Over the past decade, the importance of the 1D signature which can be seen as a functional defined along a path, has been pivotal in both path-wise stochastic calculus and the analysis of time series data. By considering an image as a two-parameter function that takes values in a $d$-dimensional space, we introduce an extension of the path signature to images. We address numerous challenges associated with this extension and demonstrate that the 2D signature satisfies a version of Chen's relation in addition to a shuffle-type product. Furthermore, we show that specific variations of the 2D signature can be recursively defined, thereby satisfying an integral-type equation. We analyze the properties of the proposed signature, such as continuity, invariance to stretching, translation and rotation of the underlying image. Additionally, we establish that the proposed 2D signature over an image satisfies a universal approximation property.
We discuss the possibility of constructing a function that validates the definition or not definition of the partial recursive functions of one variable. This is a topic in computability theory, which was first approached by Alan M. Turing in 1936 in his foundational work "On Computable Numbers". Here we face it using the Model of computability of the recursive functions instead of the Turing's machines, but the results are transferable from one to another paradigm with ease. Recursive functions that are not defined at a given point, correspond to the Turing machines that "do not end" for a given input. What we propose Is a slight slip from the orthodox point of view: the issue of the self-reference and of the self-validation is not an impediment in imperative languages.
We consider the bit complexity of computing Chow forms and their generalization to multiprojective spaces. We develop a deterministic algorithm using resultants and obtain a single exponential complexity upper bound. Earlier computational results for Chow forms were in the arithmetic complexity model, and our result represents the first bit complexity bound. We also extend our algorithm to Hurwitz forms in projective space, and explore connections between multiprojective Hurwitz forms and matroid theory. The motivation for our work comes from incidence geometry where intriguing computational algebra problems remain open.
Riemannian optimization is concerned with problems, where the independent variable lies on a smooth manifold. There is a number of problems from numerical linear algebra that fall into this category, where the manifold is usually specified by special matrix structures, such as orthogonality or definiteness. Following this line of research, we investigate tools for Riemannian optimization on the symplectic Stiefel manifold. We complement the existing set of numerical optimization algorithms with a Riemannian trust region method tailored to the symplectic Stiefel manifold. To this end, we derive a matrix formula for the Riemannian Hessian under a right-invariant metric. Moreover, we propose a novel retraction for approximating the Riemannian geodesics. Finally, we conduct a comparative study in which we juxtapose the performance of the Riemannian variants of the steepest descent, conjugate gradients, and trust region methods on selected matrix optimization problems that feature symplectic constraints.
The implication problem for conditional independence (CI) asks whether the fact that a probability distribution obeys a given finite set of CI relations implies that a further CI statement also holds in this distribution. This problem has a long and fascinating history, cumulating in positive results about implications now known as the semigraphoid axioms as well as impossibility results about a general finite characterization of CI implications. Motivated by violation of faithfulness assumptions in causal discovery, we study the implication problem in the special setting where the CI relations are obtained from a directed acyclic graphical (DAG) model along with one additional CI statement. Focusing on the Gaussian case, we give a complete characterization of when such an implication is graphical by using algebraic techniques. Moreover, prompted by the relevance of strong faithfulness in statistical guarantees for causal discovery algorithms, we give a graphical solution for an approximate CI implication problem, in which we ask whether small values of one additional partial correlation entail small values for yet a further partial correlation.
We propose a coherent transceiver architecture able to transmit information and enhance the security of the optical network by identifying other optical systems and subsystems. Simulations show that identification is obtained with sufficient reliability in standard operating conditions.
Suppose that there is an unknown underlying graph $G$ on a large vertex set, and we can test only a proportion of the possible edges to check whether they are present in $G$. If $G$ has high modularity, is the observed graph $G'$ likely to have high modularity? We see that this is indeed the case under a mild condition, in a natural model where we test edges at random. We find that $q^*(G') \geq q^*(G)-\varepsilon$ with probability at least $1-\varepsilon$, as long as the expected number edges in $G'$ is large enough. Similarly, $q^*(G') \leq q^*(G)+\varepsilon$ with probability at least $1-\varepsilon$, under the stronger condition that the expected average degree in $G'$ is large enough. Further, under this stronger condition, finding a good partition for $G'$ helps us to find a good partition for $G$. We also consider the vertex sampling model for partially observing the underlying graph: we find that for dense underlying graphs we may estimate the modularity by sampling constantly many vertices and observing the corresponding induced subgraph, but this does not hold for underlying graphs with a subquadratic number of edges. Finally we deduce some related results, for example showing that under-sampling tends to lead to overestimation of modularity.
We propose a method for obtaining parsimonious decompositions of networks into higher order interactions which can take the form of arbitrary motifs.The method is based on a class of analytically solvable generative models, where vertices are connected via explicit copies of motifs, which in combination with non-parametric priors allow us to infer higher order interactions from dyadic graph data without any prior knowledge on the types or frequencies of such interactions. Crucially, we also consider 'degree--corrected' models that correctly reflect the degree distribution of the network and consequently prove to be a better fit for many real world--networks compared to non-degree corrected models. We test the presented approach on simulated data for which we recover the set of underlying higher order interactions to a high degree of accuracy. For empirical networks the method identifies concise sets of atomic subgraphs from within thousands of candidates that cover a large fraction of edges and include higher order interactions of known structural and functional significance. The method not only produces an explicit higher order representation of the network but also a fit of the network to analytically tractable models opening new avenues for the systematic study of higher order network structures.
An interesting case of the well-known Dataset Shift Problem is the classification of Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in the context of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). The non-stationarity of EEG signals can lead to poor generalisation performance in BCI classification systems used in different sessions, also from the same subject. In this paper, we start from the hypothesis that the Dataset Shift problem can be alleviated by exploiting suitable eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods to locate and transform the relevant characteristics of the input for the goal of classification. In particular, we focus on an experimental analysis of explanations produced by several XAI methods on an ML system trained on a typical EEG dataset for emotion recognition. Results show that many relevant components found by XAI methods are shared across the sessions and can be used to build a system able to generalise better. However, relevant components of the input signal also appear to be highly dependent on the input itself.
In data assimilation, an ensemble provides a nonintrusive way to evolve a probability density described by a nonlinear prediction model. Although a large ensemble size is required for statistical accuracy, the ensemble size is typically limited to a small number due to the computational cost of running the prediction model, which leads to a sampling error. Several methods, such as localization, exist to mitigate the sampling error, often requiring problem-dependent fine-tuning and design. This work introduces another sampling error mitigation method using a smoothness constraint in the Fourier space. In particular, this work smoothes out the spectrum of the system to increase the stability and accuracy even under a small ensemble size. The efficacy of the new idea is validated through a suite of stringent test problems, including Lorenz 96 and Kuramoto-Sivashinsky turbulence models.
We consider the problem of causal inference based on observational data (or the related missing data problem) with a binary or discrete treatment variable. In that context we study counterfactual density estimation, which provides more nuanced information than counterfactual mean estimation (i.e., the average treatment effect). We impose the shape-constraint of log-concavity (a unimodality constraint) on the counterfactual densities, and then develop doubly robust estimators of the log-concave counterfactual density (based on an augmented inverse-probability weighted pseudo-outcome), and show the consistency in various global metrics of that estimator. Based on that estimator we also develop asymptotically valid pointwise confidence intervals for the counterfactual density.