Bayesian networks are popular probabilistic models that capture the conditional dependencies among a set of variables. Inference in Bayesian networks is a fundamental task for answering probabilistic queries over a subset of variables in the data. However, exact inference in Bayesian networks is \NP-hard, which has prompted the development of many practical inference methods. In this paper, we focus on improving the performance of the junction-tree algorithm, a well-known method for exact inference in Bayesian networks. In particular, we seek to leverage information in the workload of probabilistic queries to obtain an optimal workload-aware materialization of junction trees, with the aim to accelerate the processing of inference queries. We devise an optimal pseudo-polynomial algorithm to tackle this problem and discuss approximation schemes. Compared to state-of-the-art approaches for efficient processing of inference queries via junction trees, our methods are the first to exploit the information provided in query workloads. Our experimentation on several real-world Bayesian networks confirms the effectiveness of our techniques in speeding-up query processing.
We show how to translate a subset of RISC-V machine code compiled from a subset of C to quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) models that can be solved by a quantum annealing machine: given a bound $n$, there is input $I$ to a program $P$ such that $P$ runs into a given program state $E$ executing no more than $n$ machine instructions if and only if the QUBO model of $P$ for $n$ evaluates to 0 on $I$. Thus, with more qubits on the machine than variables in the QUBO model, quantum annealing the model reaches 0 (ground) energy in constant time with high probability on some input $I$ that is part of the ground state if and only if $P$ runs into $E$ on $I$ executing no more than $n$ instructions. Translation takes $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ time effectively turning a quantum annealer into a polynomial-time symbolic execution engine and bounded model checker, eliminating their path and state explosion problems. Here, we take advantage of the fact that any machine instruction may only increase the size of the program state by a constant amount of bits. Translation time comes down from $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ to $\mathcal{O}(n\cdot|P|)$ if memory consumption of $P$ is bounded by a constant, establishing a linear (quadratic) upper bound on quantum space, in number of qubits on a quantum annealer, in terms of algorithmic time (space) in classical computing, implying $NP\subseteq BQP$. Our prototypical open-source toolchain translates machine code that runs on real RISC-V hardware to models that can be solved by real quantum annealing hardware, as shown in our experiments.
In a $k$-party communication problem, the $k$ players with inputs $x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_k$, respectively, want to evaluate a function $f(x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_k)$ using as little communication as possible. We consider the message-passing model, in which the inputs are partitioned in an arbitrary, possibly worst-case manner, among a smaller number $t$ of players ($t<k$). The $t$-player communication cost of computing $f$ can only be smaller than the $k$-player communication cost, since the $t$ players can trivially simulate the $k$-player protocol. But how much smaller can it be? We study deterministic and randomized protocols in the one-way model, and provide separations for product input distributions, which are optimal for low error probability protocols. We also provide much stronger separations when the input distribution is non-product. A key application of our results is in proving lower bounds for data stream algorithms. In particular, we give an optimal $\Omega(\epsilon^{-2}\log(N) \log \log(mM))$ bits of space lower bound for the fundamental problem of $(1\pm\epsilon)$-approximating the number $\|x\|_0$ of non-zero entries of an $n$-dimensional vector $x$ after $m$ integer updates each of magnitude at most $M$, and with success probability $\ge 2/3$, in a strict turnstile stream. We additionally prove the matching $\Omega(\epsilon^{-2}\log(N) \log \log(T))$ space lower bound for the problem when we have access to a heavy hitters oracle with threshold $T$. Our results match the best known upper bounds when $\epsilon\ge 1/\operatorname{polylog}(mM)$ and when $T = 2^{\operatorname{poly}(1/\epsilon)}$ respectively. It also improves on the prior $\Omega(\epsilon^{-2}\log(mM) )$ lower bound and separates the complexity of approximating $L_0$ from approximating the $p$-norm $L_p$ for $p$ bounded away from $0$, since the latter has an $O(\epsilon^{-2}\log (mM))$ bit upper bound.
The Big Data trend is putting strain on modern storage systems, which have to support high-performance I/O accesses for the large quantities of data. With the prevalent Von Neumann computing architecture, this data is constantly moved back and forth between the computing (i.e., CPU) and storage entities (DRAM, Non-Volatile Memory NVM storage). Hence, as the data volume grows, this constant data movement between the CPU and storage devices has emerged as a key performance bottleneck. To improve the situation, researchers have advocated to leverage computational storage devices (CSDs), which offer a programmable interface to run user-defined data processing operations close to the storage without excessive data movement, thus offering performance improvements. However, despite its potential, building CSD-aware applications remains a challenging task due to the lack of exploration and experimentation with the right API and abstraction. This is due to the limited accessibility to latest CSD/NVM devices, emerging device interfaces, and closed-source software internals of the devices. To remedy the situation, in this work we present an open-source CSD prototype over emerging NVMe Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) SSDs and an interface that can be used to explore application designs for CSD/NVM storage devices. In this paper we summarize the current state of the practice with CSD devices, make a case for designing a CSD prototype with the ZNS interface and eBPF (ZCSD), and present our initial findings. The prototype is available at //github.com/Dantali0n/qemu-csd.
