Parametric mathematical models such as partial differential equations with random coefficients have received a lot of attention within the field of uncertainty quantification. The model uncertainties are often represented via a series expansion in terms of the parametric variables. In practice, this series expansion needs to be truncated to a finite number of terms, introducing a dimension truncation error to the numerical simulation of a parametric mathematical model. There have been several studies of the dimension truncation error corresponding to different models of the input random field in recent years, but many of these analyses have been carried out within the context of numerical integration. In this paper, we study the $L^2$ dimension truncation error of the parametric model problem. Estimates of this kind arise in the assessment of the dimension truncation error for function approximation in high dimensions. In addition, we show that the dimension truncation error rate is invariant with respect to certain transformations of the parametric variables. Numerical results are presented which showcase the sharpness of the theoretical results.
Motivated by applications in personalized medicine and individualized policy making, there is a growing interest in techniques for quantifying treatment effect heterogeneity in terms of the conditional average treatment effect (CATE). Some of the most prominent methods for CATE estimation developed in recent years are T-Learner, DR-Learner and R-Learner. The latter two were designed to improve on the former by being Neyman-orthogonal. However, the relations between them remain unclear, and likewise does the literature remain vague on whether these learners converge to a useful quantity or (functional) estimand when the underlying optimization procedure is restricted to a class of functions that does not include the CATE. In this article, we provide insight into these questions by discussing DR-learner and R-learner as special cases of a general class of Neyman-orthogonal learners for the CATE, for which we moreover derive oracle bounds. Our results shed light on how one may construct Neyman-orthogonal learners with desirable properties, on when DR-learner may be preferred over R-learner (and vice versa), and on novel learners that may sometimes be preferable to either of these. Theoretical findings are confirmed using results from simulation studies on synthetic data, as well as an application in critical care medicine.
Efficient and accurate estimation of multivariate empirical probability distributions is fundamental to the calculation of information-theoretic measures such as mutual information and transfer entropy. Common techniques include variations on histogram estimation which, whilst computationally efficient, are often unable to precisely capture the probability density of samples with high correlation, kurtosis or fine substructure, especially when sample sizes are small. Adaptive partitions, which adjust heuristically to the sample, can reduce the bias imparted from the geometry of the histogram itself, but these have commonly focused on the location, scale and granularity of the partition, the effects of which are limited for highly correlated distributions. In this paper, I reformulate the differential entropy estimator for the special case of an equiprobable histogram, using a k-d tree to partition the sample space into bins of equal probability mass. By doing so, I expose an implicit rotational orientation parameter, which is conjectured to be suboptimally specified in the typical marginal alignment. I propose that the optimal orientation minimises the variance of the bin volumes, and demonstrate that improved entropy estimates can be obtained by rotationally aligning the partition to the sample distribution accordingly. Such optimal partitions are observed to be more accurate than existing techniques in estimating entropies of correlated bivariate Gaussian distributions with known theoretical values, across varying sample sizes (99% CI).
Correlated outcomes are common in many practical problems. In some settings, one outcome is of particular interest, and others are auxiliary. To leverage information shared by all the outcomes, traditional multi-task learning (MTL) minimizes an averaged loss function over all the outcomes, which may lead to biased estimation for the target outcome, especially when the MTL model is mis-specified. In this work, based on a decomposition of estimation bias into two types, within-subspace and against-subspace, we develop a robust transfer learning approach to estimating a high-dimensional linear decision rule for the outcome of interest with the presence of auxiliary outcomes. The proposed method includes an MTL step using all outcomes to gain efficiency, and a subsequent calibration step using only the outcome of interest to correct both types of biases. We show that the final estimator can achieve a lower estimation error than the one using only the single outcome of interest. Simulations and real data analysis are conducted to justify the superiority of the proposed method.
We study the complexity of high-dimensional approximation in the $L_2$-norm when different classes of information are available; we compare the power of function evaluations with the power of arbitrary continuous linear measurements. Here, we discuss the situation when the number of linear measurements required to achieve an error $\varepsilon \in (0,1)$ in dimension $d\in\mathbb{N}$ depends only poly-logarithmically on $\varepsilon^{-1}$. This corresponds to an exponential order of convergence of the approximation error, which often happens in applications. However, it does not mean that the high-dimensional approximation problem is easy, the main difficulty usually lies within the dependence on the dimension $d$. We determine to which extent the required amount of information changes, if we allow only function evaluation instead of arbitrary linear information. It turns out that in this case we only lose very little, and we can even restrict to linear algorithms. In particular, several notions of tractability hold simultaneously for both types of available information.
