We study the aggregate welfare and individual regret guarantees of dynamic \emph{pacing algorithms} in the context of repeated auctions with budgets. Such algorithms are commonly used as bidding agents in Internet advertising platforms. We show that when agents simultaneously apply a natural form of gradient-based pacing, the liquid welfare obtained over the course of the learning dynamics is at least half the optimal expected liquid welfare obtainable by any allocation rule. Crucially, this result holds \emph{without requiring convergence of the dynamics}, allowing us to circumvent known complexity-theoretic obstacles of finding equilibria. This result is also robust to the correlation structure between agent valuations and holds for any \emph{core auction}, a broad class of auctions that includes first-price, second-price, and generalized second-price auctions. For individual guarantees, we further show such pacing algorithms enjoy \emph{dynamic regret} bounds for individual value maximization, with respect to the sequence of budget-pacing bids, for any auction satisfying a monotone bang-for-buck property.
In domains where sample sizes are limited, efficient learning algorithms are critical. Learning using privileged information (LuPI) offers increased sample efficiency by allowing prediction models access to auxiliary information at training time which is unavailable when the models are used. In recent work, it was shown that for prediction in linear-Gaussian dynamical systems, a LuPI learner with access to intermediate time series data is never worse and often better in expectation than any unbiased classical learner. We provide new insights into this analysis and generalize it to nonlinear prediction tasks in latent dynamical systems, extending theoretical guarantees to the case where the map connecting latent variables and observations is known up to a linear transform. In addition, we propose algorithms based on random features and representation learning for the case when this map is unknown. A suite of empirical results confirm theoretical findings and show the potential of using privileged time-series information in nonlinear prediction.
Semidefinite programming (SDP) is a unifying framework that generalizes both linear programming and quadratically-constrained quadratic programming, while also yielding efficient solvers, both in theory and in practice. However, there exist known impossibility results for approximating the optimal solution when constraints for covering SDPs arrive in an online fashion. In this paper, we study online covering linear and semidefinite programs in which the algorithm is augmented with advice from a possibly erroneous predictor. We show that if the predictor is accurate, we can efficiently bypass these impossibility results and achieve a constant-factor approximation to the optimal solution, i.e., consistency. On the other hand, if the predictor is inaccurate, under some technical conditions, we achieve results that match both the classical optimal upper bounds and the tight lower bounds up to constant factors, i.e., robustness. More broadly, we introduce a framework that extends both (1) the online set cover problem augmented with machine-learning predictors, studied by Bamas, Maggiori, and Svensson (NeurIPS 2020), and (2) the online covering SDP problem, initiated by Elad, Kale, and Naor (ICALP 2016). Specifically, we obtain general online learning-augmented algorithms for covering linear programs with fractional advice and constraints, and initiate the study of learning-augmented algorithms for covering SDP problems. Our techniques are based on the primal-dual framework of Buchbinder and Naor (Mathematics of Operations Research, 34, 2009) and can be further adjusted to handle constraints where the variables lie in a bounded region, i.e., box constraints.
The problem of monotone submodular maximization has been studied extensively due to its wide range of applications. However, there are cases where one can only access the objective function in a distorted or noisy form because of the uncertain nature or the errors involved in the evaluation. This paper considers the problem of constrained monotone submodular maximization with noisy oracles introduced by [Hassidim et al., 2017]. For a cardinality constraint, we propose an algorithm achieving a near-optimal $\left(1-\frac{1}{e}-O(\varepsilon)\right)$-approximation guarantee (for arbitrary $\varepsilon > 0$) with only a polynomial number of queries to the noisy value oracle, which improves the exponential query complexity of [Singer et al., 2018]. For general matroid constraints, we show the first constant approximation algorithm in the presence of noise. Our main approaches are to design a novel local search framework that can handle the effect of noise and to construct certain smoothing surrogate functions for noise reduction.