It is well-known that an algorithm exists which approximates the NP-complete problem of Set Cover within a factor of ln(n), and it was recently proven that this approximation ratio is optimal unless P = NP. This optimality result is the product of many advances in characterizations of NP, in terms of interactive proof systems and probabilistically checkable proofs (PCP), and improvements to the analyses thereof. However, as a result, it is difficult to extract the development of Set Cover approximation bounds from the greater scope of proof system analysis. This paper attempts to present a chronological progression of results on lower-bounding the approximation ratio of Set Cover. We analyze a series of proofs of progressively better bounds and unify the results under similar terminologies and frameworks to provide an accurate comparison of proof techniques and their results. We also treat many preliminary results as black-boxes to better focus our analysis on the core reductions to Set Cover instances. The result is alternative versions of several hardness proofs, beginning with initial inapproximability results and culminating in a version of the proof that ln(n) is a tight lower bound.
Inducing latent tree structures from sequential data is an emerging trend in the NLP research landscape today, largely popularized by recent methods such as Gumbel LSTM and Ordered Neurons (ON-LSTM). This paper proposes FASTTREES, a new general purpose neural module for fast sequence encoding. Unlike most previous works that consider recurrence to be necessary for tree induction, our work explores the notion of parallel tree induction, i.e., imbuing our model with hierarchical inductive biases in a parallelizable, non-autoregressive fashion. To this end, our proposed FASTTREES achieves competitive or superior performance to ON-LSTM on four well-established sequence modeling tasks, i.e., language modeling, logical inference, sentiment analysis and natural language inference. Moreover, we show that the FASTTREES module can be applied to enhance Transformer models, achieving performance gains on three sequence transduction tasks (machine translation, subject-verb agreement and mathematical language understanding), paving the way for modular tree induction modules. Overall, we outperform existing state-of-the-art models on logical inference tasks by +4% and mathematical language understanding by +8%.
This paper considers a canonical clustering problem where one receives unlabeled samples drawn from a balanced mixture of two elliptical distributions and aims for a classifier to estimate the labels. Many popular methods including PCA and k-means require individual components of the mixture to be somewhat spherical, and perform poorly when they are stretched. To overcome this issue, we propose a non-convex program seeking for an affine transform to turn the data into a one-dimensional point cloud concentrating around $-1$ and $1$, after which clustering becomes easy. Our theoretical contributions are two-fold: (1) we show that the non-convex loss function exhibits desirable geometric properties when the sample size exceeds some constant multiple of the dimension, and (2) we leverage this to prove that an efficient first-order algorithm achieves near-optimal statistical precision without good initialization. We also propose a general methodology for clustering with flexible choices of feature transforms and loss objectives.
Survival outcomes are common in comparative effectiveness studies and require unique handling because they are usually incompletely observed due to right-censoring. A "once for all" approach for causal inference with survival outcomes constructs pseudo-observations and allows standard methods such as propensity score weighting to proceed as if the outcomes are completely observed. For a general class of model-free causal estimands with survival outcomes on user-specified target populations, we develop corresponding propensity score weighting estimators based on the pseudo-observations and establish their asymptotic properties. In particular, utilizing the functional delta-method and the von Mises expansion, we derive a new closed-form variance of the weighting estimator that takes into account the uncertainty due to both pseudo-observation calculation and propensity score estimation. This allows valid and computationally efficient inference without resampling. We also prove the optimal efficiency property of the overlap weights within the class of balancing weights for survival outcomes. The proposed methods are applicable to both binary and multiple treatments. Extensive simulations are conducted to explore the operating characteristics of the proposed method versus other commonly used alternatives. We apply the proposed method to compare the causal effects of three popular treatment approaches for prostate cancer patients.
The literature on data sanitization aims to design algorithms that take an input dataset and produce a privacy-preserving version of it, that captures some of its statistical properties. In this note we study this question from a streaming perspective and our goal is to sanitize a data stream. Specifically, we consider low-memory algorithms that operate on a data stream and produce an alternative privacy-preserving stream that captures some statistical properties of the original input stream.
Deep neural networks and decision trees operate on largely separate paradigms; typically, the former performs representation learning with pre-specified architectures, while the latter is characterised by learning hierarchies over pre-specified features with data-driven architectures. We unite the two via adaptive neural trees (ANTs), a model that incorporates representation learning into edges, routing functions and leaf nodes of a decision tree, along with a backpropagation-based training algorithm that adaptively grows the architecture from primitive modules (e.g., convolutional layers). ANTs allow increased interpretability via hierarchical clustering, e.g., learning meaningful class associations, such as separating natural vs. man-made objects. We demonstrate this on classification and regression tasks, achieving over 99% and 90% accuracy on the MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets, and outperforming standard neural networks, random forests and gradient boosted trees on the SARCOS dataset. Furthermore, ANT optimisation naturally adapts the architecture to the size and complexity of the training data.
Owing to the recent advances in "Big Data" modeling and prediction tasks, variational Bayesian estimation has gained popularity due to their ability to provide exact solutions to approximate posteriors. One key technique for approximate inference is stochastic variational inference (SVI). SVI poses variational inference as a stochastic optimization problem and solves it iteratively using noisy gradient estimates. It aims to handle massive data for predictive and classification tasks by applying complex Bayesian models that have observed as well as latent variables. This paper aims to decentralize it allowing parallel computation, secure learning and robustness benefits. We use Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers in a top-down setting to develop a distributed SVI algorithm such that independent learners running inference algorithms only require sharing the estimated model parameters instead of their private datasets. Our work extends the distributed SVI-ADMM algorithm that we first propose, to an ADMM-based networked SVI algorithm in which not only are the learners working distributively but they share information according to rules of a graph by which they form a network. This kind of work lies under the umbrella of `deep learning over networks' and we verify our algorithm for a topic-modeling problem for corpus of Wikipedia articles. We illustrate the results on latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic model in large document classification, compare performance with the centralized algorithm, and use numerical experiments to corroborate the analytical results.