This paper focuses on parameter estimation and introduces a new method for lower bounding the Bayesian risk. The method allows for the use of virtually \emph{any} information measure, including R\'enyi's $\alpha$, $\varphi$-Divergences, and Sibson's $\alpha$-Mutual Information. The approach considers divergences as functionals of measures and exploits the duality between spaces of measures and spaces of functions. In particular, we show that one can lower bound the risk with any information measure by upper bounding its dual via Markov's inequality. We are thus able to provide estimator-independent impossibility results thanks to the Data-Processing Inequalities that divergences satisfy. The results are then applied to settings of interest involving both discrete and continuous parameters, including the ``Hide-and-Seek'' problem, and compared to the state-of-the-art techniques. An important observation is that the behaviour of the lower bound in the number of samples is influenced by the choice of the information measure. We leverage this by introducing a new divergence inspired by the ``Hockey-Stick'' Divergence, which is demonstrated empirically to provide the largest lower-bound across all considered settings. If the observations are subject to privatisation, stronger impossibility results can be obtained via Strong Data-Processing Inequalities. The paper also discusses some generalisations and alternative directions.
Developing interpretable machine learning models has become an increasingly important issue. One way in which data scientists have been able to develop interpretable models has been to use dimension reduction techniques. In this paper, we examine several dimension reduction techniques including two recent approaches developed in the network psychometrics literature called exploratory graph analysis (EGA) and unique variable analysis (UVA). We compared EGA and UVA with two other dimension reduction techniques common in the machine learning literature (principal component analysis and independent component analysis) as well as no reduction to the variables real data. We show that EGA and UVA perform as well as the other reduction techniques or no reduction. Consistent with previous literature, we show that dimension reduction can decrease, increase, or provide the same accuracy as no reduction of variables. Our tentative results find that dimension reduction tends to lead to better performance when used for classification tasks.
We review Quasi Maximum Likelihood estimation of factor models for high-dimensional panels of time series. We consider two cases: (1) estimation when no dynamic model for the factors is specified (Bai and Li, 2016); (2) estimation based on the Kalman smoother and the Expectation Maximization algorithm thus allowing to model explicitly the factor dynamics (Doz et al., 2012). Our interest is in approximate factor models, i.e., when we allow for the idiosyncratic components to be mildly cross-sectionally, as well as serially, correlated. Although such setting apparently makes estimation harder, we show, in fact, that factor models do not suffer of the curse of dimensionality problem, but instead they enjoy a blessing of dimensionality property. In particular, we show that if the cross-sectional dimension of the data, $N$, grows to infinity, then: (i) identification of the model is still possible, (ii) the mis-specification error due to the use of an exact factor model log-likelihood vanishes. Moreover, if we let also the sample size, $T$, grow to infinity, we can also consistently estimate all parameters of the model and make inference. The same is true for estimation of the latent factors which can be carried out by weighted least-squares, linear projection, or Kalman filtering/smoothing. We also compare the approaches presented with: Principal Component analysis and the classical, fixed $N$, exact Maximum Likelihood approach. We conclude with a discussion on efficiency of the considered estimators.
Long-tailed classification poses a challenge due to its heavy imbalance in class probabilities and tail-sensitivity risks with asymmetric misprediction costs. Recent attempts have used re-balancing loss and ensemble methods, but they are largely heuristic and depend heavily on empirical results, lacking theoretical explanation. Furthermore, existing methods overlook the decision loss, which characterizes different costs associated with tailed classes. This paper presents a general and principled framework from a Bayesian-decision-theory perspective, which unifies existing techniques including re-balancing and ensemble methods, and provides theoretical justifications for their effectiveness. From this perspective, we derive a novel objective based on the integrated risk and a Bayesian deep-ensemble approach to improve the accuracy of all classes, especially the "tail". Besides, our framework allows for task-adaptive decision loss which provides provably optimal decisions in varying task scenarios, along with the capability to quantify uncertainty. Finally, We conduct comprehensive experiments, including standard classification, tail-sensitive classification with a new False Head Rate metric, calibration, and ablation studies. Our framework significantly improves the current SOTA even on large-scale real-world datasets like ImageNet.
Traction parameters, that characterize the ground-wheel contact dynamics, are the central factor in the energy efficiency of vehicles. To optimize fuel consumption, reduce wear of tires, increase productivity etc., knowledge of current traction parameters is unavoidable. Unfortunately, these parameters are difficult to measure and require expensive force and torque sensors. An alternative way is to use system identification to determine them. In this work, we validate such a method in field experiments with a mobile robot. The method is based on an adaptive Kalman filter. We show how it estimates the traction parameters online, during the motion on the field, and compare them to their values determined via a 6-directional force-torque sensor installed for verification. Data of adhesion slip ratio curves is recorded and compared to curves from literature for additional validation of the method. The results can establish a foundation for a number of optimal traction methods.
The kernel-based method has been successfully applied in linear system identification using stable kernel designs. From a Gaussian process perspective, it automatically provides probabilistic error bounds for the identified models from the posterior covariance, which are useful in robust and stochastic control. However, the error bounds require knowledge of the true hyperparameters in the kernel design and are demonstrated to be inaccurate with estimated hyperparameters for lightly damped systems or in the presence of high noise. In this work, we provide reliable quantification of the estimation error when the hyperparameters are unknown. The bounds are obtained by first constructing a high-probability set for the true hyperparameters from the marginal likelihood function and then finding the worst-case posterior covariance within the set. The proposed bound is proven to contain the true model with a high probability and its validity is verified in numerical simulation.