The recent trend in deep learning methods for 3D point cloud understanding is to propose increasingly sophisticated architectures either to better capture 3D geometries or by introducing possibly undesired inductive biases. Moreover, prior works introducing novel architectures compared their performance on the same domain, devoting less attention to their generalization to other domains. We argue that the ability of a model to transfer the learnt knowledge to different domains is an important feature that should be evaluated to exhaustively assess the quality of a deep network architecture. In this work we propose PatchMixer, a simple yet effective architecture that extends the ideas behind the recent MLP-Mixer paper to 3D point clouds. The novelties of our approach are the processing of local patches instead of the whole shape to promote robustness to partial point clouds, and the aggregation of patch-wise features using an MLP as a simpler alternative to the graph convolutions or the attention mechanisms that are used in prior works. We evaluated our method on the shape classification and part segmentation tasks, achieving superior generalization performance compared to a selection of the most relevant deep architectures.
Multiagent systems aim to accomplish highly complex learning tasks through decentralised consensus seeking dynamics and their use has garnered a great deal of attention in the signal processing and computational intelligence societies. This article examines the behaviour of multiagent networked systems with nonlinear filtering/learning dynamics. To this end, a general formulation for the actions of an agent in multiagent networked systems is presented and conditions for achieving a cohesive learning behaviour is given. Importantly, application of the so derived framework in distributed and federated learning scenarios are presented.
Quantum neural networks (QNNs) and quantum kernels stand as prominent figures in the realm of quantum machine learning, poised to leverage the nascent capabilities of near-term quantum computers to surmount classical machine learning challenges. Nonetheless, the training efficiency challenge poses a limitation on both QNNs and quantum kernels, curbing their efficacy when applied to extensive datasets. To confront this concern, we present a unified approach: coreset selection, aimed at expediting the training of QNNs and quantum kernels by distilling a judicious subset from the original training dataset. Furthermore, we analyze the generalization error bounds of QNNs and quantum kernels when trained on such coresets, unveiling the comparable performance with those training on the complete original dataset. Through systematic numerical simulations, we illuminate the potential of coreset selection in expediting tasks encompassing synthetic data classification, identification of quantum correlations, and quantum compiling. Our work offers a useful way to improve diverse quantum machine learning models with a theoretical guarantee while reducing the training cost.
Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) are widely used to model complex dynamics that arises in biology, chemistry, engineering, finance, physics, etc. Calibration of a complicated ODE system using noisy data is generally very difficult. In this work, we propose a two-stage nonparametric approach to address this problem. We first extract the de-noised data and their higher order derivatives using boundary kernel method, and then feed them into a sparsely connected deep neural network with ReLU activation function. Our method is able to recover the ODE system without being subject to the curse of dimensionality and complicated ODE structure. When the ODE possesses a general modular structure, with each modular component involving only a few input variables, and the network architecture is properly chosen, our method is proven to be consistent. Theoretical properties are corroborated by an extensive simulation study that demonstrates the validity and effectiveness of the proposed method. Finally, we use our method to simultaneously characterize the growth rate of Covid-19 infection cases from 50 states of the USA.
We present a robust deep incremental learning framework for regression tasks on financial temporal tabular datasets which is built upon the incremental use of commonly available tabular and time series prediction models to adapt to distributional shifts typical of financial datasets. The framework uses a simple basic building block (decision trees) to build self-similar models of any required complexity to deliver robust performance under adverse situations such as regime changes, fat-tailed distributions, and low signal-to-noise ratios. As a detailed study, we demonstrate our scheme using XGBoost models trained on the Numerai dataset and show that a two layer deep ensemble of XGBoost models over different model snapshots delivers high quality predictions under different market regimes. We also show that the performance of XGBoost models with different number of boosting rounds in three scenarios (small, standard and large) is monotonically increasing with respect to model size and converges towards the generalisation upper bound. We also evaluate the robustness of the model under variability of different hyperparameters, such as model complexity and data sampling settings. Our model has low hardware requirements as no specialised neural architectures are used and each base model can be independently trained in parallel.