Permissioned blockchains like Hyperledger Fabric have become quite popular for implementation of enterprise applications. Recent research has mainly focused on improving performance of permissioned blockchains without any consideration of their power/energy consumption. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive empirical study to understand energy efficiency (throughput/energy) of validator peer in Hyperledger Fabric (a major bottleneck node). We pick a number of optimizations for validator peer from literature (allocated CPUs, software block cache and FPGA based accelerator). First, we propose a methodology to measure power/energy consumption of the two resulting compute platforms (CPU-only and CPU+FPGA). Then, we use our methodology to evaluate energy efficiency of a diverse set of validator peer configurations, and present many useful insights. With careful selection of software optimizations and FPGA accelerator configuration, we improved energy efficiency of validator peer by 10$\times$ compared to vanilla validator peer (i.e., energy-aware provisioning of validator peer can deliver 10$\times$ more throughput while consuming the same amount of energy). In absolute terms, this means 23,000 tx/s with power consumption of 118W from a validator peer using software block cache running on a 4-core server with AMD/Xilinx Alveo U250 FPGA card.
Collecting complete network data is expensive, time-consuming, and often infeasible. Aggregated Relational Data (ARD), which capture information about a social network by asking a respondent questions of the form ``How many people with trait X do you know?'' provide a low-cost option when collecting complete network data is not possible. Rather than asking about connections between each pair of individuals directly, ARD collects the number of contacts the respondent knows with a given trait. Despite widespread use and a growing literature on ARD methodology, there is still no systematic understanding of when and why ARD should accurately recover features of the unobserved network. This paper provides such a characterization by deriving conditions under which statistics about the unobserved network (or functions of these statistics like regression coefficients) can be consistently estimated using ARD. We do this by first providing consistent estimates of network model parameters for three commonly used probabilistic models: the beta-model with node-specific unobserved effects, the stochastic block model with unobserved community structure, and latent geometric space models with unobserved latent locations. A key observation behind these results is that cross-group link probabilities for a collection of (possibly unobserved) groups identifies the model parameters, meaning ARD is sufficient for parameter estimation. With these estimated parameters, it is possible to simulate graphs from the fitted distribution and analyze the distribution of network statistics. We can then characterize conditions under which the simulated networks based on ARD will allow for consistent estimation of the unobserved network statistics, such as eigenvector centrality or response functions by or of the unobserved network, such as regression coefficients.
In group testing, the goal is to identify a subset of defective items within a larger set of items based on tests whose outcomes indicate whether at least one defective item is present. This problem is relevant in areas such as medical testing, DNA sequencing, communication protocols, and many more. In this paper, we study (i) a sparsity-constrained version of the problem, in which the testing procedure is subjected to one of the following two constraints: items are finitely divisible and thus may participate in at most $\gamma$ tests; or tests are size-constrained to pool no more than $\rho$ items per test; and (ii) a noisy version of the problem, where each test outcome is independently flipped with some constant probability. Under each of these settings, considering the for-each recovery guarantee with asymptotically vanishing error probability, we introduce a fast splitting algorithm and establish its near-optimality not only in terms of the number of tests, but also in terms of the decoding time. While the most basic formulations of our algorithms require $\Omega(n)$ storage for each algorithm, we also provide low-storage variants based on hashing, with similar recovery guarantees.
Model diagnostics and forecast evaluation are two sides of the same coin. A common principle is that fitted or predicted distributions ought to be calibrated or reliable, ideally in the sense of auto-calibration, where the outcome is a random draw from the posited distribution. For binary responses, this is the universal concept of reliability. For real-valued outcomes, a general theory of calibration has been elusive, despite a recent surge of interest in distributional regression and machine learning. We develop a framework rooted in probability theory, which gives rise to hierarchies of calibration, and applies to both predictive distributions and stand-alone point forecasts. In a nutshell, a prediction - distributional or single-valued - is conditionally T-calibrated if it can be taken at face value in terms of the functional T. Whenever T is defined via an identification function - as in the cases of threshold (non) exceedance probabilities, quantiles, expectiles, and moments - auto-calibration implies T-calibration. We introduce population versions of T-reliability diagrams and revisit a score decomposition into measures of miscalibration (MCB), discrimination (DSC), and uncertainty (UNC). In empirical settings, stable and efficient estimators of T-reliability diagrams and score components arise via nonparametric isotonic regression and the pool-adjacent-violators algorithm. For in-sample model diagnostics, we propose a universal coefficient of determination, $$\text{R}^\ast = \frac{\text{DSC}-\text{MCB}}{\text{UNC}},$$ that nests and reinterprets the classical $\text{R}^2$ in least squares (mean) regression and its natural analogue $\text{R}^1$ in quantile regression, yet applies to T-regression in general, with MCB $\geq 0$, DSC $\geq 0$, and $\text{R}^\ast \in [0,1]$ under modest conditions.
