We consider simultaneous predictive distributions for independent Poisson observables and evaluate the performance of predictive distributions using the Kullback--Leibler (K-L) loss. We propose a class of empirical Bayesian predictive distributions that dominate the Bayesian predictive distribution based on the Jeffreys prior. The K-L risk of the empirical Bayesian predictive distributions is demonstrated to be less than $1.04$ times the minimax lower bound.
Numerical methods for computing the solutions of Markov backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs) driven by continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) are explored. The main contributions of this paper are as follows: (1) we observe that Euler-Maruyama temporal discretization methods for solving Markov BSDEs driven by CTMCs are equivalent to exponential integrators for solving the associated systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs); (2) we introduce multi-stage Euler-Maruyama methods for effectively solving "stiff" Markov BSDEs driven by CTMCs; these BSDEs typically arise from the spatial discretization of Markov BSDEs driven by Brownian motion; (3) we propose a multilevel spatial discretization method on sparse grids that efficiently approximates high-dimensional Markov BSDEs driven by Brownian motion with a combination of multiple Markov BSDEs driven by CTMCs on grids with different resolutions. We also illustrate the effectiveness of the presented methods with a number of numerical experiments in which we treat nonlinear BSDEs arising from option pricing problems in finance.
This work presents an abstract framework for the design, implementation, and analysis of the multiscale spectral generalized finite element method (MS-GFEM), a particular numerical multiscale method originally proposed in [I. Babuska and R. Lipton, Multiscale Model.\;\,Simul., 9 (2011), pp.~373--406]. MS-GFEM is a partition of unity method employing optimal local approximation spaces constructed from local spectral problems. We establish a general local approximation theory demonstrating exponential convergence with respect to local degrees of freedom under certain assumptions, with explicit dependence on key problem parameters. Our framework applies to a broad class of multiscale PDEs with $L^{\infty}$-coefficients in both continuous and discrete, finite element settings, including highly indefinite problems (convection-dominated diffusion, as well as the high-frequency Helmholtz, Maxwell and elastic wave equations with impedance boundary conditions), and higher-order problems. Notably, we prove a local convergence rate of $O(e^{-cn^{1/d}})$ for MS-GFEM for all these problems, improving upon the $O(e^{-cn^{1/(d+1)}})$ rate shown by Babuska and Lipton. Moreover, based on the abstract local approximation theory for MS-GFEM, we establish a unified framework for showing low-rank approximations to multiscale PDEs. This framework applies to the aforementioned problems, proving that the associated Green's functions admit an $O(|\log\epsilon|^{d})$-term separable approximation on well-separated domains with error $\epsilon>0$. Our analysis improves and generalizes the result in [M. Bebendorf and W. Hackbusch, Numerische Mathematik, 95 (2003), pp.~1-28] where an $O(|\log\epsilon|^{d+1})$-term separable approximation was proved for Poisson-type problems.
Simply-verifiable mathematical conditions for existence, uniqueness and explicit analytical computation of minimal adversarial paths (MAP) and minimal adversarial distances (MAD) for (locally) uniquely-invertible classifiers, for generalized linear models (GLM), and for entropic AI (EAI) are formulated and proven. Practical computation of MAP and MAD, their comparison and interpretations for various classes of AI tools (for neuronal networks, boosted random forests, GLM and EAI) are demonstrated on the common synthetic benchmarks: on a double Swiss roll spiral and its extensions, as well as on the two biomedical data problems (for the health insurance claim predictions, and for the heart attack lethality classification). On biomedical applications it is demonstrated how MAP provides unique minimal patient-specific risk-mitigating interventions in the predefined subsets of accessible control variables.
Quantum-key-distribution (QKD) networks are gaining importance and it has become necessary to analyze the most appropriate methods for their long-distance interconnection. In this paper, four different methods of interconnecting remote QKD networks are proposed. The methods are used to link three different QKD testbeds in Europe, located in Berlin, Madrid, and Poznan. Although long-distance QKD links are only emulated, the used methods can serve as a blueprint for a secure interconnection of distant QKD networks in the future. Specifically, the presented approaches combine, in a transparent way, different fiber and satellite physical media, as well as common standards of key-delivery interfaces. The testbed interconnections are designed to increase the security by utilizing multipath techniques and multiple hybridizations of QKD and post quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms.
In spatial blind source separation the observed multivariate random fields are assumed to be mixtures of latent spatially dependent random fields. The objective is to recover latent random fields by estimating the unmixing transformation. Currently, the algorithms for spatial blind source separation can only estimate linear unmixing transformations. Nonlinear blind source separation methods for spatial data are scarce. In this paper we extend an identifiable variational autoencoder that can estimate nonlinear unmixing transformations to spatially dependent data and demonstrate its performance for both stationary and nonstationary spatial data using simulations. In addition, we introduce scaled mean absolute Shapley additive explanations for interpreting the latent components through nonlinear mixing transformation. The spatial identifiable variational autoencoder is applied to a geochemical dataset to find the latent random fields, which are then interpreted by using the scaled mean absolute Shapley additive explanations.
