Collecting large quantities of high-quality data is often prohibitively expensive or impractical, and a crucial bottleneck in machine learning. One may instead augment a small set of $n$ data points from the target distribution with data from more accessible sources like public datasets, data collected under different circumstances, or synthesized by generative models. Blurring distinctions, we refer to such data as `surrogate data'. We define a simple scheme for integrating surrogate data into training and use both theoretical models and empirical studies to explore its behavior. Our main findings are: $(i)$ Integrating surrogate data can significantly reduce the test error on the original distribution; $(ii)$ In order to reap this benefit, it is crucial to use optimally weighted empirical risk minimization; $(iii)$ The test error of models trained on mixtures of real and surrogate data is well described by a scaling law. This can be used to predict the optimal weighting and the gain from surrogate data.
Topological data analysis (TDA) is a powerful technique for extracting complex and valuable shape-related summaries of high-dimensional data. However, the computational demands of classical algorithms for computing TDA are exorbitant, and quickly become impractical for high-order characteristics. Quantum computers offer the potential of achieving significant speedup for certain computational problems. Indeed, TDA has been purported to be one such problem, yet, quantum computing algorithms proposed for the problem, such as the original Quantum TDA (QTDA) formulation by Lloyd, Garnerone and Zanardi, require fault-tolerance qualifications that are currently unavailable. In this study, we present NISQ-TDA, a fully implemented end-to-end quantum machine learning algorithm needing only a short circuit-depth, that is applicable to high-dimensional classical data, and with provable asymptotic speedup for certain classes of problems. The algorithm neither suffers from the data-loading problem nor does it need to store the input data on the quantum computer explicitly. The algorithm was successfully executed on quantum computing devices, as well as on noisy quantum simulators, applied to small datasets. Preliminary empirical results suggest that the algorithm is robust to noise.
Conformal inference is a fundamental and versatile tool that provides distribution-free guarantees for many machine learning tasks. We consider the transductive setting, where decisions are made on a test sample of $m$ new points, giving rise to $m$ conformal $p$-values. While classical results only concern their marginal distribution, we show that their joint distribution follows a P\'olya urn model, and establish a concentration inequality for their empirical distribution function. The results hold for arbitrary exchangeable scores, including adaptive ones that can use the covariates of the test+calibration samples at training stage for increased accuracy. We demonstrate the usefulness of these theoretical results through uniform, in-probability guarantees for two machine learning tasks of current interest: interval prediction for transductive transfer learning and novelty detection based on two-class classification.
Most currently used tensor regression models for high-dimensional data are based on Tucker decomposition, which has good properties but loses its efficiency in compressing tensors very quickly as the order of tensors increases, say greater than four or five. However, for the simplest tensor autoregression in handling time series data, its coefficient tensor already has the order of six. This paper revises a newly proposed tensor train (TT) decomposition and then applies it to tensor regression such that a nice statistical interpretation can be obtained. The new tensor regression can well match the data with hierarchical structures, and it even can lead to a better interpretation for the data with factorial structures, which are supposed to be better fitted by models with Tucker decomposition. More importantly, the new tensor regression can be easily applied to the case with higher order tensors since TT decomposition can compress the coefficient tensors much more efficiently. The methodology is also extended to tensor autoregression for time series data, and nonasymptotic properties are derived for the ordinary least squares estimations of both tensor regression and autoregression. A new algorithm is introduced to search for estimators, and its theoretical justification is also discussed. Theoretical and computational properties of the proposed methodology are verified by simulation studies, and the advantages over existing methods are illustrated by two real examples.
One of the fundamental steps toward understanding a complex system is identifying variation at the scale of the system's components that is most relevant to behavior on a macroscopic scale. Mutual information provides a natural means of linking variation across scales of a system due to its independence of functional relationship between observables. However, characterizing the manner in which information is distributed across a set of observables is computationally challenging and generally infeasible beyond a handful of measurements. Here we propose a practical and general methodology that uses machine learning to decompose the information contained in a set of measurements by jointly optimizing a lossy compression of each measurement. Guided by the distributed information bottleneck as a learning objective, the information decomposition identifies the variation in the measurements of the system state most relevant to specified macroscale behavior. We focus our analysis on two paradigmatic complex systems: a Boolean circuit and an amorphous material undergoing plastic deformation. In both examples, the large amount of entropy of the system state is decomposed, bit by bit, in terms of what is most related to macroscale behavior. The identification of meaningful variation in data, with the full generality brought by information theory, is made practical for studying the connection between micro- and macroscale structure in complex systems.
