Combining ideas coming from Stone duality and Reynolds parametricity, we formulate in a clean and principled way a notion of profinite lambda-term which, we show, generalizes at every type the traditional notion of profinite word coming from automata theory. We start by defining the Stone space of profinite lambda-terms as a projective limit of finite sets of usual lambda-terms, considered modulo a notion of equivalence based on the finite standard model. One main contribution of the paper is to establish that, somewhat surprisingly, the resulting notion of profinite lambda-term coming from Stone duality lives in perfect harmony with the principles of Reynolds parametricity. In addition, we show that the notion of profinite lambda-term is compositional by constructing a cartesian closed category of profinite lambda-terms, and we establish that the embedding from lambda-terms modulo beta-eta-conversion to profinite lambda-terms is faithful using Statman's finite completeness theorem. Finally, we prove that the traditional Church encoding of finite words into lambda-terms can be extended to profinite words, and leads to a homeomorphism between the space of profinite words and the space of profinite lambda-terms of the corresponding Church type.
Contraction in Wasserstein 1-distance with explicit rates is established for generalized Hamiltonian Monte Carlo with stochastic gradients under possibly nonconvex conditions. The algorithms considered include splitting schemes of kinetic Langevin diffusion. As consequence, quantitative Gaussian concentration bounds are provided for empirical averages. Convergence in Wasserstein 2-distance, total variation and relative entropy are also given, together with numerical bias estimates.
Linear regression models have been extensively considered in the literature. However, in some practical applications they may not be appropriate all over the range of the covariate. In this paper, a more flexible model is introduced by considering a regression model $Y=r(X)+\varepsilon$ where the regression function $r(\cdot)$ is assumed to be linear for large values in the domain of the predictor variable $X$. More precisely, we assume that $r(x)=\alpha_0+\beta_0 x$ for $x> u_0$, where the value $u_0$ is identified as the smallest value satisfying such a property. A penalized procedure is introduced to estimate the threshold $u_0$. The considered proposal focusses on a semiparametric approach since no parametric model is assumed for the regression function for values smaller than $u_0$. Consistency properties of both the threshold estimator and the estimators of $(\alpha_0,\beta_0)$ are derived, under mild assumptions. Through a numerical study, the small sample properties of the proposed procedure and the importance of introducing a penalization are investigated. The analysis of a real data set allows us to demonstrate the usefulness of the penalized estimators.
Causal representation learning algorithms discover lower-dimensional representations of data that admit a decipherable interpretation of cause and effect; as achieving such interpretable representations is challenging, many causal learning algorithms utilize elements indicating prior information, such as (linear) structural causal models, interventional data, or weak supervision. Unfortunately, in exploratory causal representation learning, such elements and prior information may not be available or warranted. Alternatively, scientific datasets often have multiple modalities or physics-based constraints, and the use of such scientific, multimodal data has been shown to improve disentanglement in fully unsupervised settings. Consequently, we introduce a causal representation learning algorithm (causalPIMA) that can use multimodal data and known physics to discover important features with causal relationships. Our innovative algorithm utilizes a new differentiable parametrization to learn a directed acyclic graph (DAG) together with a latent space of a variational autoencoder in an end-to-end differentiable framework via a single, tractable evidence lower bound loss function. We place a Gaussian mixture prior on the latent space and identify each of the mixtures with an outcome of the DAG nodes; this novel identification enables feature discovery with causal relationships. Tested against a synthetic and a scientific dataset, our results demonstrate the capability of learning an interpretable causal structure while simultaneously discovering key features in a fully unsupervised setting.
Non-contrastive SSL methods like BYOL and SimSiam rely on asymmetric predictor networks to avoid representational collapse without negative samples. Yet, how predictor networks facilitate stable learning is not fully understood. While previous theoretical analyses assumed Euclidean losses, most practical implementations rely on cosine similarity. To gain further theoretical insight into non-contrastive SSL, we analytically study learning dynamics in conjunction with Euclidean and cosine similarity in the eigenspace of closed-form linear predictor networks. We show that both avoid collapse through implicit variance regularization albeit through different dynamical mechanisms. Moreover, we find that the eigenvalues act as effective learning rate multipliers and propose a family of isotropic loss functions (IsoLoss) that equalize convergence rates across eigenmodes. Empirically, IsoLoss speeds up the initial learning dynamics and increases robustness, thereby allowing us to dispense with the EMA target network typically used with non-contrastive methods. Our analysis sheds light on the variance regularization mechanisms of non-contrastive SSL and lays the theoretical grounds for crafting novel loss functions that shape the learning dynamics of the predictor's spectrum.