We propose a novel and simple spectral method based on the semi-discrete Fourier transforms to discretize the fractional Laplacian $(-\Delta)^\frac{\alpha}{2}$. Numerical analysis and experiments are provided to study its performance. Our method has the same symbol $|\xi|^\alpha$ as the fractional Laplacian $(-\Delta)^\frac{\alpha}{2}$ at the discrete level, and thus it can be viewed as the exact discrete analogue of the fractional Laplacian. This {\it unique feature} distinguishes our method from other existing methods for the fractional Laplacian. Note that our method is different from the Fourier pseudospectral methods in the literature, which are usually limited to periodic boundary conditions (see Remark \ref{remark0}). Numerical analysis shows that our method can achieve a spectral accuracy. The stability and convergence of our method in solving the fractional Poisson equations were analyzed. Our scheme yields a multilevel Toeplitz stiffness matrix, and thus fast algorithms can be developed for efficient matrix-vector products. The computational complexity is ${\mathcal O}(2N\log(2N))$, and the memory storage is ${\mathcal O}(N)$ with $N$ the total number of points. Extensive numerical experiments verify our analytical results and demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in solving various problems.
We propose an individual claims reserving model based on the conditional Aalen--Johansen estimator, as developed in Bladt and Furrer (2023b). In our approach, we formulate a multi-state problem, where the underlying variable is the individual claim size, rather than time. The states in this model represent development periods, and we estimate the cumulative density function of individual claim costs using the conditional Aalen--Johansen method as transition probabilities to an absorbing state. Our methodology reinterprets the concept of multi-state models and offers a strategy for modeling the complete curve of individual claim costs. To illustrate our approach, we apply our model to both simulated and real datasets. Having access to the entire dataset enables us to support the use of our approach by comparing the predicted total final cost with the actual amount, as well as evaluating it in terms of the continuously ranked probability score, as discussed in Gneiting and A. E. Raftery (2007)
This study compares the performance of (1) fine-tuned models and (2) extremely large language models on the task of check-worthy claim detection. For the purpose of the comparison we composed a multilingual and multi-topical dataset comprising texts of various sources and styles. Building on this, we performed a benchmark analysis to determine the most general multilingual and multi-topical claim detector. We chose three state-of-the-art models in the check-worthy claim detection task and fine-tuned them. Furthermore, we selected three state-of-the-art extremely large language models without any fine-tuning. We made modifications to the models to adapt them for multilingual settings and through extensive experimentation and evaluation. We assessed the performance of all the models in terms of accuracy, recall, and F1-score in in-domain and cross-domain scenarios. Our results demonstrate that despite the technological progress in the area of natural language processing, the models fine-tuned for the task of check-worthy claim detection still outperform the zero-shot approaches in a cross-domain settings.
We present a framework for the efficient computation of optimal Bayesian decisions under intractable likelihoods, by learning a surrogate model for the expected utility (or its distribution) as a function of the action and data spaces. We leverage recent advances in simulation-based inference and Bayesian optimization to develop active learning schemes to choose where in parameter and action spaces to simulate. This allows us to learn the optimal action in as few simulations as possible. The resulting framework is extremely simulation efficient, typically requiring fewer model calls than the associated posterior inference task alone, and a factor of $100-1000$ more efficient than Monte-Carlo based methods. Our framework opens up new capabilities for performing Bayesian decision making, particularly in the previously challenging regime where likelihoods are intractable, and simulations expensive.
Heterogeneous graph neural networks (HGNNs) as an emerging technique have shown superior capacity of dealing with heterogeneous information network (HIN). However, most HGNNs follow a semi-supervised learning manner, which notably limits their wide use in reality since labels are usually scarce in real applications. Recently, contrastive learning, a self-supervised method, becomes one of the most exciting learning paradigms and shows great potential when there are no labels. In this paper, we study the problem of self-supervised HGNNs and propose a novel co-contrastive learning mechanism for HGNNs, named HeCo. Different from traditional contrastive learning which only focuses on contrasting positive and negative samples, HeCo employs cross-viewcontrastive mechanism. Specifically, two views of a HIN (network schema and meta-path views) are proposed to learn node embeddings, so as to capture both of local and high-order structures simultaneously. Then the cross-view contrastive learning, as well as a view mask mechanism, is proposed, which is able to extract the positive and negative embeddings from two views. This enables the two views to collaboratively supervise each other and finally learn high-level node embeddings. Moreover, two extensions of HeCo are designed to generate harder negative samples with high quality, which further boosts the performance of HeCo. Extensive experiments conducted on a variety of real-world networks show the superior performance of the proposed methods over the state-of-the-arts.