The ability to learn and compose functions is foundational to efficient learning and reasoning in humans, enabling flexible generalizations such as creating new dishes from known cooking processes. Beyond sequential chaining of functions, existing linguistics literature indicates that humans can grasp more complex compositions with interacting functions, where output production depends on context changes induced by different function orderings. Extending the investigation into the visual domain, we developed a function learning paradigm to explore the capacity of humans and neural network models in learning and reasoning with compositional functions under varied interaction conditions. Following brief training on individual functions, human participants were assessed on composing two learned functions, in ways covering four main interaction types, including instances in which the application of the first function creates or removes the context for applying the second function. Our findings indicate that humans can make zero-shot generalizations on novel visual function compositions across interaction conditions, demonstrating sensitivity to contextual changes. A comparison with a neural network model on the same task reveals that, through the meta-learning for compositionality (MLC) approach, a standard sequence-to-sequence Transformer can mimic human generalization patterns in composing functions.
The use of discretized variables in the development of prediction models is a common practice, in part because the decision-making process is more natural when it is based on rules created from segmented models. Although this practice is perhaps more common in medicine, it is extensible to any area of knowledge where a predictive model helps in decision-making. Therefore, providing researchers with a useful and valid categorization method could be a relevant issue when developing prediction models. In this paper, we propose a new general methodology that can be applied to categorize a predictor variable in any regression model where the response variable belongs to the exponential family distribution. Furthermore, it can be applied in any multivariate context, allowing to categorize more than one continuous covariate simultaneously. In addition, a computationally very efficient method is proposed to obtain the optimal number of categories, based on a pseudo-BIC proposal. Several simulation studies have been conducted in which the efficiency of the method with respect to both the location and the number of estimated cut-off points is shown. Finally, the categorization proposal has been applied to a real data set of 543 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease from Galdakao Hospital's five outpatient respiratory clinics, who were followed up for 10 years. We applied the proposed methodology to jointly categorize the continuous variables six-minute walking test and forced expiratory volume in one second in a multiple Poisson generalized additive model for the response variable rate of the number of hospital admissions by years of follow-up. The location and number of cut-off points obtained were clinically validated as being in line with the categorizations used in the literature.
When complex Bayesian models exhibit implausible behaviour, one solution is to assemble available information into an informative prior. Challenges arise as prior information is often only available for the observable quantity, or some model-derived marginal quantity, rather than directly pertaining to the natural parameters in our model. We propose a method for translating available prior information, in the form of an elicited distribution for the observable or model-derived marginal quantity, into an informative joint prior. Our approach proceeds given a parametric class of prior distributions with as yet undetermined hyperparameters, and minimises the difference between the supplied elicited distribution and corresponding prior predictive distribution. We employ a global, multi-stage Bayesian optimisation procedure to locate optimal values for the hyperparameters. Three examples illustrate our approach: a cure-fraction survival model, where censoring implies that the observable quantity is a priori a mixed discrete/continuous quantity; a setting in which prior information pertains to $R^{2}$ -- a model-derived quantity; and a nonlinear regression model.
We establish an invariance principle for polynomial functions of $n$ independent high-dimensional random vectors, and also show that the obtained rates are nearly optimal. Both the dimension of the vectors and the degree of the polynomial are permitted to grow with $n$. Specifically, we obtain a finite sample upper bound for the error of approximation by a polynomial of Gaussians, measured in Kolmogorov distance, and extend it to functions that are approximately polynomial in a mean squared error sense. We give a corresponding lower bound that shows the invariance principle holds up to polynomial degree $o(\log n)$. The proof is constructive and adapts an asymmetrisation argument due to V. V. Senatov. As applications, we obtain a higher-order delta method with possibly non-Gaussian limits, and generalise a number of known results on high-dimensional and infinite-order U-statistics, and on fluctuations of subgraph counts.
In recent years, power analysis has become widely used in applied sciences, with the increasing importance of the replicability issue. When distribution-free methods, such as Partial Least Squares (PLS)-based approaches, are considered, formulating power analysis turns out to be challenging. In this study, we introduce the methodological framework of a new procedure for performing power analysis when PLS-based methods are used. Data are simulated by the Monte Carlo method, assuming the null hypothesis of no effect is false and exploiting the latent structure estimated by PLS in the pilot data. In this way, the complex correlation data structure is explicitly considered in power analysis and sample size estimation. The paper offers insights into selecting statistical tests for the power analysis procedure, comparing accuracy-based tests and those based on continuous parameters estimated by PLS. Simulated and real datasets are investigated to show how the method works in practice.
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.