We study the recursion-theoretic complexity of Positive Almost-Sure Termination ($\mathsf{PAST}$) in an imperative programming language with rational variables, bounded nondeterministic choice, and discrete probabilistic choice. A program terminates positive almost-surely if, for every scheduler, the program terminates almost-surely and the expected runtime to termination is finite. We show that $\mathsf{PAST}$ for our language is complete for the (lightface) co-analytic sets ($\Pi^1_1$-complete) - this is in contrast to the related notions of Almost-Sure Termination ($\mathsf{AST}$) and Bounded Termination ($\mathsf{BAST}$), both of which are arithmetical ($\Pi^0_2$ and $\Sigma^0_2$ complete respectively). Our upper bound implies an effective procedure to reduce reasoning about probabilistic termination to non-probabilistic fair termination in a model with bounded nondeterminism, and to simple program termination in models with unbounded nondeterminism. Our lower bound shows the opposite: for every program with unbounded nondeterministic choice, there is an effectively computable probabilistic program with bounded choice such that the original program is terminating $iff$ the transformed program is $\mathsf{PAST}$. We show that every program has an effectively computable normal form, in which each probabilistic choice either continues or terminates execution. For normal form programs, we provide the first sound and complete proof rule for $\mathsf{PAST}$. Our proof rule uses transfinite ordinals. We show that reasoning about $\mathsf{PAST}$ requires transfinite ordinals up to $\omega^{CK}_1$; thus, existing techniques for probabilistic termination based on ranking supermartingales that map program states to reals do not suffice to reason about $\mathsf{PAST}$.
We describe two algorithms for multiplying n x n matrices using time and energy n^2 polylog(n) under basic models of classical physics. The first algorithm is for multiplying integer-valued matrices, and the second, quite different algorithm, is for Boolean matrix multiplication. We hope this work inspires a deeper consideration of physically plausible/realizable models of computing that might allow for algorithms which improve upon the runtimes and energy usages suggested by the parallel RAM model in which each operation requires one unit of time and one unit of energy.
We study a fundamental problem in Computational Geometry, the \emph{planar two-center} problem. In this problem, the input is a set $S$ of $n$ points in the plane and the goal is to find two smallest congruent disks whose union contains all points of $S$. A longstanding open problem has been to obtain an $O(n\log n)$-time algorithm for planar two-center, matching the $\Omega(n\log n)$ lower bound given by Eppstein [SODA'97]. Towards this, researchers have made a lot of efforts over decades. The previous best algorithm, given by Wang [SoCG'20], solves the problem in $O(n\log^2 n)$ time. In this paper, we present an $O(n\log n)$-time (deterministic) algorithm for planar two-center, which completely resolves this open problem.
The two-parameter Mittag-Leffler function $E_{\alpha, \beta}$ is of fundamental importance in fractional calculus. It appears frequently in the solutions of fractional differential and integral equations. Nonetheless, this vital function is often expensive to compute. Several attempts have been made to construct cost-effective and accurate approximations. These attempts focus mainly on the completely monotone Mittag-Leffler functions. However, when $\alpha > 1$ the monotonicity property is largely lost and as such roots and oscillations are exhibited. Consequently, existing approximants constructed mainly for $\alpha \in (0,1)$ often fail to capture this oscillatory behavior. In this paper, we construct computationally efficient and accurate rational approximants for $E_{\alpha, \beta}(-t)$, $t \ge 0$, with $\alpha \in (1,2)$. This construction is fundamentally based on the decomposition of Mittag-Leffler function with real roots into one without and a polynomial. Following which new approximants are constructed by combining the global Pad\'e approximation with a polynomial of appropriate degree. The rational approximants are extended to approximation of matrix Mittag-Leffler and different approaches to achieve efficient implementation for matrix arguments are discussed. Numerical experiments are provided to illustrate the significant accuracy improvement achieved by the proposed approximants.
Gamma-Phi losses constitute a family of multiclass classification loss functions that generalize the logistic and other common losses, and have found application in the boosting literature. We establish the first general sufficient condition for the classification-calibration (CC) of such losses. To our knowledge, this sufficient condition gives the first family of nonconvex multiclass surrogate losses for which CC has been fully justified. In addition, we show that a previously proposed sufficient condition is in fact not sufficient. This contribution highlights a technical issue that is important in the study of multiclass CC but has been neglected in prior work.
Leveraging machine-learning methods to predict outcomes on some unlabeled datasets and then using these pseudo-outcomes in subsequent statistical inference is common in modern data analysis. Inference in this setting is often called post-prediction inference. We propose a novel, assumption-lean framework for inference under post-prediction setting, called \emph{Prediction De-Correlated inference} (PDC). Our approach can automatically adapt to any black-box machine-learning model and consistently outperforms supervised methods. The PDC framework also offers easy extensibility for accommodating multiple predictive models. Both numerical results and real-world data analysis support our theoretical results.