In these pedagogic notes I review the statistical mechanics approach to neural networks, focusing on the paradigmatic example of the perceptron architecture with binary an continuous weights, in the classification setting. I will review the Gardner's approach based on replica method and the derivation of the SAT/UNSAT transition in the storage setting. Then, I discuss some recent works that unveiled how the zero training error configurations are geometrically arranged, and how this arrangement changes as the size of the training set increases. I also illustrate how different regions of solution space can be explored analytically and how the landscape in the vicinity of a solution can be characterized. I give evidence how, in binary weight models, algorithmic hardness is a consequence of the disappearance of a clustered region of solutions that extends to very large distances. Finally, I demonstrate how the study of linear mode connectivity between solutions can give insights into the average shape of the solution manifold.
Complex networks are used to model many real-world systems. However, the dimensionality of these systems can make them challenging to analyze. Dimensionality reduction techniques like POD can be used in such cases. However, these models are susceptible to perturbations in the input data. We propose an algorithmic framework that combines techniques from pattern recognition (PR) and stochastic filtering theory to enhance the output of such models. The results of our study show that our method can improve the accuracy of the surrogate model under perturbed inputs. Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are susceptible to adversarial attacks. However, recent research has revealed that Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (neural ODEs) exhibit robustness in specific applications. We benchmark our algorithmic framework with the neural ODE-based approach as a reference.
The accurate representation of precipitation in Earth system models (ESMs) is crucial for reliable projections of the ecological and socioeconomic impacts in response to anthropogenic global warming. The complex cross-scale interactions of processes that produce precipitation are challenging to model, however, inducing potentially strong biases in ESM fields, especially regarding extremes. State-of-the-art bias correction methods only address errors in the simulated frequency distributions locally at every individual grid cell. Improving unrealistic spatial patterns of the ESM output, which would require spatial context, has not been possible so far. Here, we show that a post-processing method based on physically constrained generative adversarial networks (cGANs) can correct biases of a state-of-the-art, CMIP6-class ESM both in local frequency distributions and in the spatial patterns at once. While our method improves local frequency distributions equally well as gold-standard bias-adjustment frameworks, it strongly outperforms any existing methods in the correction of spatial patterns, especially in terms of the characteristic spatial intermittency of precipitation extremes.
We present a novel computational model for the dynamics of alveolar recruitment/derecruitment (RD), which reproduces the underlying characteristics typically observed in injured lungs. The basic idea is a pressure- and time-dependent variation of the stress-free reference volume in reduced dimensional viscoelastic elements representing the acinar tissue. We choose a variable reference volume triggered by critical opening and closing pressures in a time-dependent manner from a straightforward mechanical point of view. In the case of (partially and progressively) collapsing alveolar structures, the volume available for expansion during breathing reduces and vice versa, eventually enabling consideration of alveolar collapse and reopening in our model. We further introduce a method for patient-specific determination of the underlying critical parameters of the new alveolar RD dynamics when integrated into the tissue elements, referred to as terminal units, of a spatially resolved physics-based lung model that simulates the human respiratory system in an anatomically correct manner. Relevant patient-specific parameters of the terminal units are herein determined based on medical image data and the macromechanical behavior of the lung during artificial ventilation. We test the whole modeling approach for a real-life scenario by applying it to the clinical data of a mechanically ventilated patient. The generated lung model is capable of reproducing clinical measurements such as tidal volume and pleural pressure during various ventilation maneuvers. We conclude that this new model is an important step toward personalized treatment of ARDS patients by considering potentially harmful mechanisms - such as cyclic RD and overdistension - and might help in the development of relevant protective ventilation strategies to reduce ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI).
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.
Deep learning constitutes a recent, modern technique for image processing and data analysis, with promising results and large potential. As deep learning has been successfully applied in various domains, it has recently entered also the domain of agriculture. In this paper, we perform a survey of 40 research efforts that employ deep learning techniques, applied to various agricultural and food production challenges. We examine the particular agricultural problems under study, the specific models and frameworks employed, the sources, nature and pre-processing of data used, and the overall performance achieved according to the metrics used at each work under study. Moreover, we study comparisons of deep learning with other existing popular techniques, in respect to differences in classification or regression performance. Our findings indicate that deep learning provides high accuracy, outperforming existing commonly used image processing techniques.