(Strong) circular external difference families (which we denote as CEDFs and SCEDFs) can be used to construct nonmalleable threshold schemes. They are a variation of (strong) external difference families, which have been extensively studied in recent years. We provide a variety of constructions for CEDFs based on graceful labellings ($\alpha$-valuations) of lexicographic products $C_n \boldsymbol{\cdot} K_{\ell}^c$, where $C_n$ denotes a cycle of length $n$. SCEDFs having more than two subsets do not exist. However, we can construct close approximations (more specifically, certain types of circular algebraic manipulation detection (AMD) codes) using the theory of cyclotomic numbers in finite fields.
Scientists continue to develop increasingly complex mechanistic models to reflect their knowledge more realistically. Statistical inference using these models can be challenging since the corresponding likelihood function is often intractable and model simulation may be computationally burdensome. Fortunately, in many of these situations, it is possible to adopt a surrogate model or approximate likelihood function. It may be convenient to conduct Bayesian inference directly with the surrogate, but this can result in bias and poor uncertainty quantification. In this paper we propose a new method for adjusting approximate posterior samples to reduce bias and produce more accurate uncertainty quantification. We do this by optimizing a transform of the approximate posterior that maximizes a scoring rule. Our approach requires only a (fixed) small number of complex model simulations and is numerically stable. We demonstrate good performance of the new method on several examples of increasing complexity.
We construct a bipartite generalization of Alon and Szegedy's nearly orthogonal vectors, thereby obtaining strong bounds for several extremal problems involving the Lov\'asz theta function, vector chromatic number, minimum semidefinite rank, nonnegative rank, and extension complexity of polytopes. In particular, we derive some general lower bounds for the vector chromatic number which may be of independent interest.
Generative diffusion models have achieved spectacular performance in many areas of generative modeling. While the fundamental ideas behind these models come from non-equilibrium physics, in this paper we show that many aspects of these models can be understood using the tools of equilibrium statistical mechanics. Using this reformulation, we show that generative diffusion models undergo second-order phase transitions corresponding to symmetry breaking phenomena. We argue that this lead to a form of instability that lies at the heart of their generative capabilities and that can be described by a set of mean field critical exponents. We conclude by analyzing recent work connecting diffusion models and associative memory networks in view of the thermodynamic formulations.
When multiple self-adaptive systems share the same environment and have common goals, they may coordinate their adaptations at runtime to avoid conflicts and to satisfy their goals. There are two approaches to coordination. (1) Logically centralized, where a supervisor has complete control over the individual self-adaptive systems. Such approach is infeasible when the systems have different owners or administrative domains. (2) Logically decentralized, where coordination is achieved through direct interactions. Because the individual systems have control over the information they share, decentralized coordination accommodates multiple administrative domains. However, existing techniques do not account simultaneously for both local concerns, e.g., preferences, and shared concerns, e.g., conflicts, which may lead to goals not being achieved as expected. Our idea to address this shortcoming is to express both types of concerns within the same constraint optimization problem. We propose CoADAPT, a decentralized coordination technique introducing two types of constraints: preference constraints, expressing local concerns, and consistency constraints, expressing shared concerns. At runtime, the problem is solved in a decentralized way using distributed constraint optimization algorithms implemented by each self-adaptive system. As a first step in realizing CoADAPT, we focus in this work on the coordination of adaptation planning strategies, traditionally addressed only with centralized techniques. We show the feasibility of CoADAPT in an exemplar from cloud computing and analyze experimentally its scalability.
The goal of explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is to generate human-interpretable explanations, but there are no computationally precise theories of how humans interpret AI generated explanations. The lack of theory means that validation of XAI must be done empirically, on a case-by-case basis, which prevents systematic theory-building in XAI. We propose a psychological theory of how humans draw conclusions from saliency maps, the most common form of XAI explanation, which for the first time allows for precise prediction of explainee inference conditioned on explanation. Our theory posits that absent explanation humans expect the AI to make similar decisions to themselves, and that they interpret an explanation by comparison to the explanations they themselves would give. Comparison is formalized via Shepard's universal law of generalization in a similarity space, a classic theory from cognitive science. A pre-registered user study on AI image classifications with saliency map explanations demonstrate that our theory quantitatively matches participants' predictions of the AI.