Solving the inverse kinematics problem is a fundamental challenge in motion planning, control, and calibration for articulated robots. Kinematic models for these robots are typically parametrized by joint angles, generating a complicated mapping between the robot configuration and the end-effector pose. Alternatively, the kinematic model and task constraints can be represented using invariant distances between points attached to the robot. In this paper, we formalize the equivalence of distance-based inverse kinematics and the distance geometry problem for a large class of articulated robots and task constraints. Unlike previous approaches, we use the connection between distance geometry and low-rank matrix completion to find inverse kinematics solutions by completing a partial Euclidean distance matrix through local optimization. Furthermore, we parametrize the space of Euclidean distance matrices with the Riemannian manifold of fixed-rank Gram matrices, allowing us to leverage a variety of mature Riemannian optimization methods. Finally, we show that bound smoothing can be used to generate informed initializations without significant computational overhead, improving convergence. We demonstrate that our inverse kinematics solver achieves higher success rates than traditional techniques, and substantially outperforms them on problems that involve many workspace constraints.
We consider the Distinct Shortest Walks problem. Given two vertices $s$ and $t$ of a graph database $\mathcal{D}$ and a regular path query, enumerate all walks of minimal length from $s$ to $t$ that carry a label that conforms to the query. Usual theoretical solutions turn out to be inefficient when applied to graph models that are closer to real-life systems, in particular because edges may carry multiple labels. Indeed, known algorithms may repeat the same answer exponentially many times. We propose an efficient algorithm for multi-labelled graph databases. The preprocessing runs in $O{|\mathcal{D}|\times|\mathcal{A}|}$ and the delay between two consecutive outputs is in $O(\lambda\times|\mathcal{A}|)$, where $\mathcal{A}$ is a nondeterministic automaton representing the query and $\lambda$ is the minimal length. The algorithm can handle $\varepsilon$-transitions in $\mathcal{A}$ or queries given as regular expressions at no additional cost.
This paper investigates the feasibility of machine learning (ML)-based pilotless spatial multiplexing in multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems. Especially, it is shown that by training the transmitter and receiver jointly, the transmitter can learn such constellation shapes for the spatial streams which facilitate completely blind separation and detection by the simultaneously learned receiver. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time ML-based spatial multiplexing without channel estimation pilots is demonstrated. The results show that the learned pilotless scheme can outperform a conventional pilot-based system by as much as 15-20% in terms of spectral efficiency, depending on the modulation order and signal-to-noise ratio.
Multi-distribution learning (MDL), which seeks to learn a shared model that minimizes the worst-case risk across $k$ distinct data distributions, has emerged as a unified framework in response to the evolving demand for robustness, fairness, multi-group collaboration, etc. Achieving data-efficient MDL necessitates adaptive sampling, also called on-demand sampling, throughout the learning process. However, there exist substantial gaps between the state-of-the-art upper and lower bounds on the optimal sample complexity. Focusing on a hypothesis class of Vapnik-Chervonenkis (VC) dimension $d$, we propose a novel algorithm that yields an $varepsilon$-optimal randomized hypothesis with a sample complexity on the order of $(d+k)/\varepsilon^2$ (modulo some logarithmic factor), matching the best-known lower bound. Our algorithmic ideas and theory have been further extended to accommodate Rademacher classes. The proposed algorithms are oracle-efficient, which access the hypothesis class solely through an empirical risk minimization oracle. Additionally, we establish the necessity of randomization, unveiling a large sample size barrier when only deterministic hypotheses are permitted. These findings successfully resolve three open problems presented in COLT 2023 (i.e., Awasthi et al., (2023, Problem 1, 3 and 4)).
This paper studies the joint community detection and phase synchronization problem on the \textit{stochastic block model with relative phase}, where each node is associated with an unknown phase angle. This problem, with a variety of real-world applications, aims to recover the cluster structure and associated phase angles simultaneously. We show this problem exhibits a \textit{``multi-frequency''} structure by closely examining its maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) formulation, whereas existing methods are not originated from this perspective. To this end, two simple yet efficient algorithms that leverage the MLE formulation and benefit from the information across multiple frequencies are proposed. The former is a spectral method based on the novel multi-frequency column-pivoted QR factorization. The factorization applied to the top eigenvectors of the observation matrix provides key information about the cluster structure and associated phase angles. The second approach is an iterative multi-frequency generalized power method, where each iteration updates the estimation in a matrix-multiplication-then-projection manner. Numerical experiments show that our proposed algorithms significantly improve the ability of exactly recovering the cluster structure and the accuracy of the estimated phase angles, compared to state-of-the-art algorithms.