This paper deals with the grouped variable selection problem. A widely used strategy is to augment the negative log-likelihood function with a sparsity-promoting penalty. Existing methods include the group Lasso, group SCAD, and group MCP. The group Lasso solves a convex optimization problem but is plagued by underestimation bias. The group SCAD and group MCP avoid this estimation bias but require solving a nonconvex optimization problem that may be plagued by suboptimal local optima. In this work, we propose an alternative method based on the generalized minimax concave (GMC) penalty, which is a folded concave penalty that maintains the convexity of the objective function. We develop a new method for grouped variable selection in linear regression, the group GMC, that generalizes the strategy of the original GMC estimator. We present an efficient algorithm for computing the group GMC estimator and also prove properties of the solution path to guide its numerical computation and tuning parameter selection in practice. We establish error bounds for both the group GMC and original GMC estimators. A rich set of simulation studies and a real data application indicate that the proposed group GMC approach outperforms existing methods in several different aspects under a wide array of scenarios.
We consider the Cauchy problem for the Helmholtz equation with a domain in R^d, d>2 with N cylindrical outlets to infinity with bounded inclusions in R^{d-1}. Cauchy data are prescribed on the boundary of the bounded domains and the aim is to find solution on the unbounded part of the boundary. In 1989, Kozlov and Maz'ya proposed an alternating iterative method for solving Cauchy problems associated with elliptic,self-adjoint and positive-definite operators in bounded domains. Different variants of this method for solving Cauchy problems associated with Helmholtz-type operators exists. We consider the variant proposed by Mpinganzima et al. for bounded domains and derive the necessary conditions for the convergence of the procedure in unbounded domains. For the numerical implementation, a finite difference method is used to solve the problem in a simple rectangular domain in R^2 that represent a truncated infinite strip. The numerical results shows that by appropriate truncation of the domain and with appropriate choice of the Robin parameters, the Robin-Dirichlet alternating iterative procedure is convergent.
We introduce and analyze various Regularized Combined Field Integral Equations (CFIER) formulations of time-harmonic Navier equations in media with piece-wise constant material properties. These formulations can be derived systematically starting from suitable coercive approximations of Dirichlet-to-Neumann operators (DtN), and we present a periodic pseudodifferential calculus framework within which the well posedness of CIER formulations can be established. We also use the DtN approximations to derive and analyze Optimized Schwarz (OS) methods for the solution of elastodynamics transmission problems. The pseudodifferential calculus we develop in this paper relies on careful singularity splittings of the kernels of Navier boundary integral operators which is also the basis of high-order Nystr\"om quadratures for their discretizations. Based on these high-order discretizations we investigate the rate of convergence of iterative solvers applied to CFIER and OS formulations of scattering and transmission problems. We present a variety of numerical results that illustrate that the CFIER methodology leads to important computational savings over the classical CFIE one, whenever iterative solvers are used for the solution of the ensuing discretized boundary integral equations. Finally, we show that the OS methods are competitive in the high-frequency high-contrast regime.
We introduce a new constrained optimization method for policy gradient reinforcement learning, which uses two trust regions to regulate each policy update. In addition to using the proximity of one single old policy as the first trust region as done by prior works, we propose to form a second trust region through the construction of another virtual policy that represents a wide range of past policies. We then enforce the new policy to stay closer to the virtual policy, which is beneficial in case the old policy performs badly. More importantly, we propose a mechanism to automatically build the virtual policy from a memory buffer of past policies, providing a new capability for dynamically selecting appropriate trust regions during the optimization process. Our proposed method, dubbed as Memory-Constrained Policy Optimization (MCPO), is examined on a diverse suite of environments including robotic locomotion control, navigation with sparse rewards and Atari games, consistently demonstrating competitive performance against recent on-policy constrained policy gradient methods.
In this work we present point-level region contrast, a self-supervised pre-training approach for the task of object detection. This approach is motivated by the two key factors in detection: localization and recognition. While accurate localization favors models that operate at the pixel- or point-level, correct recognition typically relies on a more holistic, region-level view of objects. Incorporating this perspective in pre-training, our approach performs contrastive learning by directly sampling individual point pairs from different regions. Compared to an aggregated representation per region, our approach is more robust to the change in input region quality, and further enables us to implicitly improve initial region assignments via online knowledge distillation during training. Both advantages are important when dealing with imperfect regions encountered in the unsupervised setting. Experiments show point-level region contrast improves on state-of-the-art pre-training methods for object detection and segmentation across multiple tasks and datasets, and we provide extensive ablation studies and visualizations to aid understanding. Code will be made available.
