We solve the $r$-star covering problem in simple orthogonal polygons, also known as the point guard problem in simple orthogonal polygons with rectangular vision, in quadratic time.
We introduce a new Langevin dynamics based algorithm, called e-TH$\varepsilon$O POULA, to solve optimization problems with discontinuous stochastic gradients which naturally appear in real-world applications such as quantile estimation, vector quantization, CVaR minimization, and regularized optimization problems involving ReLU neural networks. We demonstrate both theoretically and numerically the applicability of the e-TH$\varepsilon$O POULA algorithm. More precisely, under the conditions that the stochastic gradient is locally Lipschitz in average and satisfies a certain convexity at infinity condition, we establish non-asymptotic error bounds for e-TH$\varepsilon$O POULA in Wasserstein distances and provide a non-asymptotic estimate for the expected excess risk, which can be controlled to be arbitrarily small. Three key applications in finance and insurance are provided, namely, multi-period portfolio optimization, transfer learning in multi-period portfolio optimization, and insurance claim prediction, which involve neural networks with (Leaky)-ReLU activation functions. Numerical experiments conducted using real-world datasets illustrate the superior empirical performance of e-TH$\varepsilon$O POULA compared to SGLD, TUSLA, ADAM, and AMSGrad in terms of model accuracy.
We propose a topological mapping and localization system able to operate on real human colonoscopies, despite significant shape and illumination changes. The map is a graph where each node codes a colon location by a set of real images, while edges represent traversability between nodes. For close-in-time images, where scene changes are minor, place recognition can be successfully managed with the recent transformers-based local feature matching algorithms. However, under long-term changes -- such as different colonoscopies of the same patient -- feature-based matching fails. To address this, we train on real colonoscopies a deep global descriptor achieving high recall with significant changes in the scene. The addition of a Bayesian filter boosts the accuracy of long-term place recognition, enabling relocalization in a previously built map. Our experiments show that ColonMapper is able to autonomously build a map and localize against it in two important use cases: localization within the same colonoscopy or within different colonoscopies of the same patient. Code will be available upon acceptance.
We propose and analyze an efficient algorithm for solving the joint sparse recovery problem using a new regularization-based method, named orthogonally weighted $\ell_{2,1}$ ($\mathit{ow}\ell_{2,1}$), which is specifically designed to take into account the rank of the solution matrix. This method has applications in feature extraction, matrix column selection, and dictionary learning, and it is distinct from commonly used $\ell_{2,1}$ regularization and other existing regularization-based approaches because it can exploit the full rank of the row-sparse solution matrix, a key feature in many applications. We provide a proof of the method's rank-awareness, establish the existence of solutions to the proposed optimization problem, and develop an efficient algorithm for solving it, whose convergence is analyzed. We also present numerical experiments to illustrate the theory and demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on real-life problems.
We propose data thinning, an approach for splitting an observation into two or more independent parts that sum to the original observation, and that follow the same distribution as the original observation, up to a (known) scaling of a parameter. This very general proposal is applicable to any convolution-closed distribution, a class that includes the Gaussian, Poisson, negative binomial, gamma, and binomial distributions, among others. Data thinning has a number of applications to model selection, evaluation, and inference. For instance, cross-validation via data thinning provides an attractive alternative to the usual approach of cross-validation via sample splitting, especially in settings in which the latter is not applicable. In simulations and in an application to single-cell RNA-sequencing data, we show that data thinning can be used to validate the results of unsupervised learning approaches, such as k-means clustering and principal components analysis, for which traditional sample splitting is unattractive or unavailable.
We investigate how invariant subspaces will change when a matrix with a single eigenvalue is perturbed. We focus on the case when an invariant subspace corresponds to the eigenvalues perturbed from those associated with the same order Jordan blocks. An invariant subspace can be expressed as the range of a full column matrix. We characterize the perturbations in terms of fractional orders for the blocks of such a matrix. We also provide the formulas for the coefficient matrices associated with the zero and first fractional orders. The results generalize the existing standard invariant subspace perturbation theory.
Self-orthogonal codes are an important subclass of linear codes which have nice applications in quantum codes and lattices. It is known that a binary linear code is self-orthogonal if its every codeword has weight divisible by four, and a ternary linear code is self-orthogonal if and only if its every codeword has weight divisible by three. It remains open for a long time to establish the relationship between the self-orthogonality of a general $q$-ary linear code and the divisibility of its weights, where $q=p^m$ for a prime $p$. In this paper, we mainly prove that any $p$-divisible code containing the all-1 vector over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$ is self-orthogonal for odd prime $p$, which solves this open problem under certain conditions. Thanks to this result, we characterize that any projective two-weight code containing the all-1 codeword over $\mathbb{F}_q$ is self-orthogonal. Furthermore, by the extending and augmentation techniques, we construct six new families of self-orthogonal divisible codes from known cyclic codes. Finally, we construct two more families of self-orthogonal divisible codes with locality 2 which have nice application in distributed storage systems.
