation. However, these RNNs impose large computation and memory overheads, and are not directly trained to model such stable estimation. They can converge poorly and thereby suffer from performance degradation. To combat these drawbacks, we propose deep equilibrium (DEQ) flow estimators, an approach that directly solves for the flow as the infinite-level fixed point of an implicit layer (using any black-box solver), and differentiates through this fixed point analytically (thus requiring $O(1)$ training memory). This implicit-depth approach is not predicated on any specific model, and thus can be applied to a wide range of SOTA flow estimation model designs. The use of these DEQ flow estimators allows us to compute the flow faster using, e.g., fixed-point reuse and inexact gradients, consumes $4\sim6\times$ times less training memory than the recurrent counterpart, and achieves better results with the same computation budget. In addition, we propose a novel, sparse fixed-point correction scheme to stabilize our DEQ flow estimators, which addresses a longstanding challenge for DEQ models in general. We test our approach in various realistic settings and show that it improves SOTA methods on Sintel and KITTI datasets with substantially better computational and memory efficiency.
We propose a decomposition method for the spectral peaks in an observed frequency spectrum, which is efficiently acquired by utilizing the Fast Fourier Transform. In contrast to the traditional methods of waveform fitting on the spectrum, we optimize the problem from a more robust perspective. We model the peaks in spectrum as pseudo-symmetric functions, where the only constraint is a nonincreasing behavior around a central frequency when the distance increases. Our approach is more robust against arbitrary distortion, interference and noise on the spectrum that may be caused by an observation system. The time complexity of our method is linear, i.e., $O(N)$ per extracted spectral peak. Moreover, the decomposed spectral peaks show a pseudo-orthogonal behavior, where they conform to a power preserving equality.
Computing a maximum independent set (MaxIS) is a fundamental NP-hard problem in graph theory, which has important applications in a wide spectrum of fields. Since graphs in many applications are changing frequently over time, the problem of maintaining a MaxIS over dynamic graphs has attracted increasing attention over the past few years. Due to the intractability of maintaining an exact MaxIS, this paper aims to develop efficient algorithms that can maintain an approximate MaxIS with an accuracy guarantee theoretically. In particular, we propose a framework that maintains a $(\frac{\Delta}{2} + 1)$-approximate MaxIS over dynamic graphs and prove that it achieves a constant approximation ratio in many real-world networks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first non-trivial approximability result for the dynamic MaxIS problem. Following the framework, we implement an efficient linear-time dynamic algorithm and a more effective dynamic algorithm with near-linear expected time complexity. Our thorough experiments over real and synthetic graphs demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithms, especially when the graph is highly dynamic.
Randomized Maximum Likelihood (RML) is an approximate posterior sampling methodology, widely used in Bayesian inverse problems with complex forward models, particularly in petroleum engineering applications. The procedure involves solving a multi-objective optimization problem, which can be challenging in high-dimensions and when there are constraints on computational costs. We propose a new methodology for tackling the RML optimization problem based on the high-dimensional Bayesian optimization literature. By sharing data between the different objective functions, we are able to implement RML at a greatly reduced computational cost. We demonstrate the benefits of our methodology in comparison with the solutions obtained by alternative optimization methods on a variety of synthetic and real-world problems, including medical and fluid dynamics applications. Furthermore, we show that the samples produced by our method cover well the high-posterior density regions in all of the experiments.
Let $X^{(n)}$ be an observation sampled from a distribution $P_{\theta}^{(n)}$ with an unknown parameter $\theta,$ $\theta$ being a vector in a Banach space $E$ (most often, a high-dimensional space of dimension $d$). We study the problem of estimation of $f(\theta)$ for a functional $f:E\mapsto {\mathbb R}$ of some smoothness $s>0$ based on an observation $X^{(n)}\sim P_{\theta}^{(n)}.$ Assuming that there exists an estimator $\hat \theta_n=\hat \theta_n(X^{(n)})$ of parameter $\theta$ such that $\sqrt{n}(\hat \theta_n-\theta)$ is sufficiently close in distribution to a mean zero Gaussian random vector in $E,$ we construct a functional $g:E\mapsto {\mathbb R}$ such that $g(\hat \theta_n)$ is an asymptotically normal estimator of $f(\theta)$ with $\sqrt{n}$ rate provided that $s>\frac{1}{1-\alpha}$ and $d\leq n^{\alpha}$ for some $\alpha\in (0,1).$ We also derive general upper bounds on Orlicz norm error rates for estimator $g(\hat \theta)$ depending on smoothness $s,$ dimension $d,$ sample size $n$ and the accuracy of normal approximation of $\sqrt{n}(\hat \theta_n-\theta).$ In particular, this approach yields asymptotically efficient estimators in some high-dimensional exponential models.
One of the most important problems in system identification and statistics is how to estimate the unknown parameters of a given model. Optimization methods and specialized procedures, such as Empirical Minimization (EM) can be used in case the likelihood function can be computed. For situations where one can only simulate from a parametric model, but the likelihood is difficult or impossible to evaluate, a technique known as the Two-Stage (TS) Approach can be applied to obtain reliable parametric estimates. Unfortunately, there is currently a lack of theoretical justification for TS. In this paper, we propose a statistical decision-theoretical derivation of TS, which leads to Bayesian and Minimax estimators. We also show how to apply the TS approach on models for independent and identically distributed samples, by computing quantiles of the data as a first step, and using a linear function as the second stage. The proposed method is illustrated via numerical simulations.
The numerical solution of singular eigenvalue problems is complicated by the fact that small perturbations of the coefficients may have an arbitrarily bad effect on eigenvalue accuracy. However, it has been known for a long time that such perturbations are exceptional and standard eigenvalue solvers, such as the QZ algorithm, tend to yield good accuracy despite the inevitable presence of roundoff error. Recently, Lotz and Noferini quantified this phenomenon by introducing the concept of $\delta$-weak eigenvalue condition numbers. In this work, we consider singular quadratic eigenvalue problems and two popular linearizations. Our results show that a correctly chosen linearization increases $\delta$-weak eigenvalue condition numbers only marginally, justifying the use of these linearizations in numerical solvers also in the singular case. We propose a very simple but often effective algorithm for computing well-conditioned eigenvalues of a singular quadratic eigenvalue problems by adding small random perturbations to the coefficients. We prove that the eigenvalue condition number is, with high probability, a reliable criterion for detecting and excluding spurious eigenvalues created from the singular part.