The naive importance sampling (IS) estimator generally does not work well in examples involving simultaneous inference on several targets, as the importance weights can take arbitrarily large values, making the estimator highly unstable. In such situations, alternative multiple IS estimators involving samples from multiple proposal distributions are preferred. Just like the naive IS, the success of these multiple IS estimators crucially depends on the choice of the proposal distributions. The selection of these proposal distributions is the focus of this article. We propose three methods: (i) a geometric space filling approach, (ii) a minimax variance approach, and (iii) a maximum entropy approach. The first two methods are applicable to any IS estimator, whereas the third approach is described in the context of Doss's (2010) two-stage IS estimator. For the first method, we propose a suitable measure of 'closeness' based on the symmetric Kullback-Leibler divergence, while the second and third approaches use estimates of asymptotic variances of Doss's (2010) IS estimator and Geyer's (1994) reverse logistic regression estimator, respectively. Thus, when samples from the proposal distributions are obtained by running Markov chains, we provide consistent spectral variance estimators for these asymptotic variances. The proposed methods for selecting proposal densities are illustrated using various detailed examples.
Linear mixed models (LMMs) are instrumental for regression analysis with structured dependence, such as grouped, clustered, or multilevel data. However, selection among the covariates--while accounting for this structured dependence--remains a challenge. We introduce a Bayesian decision analysis for subset selection with LMMs. Using a Mahalanobis loss function that incorporates the structured dependence, we derive optimal linear coefficients for (i) any given subset of variables and (ii) all subsets of variables that satisfy a cardinality constraint. Crucially, these estimates inherit shrinkage or regularization and uncertainty quantification from the underlying Bayesian model, and apply for any well-specified Bayesian LMM. More broadly, our decision analysis strategy deemphasizes the role of a single "best" subset, which is often unstable and limited in its information content, and instead favors a collection of near-optimal subsets. This collection is summarized by key member subsets and variable-specific importance metrics. Customized subset search and out-of-sample approximation algorithms are provided for more scalable computing. These tools are applied to simulated data and a longitudinal physical activity dataset, and demonstrate excellent prediction, estimation, and selection ability.
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.
With the increasing penetration of distributed energy resources, distributed optimization algorithms have attracted significant attention for power systems applications due to their potential for superior scalability, privacy, and robustness to a single point-of-failure. The Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) is a popular distributed optimization algorithm; however, its convergence performance is highly dependent on the selection of penalty parameters, which are usually chosen heuristically. In this work, we use reinforcement learning (RL) to develop an adaptive penalty parameter selection policy for the AC optimal power flow (ACOPF) problem solved via ADMM with the goal of minimizing the number of iterations until convergence. We train our RL policy using deep Q-learning, and show that this policy can result in significantly accelerated convergence (up to a 59% reduction in the number of iterations compared to existing, curvature-informed penalty parameter selection methods). Furthermore, we show that our RL policy demonstrates promise for generalizability, performing well under unseen loading schemes as well as under unseen losses of lines and generators (up to a 50% reduction in iterations). This work thus provides a proof-of-concept for using RL for parameter selection in ADMM for power systems applications.
In variable selection, a selection rule that prescribes the permissible sets of selected variables (called a "selection dictionary") is desirable due to the inherent structural constraints among the candidate variables. The methods that can incorporate such restrictions can improve model interpretability and prediction accuracy. Penalized regression can integrate selection rules by assigning the coefficients to different groups and then applying penalties to the groups. However, no general framework has been proposed to formalize selection rules and their applications. In this work, we establish a framework for structured variable selection that can incorporate universal structural constraints. We develop a mathematical language for constructing arbitrary selection rules, where the selection dictionary is formally defined. We show that all selection rules can be represented as a combination of operations on constructs, which can be used to identify the related selection dictionary. One may then apply some criteria to select the best model. We show that the theoretical framework can help to identify the grouping structure in existing penalized regression methods. In addition, we formulate structured variable selection into mixed-integer optimization problems which can be solved by existing software. Finally, we discuss the significance of the framework in the context of statistics.
This manuscript portrays optimization as a process. In many practical applications the environment is so complex that it is infeasible to lay out a comprehensive theoretical model and use classical algorithmic theory and mathematical optimization. It is necessary as well as beneficial to take a robust approach, by applying an optimization method that learns as one goes along, learning from experience as more aspects of the problem are observed. This view of optimization as a process has become prominent in varied fields and has led to some spectacular success in modeling and systems that are now part of our daily lives.