Decentralized cryptocurrencies are payment systems that rely on aligning the incentives of users and miners to operate correctly and offer a high quality of service to their users. Recent literature studies the mechanism design problem of the auction serving as the transaction fee mechanism (TFM). We show that while the protocol that requires a user to "pay as bid" and greedily chooses among available transactions based on their fees is not dominant strategy incentive-compatible (DSIC) for users, it has a Bayesian-Nash equilibrium (BNE) where bids are slightly shaded. Relaxing this incentive compatibility requirement circumvents the impossibility result of [16] and allows for an approximately revenue and welfare optimal, myopic miners incentive-compatibility (MMIC), and off-chain-agreement (OCA)-proof mechanism. We prove its guarantees using different benchmarks, and in particular, show it is the revenue optimal Bayesian incentive-compatible (BIC), MMIC and 1-OCA-proof mechanism among a large class of mechanisms. We move beyond the myopic model to a model where users offer transaction fees for their transaction to be accepted, as well as report their urgency level by specifying the time to live (TTL) of the transaction, after which it expires. We show guarantees provided by the greedy allocation rule, as well as a better-performing non-myopic rule. The above analysis is stated in terms of a cryptocurrency TFM, but applies to other settings, such as cloud computing and decentralized "gig" economy, as well.
Tie-breaker designs trade off a statistical design objective with short-term gain from preferentially assigning a binary treatment to those with high values of a running variable $x$. The design objective is any continuous function of the expected information matrix in a two-line regression model, and short-term gain is expressed as the covariance between the running variable and the treatment indicator. We investigate how to specify design functions indicating treatment probabilities as a function of $x$ to optimize these competing objectives, under external constraints on the number of subjects receiving treatment. Our results include sharp existence and uniqueness guarantees, while accommodating the ethically appealing requirement that treatment probabilities are non-decreasing in $x$. Under such a constraint, there always exists an optimal design function that is constant below and above a single discontinuity. When the running variable distribution is not symmetric or the fraction of subjects receiving the treatment is not $1/2$, our optimal designs improve upon a $D$-optimality objective without sacrificing short-term gain, compared to the three level tie-breaker designs of Owen and Varian (2020) that fix treatment probabilities at $0$, $1/2$, and $1$. We illustrate our optimal designs with data from Head Start, an early childhood government intervention program.
We study reserve price optimization in multi-phase second price auctions, where seller's prior actions affect the bidders' later valuations through a Markov Decision Process (MDP). Compared to the bandit setting in existing works, the setting in ours involves three challenges. First, from the seller's perspective, we need to efficiently explore the environment in the presence of potentially nontruthful bidders who aim to manipulates seller's policy. Second, we want to minimize the seller's revenue regret when the market noise distribution is unknown. Third, the seller's per-step revenue is unknown, nonlinear, and cannot even be directly observed from the environment. We propose a mechanism addressing all three challenges. To address the first challenge, we use a combination of a new technique named "buffer periods" and inspirations from Reinforcement Learning (RL) with low switching cost to limit bidders' surplus from untruthful bidding, thereby incentivizing approximately truthful bidding. The second one is tackled by a novel algorithm that removes the need for pure exploration when the market noise distribution is unknown. The third challenge is resolved by an extension of LSVI-UCB, where we use the auction's underlying structure to control the uncertainty of the revenue function. The three techniques culminate in the $\underline{\rm C}$ontextual-$\underline{\rm L}$SVI-$\underline{\rm U}$CB-$\underline{\rm B}$uffer (CLUB) algorithm which achieves $\tilde{ \mathcal{O}}(H^{5/2}\sqrt{K})$ revenue regret when the market noise is known and $\tilde{ \mathcal{O}}(H^{3}\sqrt{K})$ revenue regret when the noise is unknown with no assumptions on bidders' truthfulness.