The probe and singular sources methods are well-known two classical direct reconstruction methods in inverse obstacle problems governed by partial differential equations. In this paper, by considering an inverse obstacle problem governed by the Laplace equation in a bounded domain as a prototype case, an integrated theory of the probe and singular sources methods is proposed. The theory consists of three parts: (i) introducing the singular sources method combined with the notion of the probe method; (ii) finding {\it a third indicator function} whose two ways decomposition yields the indicator functions in the probe and singular sources methods; (iii) finding the completely integrated version of the probe and singular sources methods.
We prove a tight parallel repetition theorem for $3$-message computationally-secure quantum interactive protocols between an efficient challenger and an efficient adversary. We also prove under plausible assumptions that the security of $4$-message computationally secure protocols does not generally decrease under parallel repetition. These mirror the classical results of Bellare, Impagliazzo, and Naor [BIN97]. Finally, we prove that all quantum argument systems can be generically compiled to an equivalent $3$-message argument system, mirroring the transformation for quantum proof systems [KW00, KKMV07]. As immediate applications, we show how to derive hardness amplification theorems for quantum bit commitment schemes (answering a question of Yan [Yan22]), EFI pairs (answering a question of Brakerski, Canetti, and Qian [BCQ23]), public-key quantum money schemes (answering a question of Aaronson and Christiano [AC13]), and quantum zero-knowledge argument systems. We also derive an XOR lemma [Yao82] for quantum predicates as a corollary.
Because $\Sigma^p_2$- and $\Sigma^p_3$-hardness proofs are usually tedious and difficult, not so many complete problems for these classes are known. This is especially true in the areas of min-max regret robust optimization, network interdiction, most vital vertex problems, blocker problems, and two-stage adjustable robust optimization problems. Even though these areas are well-researched for over two decades and one would naturally expect many (if not most) of the problems occurring in these areas to be complete for the above classes, almost no completeness results exist in the literature. We address this lack of knowledge by introducing over 70 new $\Sigma^p_2$-complete and $\Sigma^p_3$-complete problems. We achieve this result by proving a new meta-theorem, which shows $\Sigma^p_2$- and $\Sigma^p_3$-completeness simultaneously for a huge class of problems. The majority of all earlier publications on $\Sigma^p_2$- and $\Sigma^p_3$-completeness in said areas are special cases of our meta-theorem. Our precise result is the following: We introduce a large list of problems for which the meta-theorem is applicable (including clique, vertex cover, knapsack, TSP, facility location and many more). For every problem on this list, we show: The interdiction/minimum cost blocker/most vital nodes problem (with element costs) is $\Sigma^p_2$-complete. The min-max-regret problem with interval uncertainty is $\Sigma^p_2$-complete. The two-stage adjustable robust optimization problem with discrete budgeted uncertainty is $\Sigma^p_3$-complete. In summary, our work reveals the interesting insight that a large amount of NP-complete problems have the property that their min-max versions are 'automatically' $\Sigma^p_2$-complete.
Learning distance functions between complex objects, such as the Wasserstein distance to compare point sets, is a common goal in machine learning applications. However, functions on such complex objects (e.g., point sets and graphs) are often required to be invariant to a wide variety of group actions e.g. permutation or rigid transformation. Therefore, continuous and symmetric product functions (such as distance functions) on such complex objects must also be invariant to the product of such group actions. We call these functions symmetric and factor-wise group invariant (or SFGI functions in short). In this paper, we first present a general neural network architecture for approximating SFGI functions. The main contribution of this paper combines this general neural network with a sketching idea to develop a specific and efficient neural network which can approximate the $p$-th Wasserstein distance between point sets. Very importantly, the required model complexity is independent of the sizes of input point sets. On the theoretical front, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first result showing that there exists a neural network with the capacity to approximate Wasserstein distance with bounded model complexity. Our work provides an interesting integration of sketching ideas for geometric problems with universal approximation of symmetric functions. On the empirical front, we present a range of results showing that our newly proposed neural network architecture performs comparatively or better than other models (including a SOTA Siamese Autoencoder based approach). In particular, our neural network generalizes significantly better and trains much faster than the SOTA Siamese AE. Finally, this line of investigation could be useful in exploring effective neural network design for solving a broad range of geometric optimization problems (e.g., $k$-means in a metric space).