Surrogate modelling techniques have seen growing attention in recent years when applied to both modelling and optimisation of industrial design problems. These techniques are highly relevant when assessing the performance of a particular design carries a high cost, as the overall cost can be mitigated via the construction of a model to be queried in lieu of the available high-cost source. The construction of these models can sometimes employ other sources of information which are both cheaper and less accurate. The existence of these sources however poses the question of which sources should be used when constructing a model. Recent studies have attempted to characterise harmful data sources to guide practitioners in choosing when to ignore a certain source. These studies have done so in a synthetic setting, characterising sources using a large amount of data that is not available in practice. Some of these studies have also been shown to potentially suffer from bias in the benchmarks used in the analysis. In this study, we present a characterisation of harmful low-fidelity sources using only the limited data available to train a surrogate model. We employ recently developed benchmark filtering techniques to conduct a bias-free assessment, providing objectively varied benchmark suites of different sizes for future research. Analysing one of these benchmark suites with the technique known as Instance Space Analysis, we provide an intuitive visualisation of when a low-fidelity source should be used and use this analysis to provide guidelines that can be used in an applied industrial setting.
High-dimensional linear models have been widely studied, but the developments in high-dimensional generalized linear models, or GLMs, have been slower. In this paper, we propose an empirical or data-driven prior leading to an empirical Bayes posterior distribution which can be used for estimation of and inference on the coefficient vector in a high-dimensional GLM, as well as for variable selection. We prove that our proposed posterior concentrates around the true/sparse coefficient vector at the optimal rate, provide conditions under which the posterior can achieve variable selection consistency, and prove a Bernstein--von Mises theorem that implies asymptotically valid uncertainty quantification. Computation of the proposed empirical Bayes posterior is simple and efficient, and is shown to perform well in simulations compared to existing Bayesian and non-Bayesian methods in terms of estimation and variable selection.
Calls to make scientific research more open have gained traction with a range of societal stakeholders. Open Science practices include but are not limited to the early sharing of results via preprints and openly sharing outputs such as data and code to make research more reproducible and extensible. Existing evidence shows that adopting Open Science practices has effects in several domains. In this study, we investigate whether adopting one or more Open Science practices leads to significantly higher citations for an associated publication, which is one form of academic impact. We use a novel dataset known as Open Science Indicators, produced by PLOS and DataSeer, which includes all PLOS publications from 2018 to 2023 as well as a comparison group sampled from the PMC Open Access Subset. In total, we analyze circa 122'000 publications. We calculate publication and author-level citation indicators and use a broad set of control variables to isolate the effect of Open Science Indicators on received citations. We show that Open Science practices are adopted to different degrees across scientific disciplines. We find that the early release of a publication as a preprint correlates with a significant positive citation advantage of about 20.2% on average. We also find that sharing data in an online repository correlates with a smaller yet still positive citation advantage of 4.3% on average. However, we do not find a significant citation advantage for sharing code. Further research is needed on additional or alternative measures of impact beyond citations. Our results are likely to be of interest to researchers, as well as publishers, research funders, and policymakers.
Surrogate models provide a quick-to-evaluate approximation to complex computational models and are essential for multi-query problems like design optimisation. The inputs of current computational models are usually high-dimensional and uncertain. We consider Bayesian inference for constructing statistical surrogates with input uncertainties and intrinsic dimensionality reduction. The surrogates are trained by fitting to data from prevalent deterministic computational models. The assumed prior probability density of the surrogate is a Gaussian process. We determine the respective posterior probability density and parameters of the posited statistical model using variational Bayes. The non-Gaussian posterior is approximated by a simpler trial density with free variational parameters and the discrepancy between them is measured using the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence. We employ the stochastic gradient method to compute the variational parameters and other statistical model parameters by minimising the KL divergence. We demonstrate the accuracy and versatility of the proposed reduced dimension variational Gaussian process (RDVGP) surrogate on illustrative and robust structural optimisation problems with cost functions depending on a weighted sum of the mean and standard deviation of model outputs.
We provide full theoretical guarantees for the convergence behaviour of diffusion-based generative models under the assumption of strongly log-concave data distributions while our approximating class of functions used for score estimation is made of Lipschitz continuous functions. We demonstrate via a motivating example, sampling from a Gaussian distribution with unknown mean, the powerfulness of our approach. In this case, explicit estimates are provided for the associated optimization problem, i.e. score approximation, while these are combined with the corresponding sampling estimates. As a result, we obtain the best known upper bound estimates in terms of key quantities of interest, such as the dimension and rates of convergence, for the Wasserstein-2 distance between the data distribution (Gaussian with unknown mean) and our sampling algorithm. Beyond the motivating example and in order to allow for the use of a diverse range of stochastic optimizers, we present our results using an $L^2$-accurate score estimation assumption, which crucially is formed under an expectation with respect to the stochastic optimizer and our novel auxiliary process that uses only known information. This approach yields the best known convergence rate for our sampling algorithm.
The use of ML models to predict a user's cognitive state from behavioral data has been studied for various applications which includes predicting the intent to perform selections in VR. We developed a novel technique that uses gaze-based intent models to adapt dwell-time thresholds to aid gaze-only selection. A dataset of users performing selection in arithmetic tasks was used to develop intent prediction models (F1 = 0.94). We developed GazeIntent to adapt selection dwell times based on intent model outputs and conducted an end-user study with returning and new users performing additional tasks with varied selection frequencies. Personalized models for returning users effectively accounted for prior experience and were preferred by 63% of users. Our work provides the field with methods to adapt dwell-based selection to users, account for experience over time, and consider tasks that vary by selection frequency
Test-negative designs are widely used for post-market evaluation of vaccine effectiveness, particularly in cases where randomization is not feasible. Differing from classical test-negative designs where only healthcare-seekers with symptoms are included, recent test-negative designs have involved individuals with various reasons for testing, especially in an outbreak setting. While including these data can increase sample size and hence improve precision, concerns have been raised about whether they introduce bias into the current framework of test-negative designs, thereby demanding a formal statistical examination of this modified design. In this article, using statistical derivations, causal graphs, and numerical simulations, we show that the standard odds ratio estimator may be biased if various reasons for testing are not accounted for. To eliminate this bias, we identify three categories of reasons for testing, including symptoms, disease-unrelated reasons, and case contact tracing, and characterize associated statistical properties and estimands. Based on our characterization, we show how to consistently estimate each estimand via stratification. Furthermore, we describe when these estimands correspond to the same vaccine effectiveness parameter, and, when appropriate, propose a stratified estimator that can incorporate multiple reasons for testing and improve precision. The performance of our proposed method is demonstrated through simulation studies.
Cross-validation is usually employed to evaluate the performance of a given statistical methodology. When such a methodology depends on a number of tuning parameters, cross-validation proves to be helpful to select the parameters that optimize the estimated performance. In this paper, however, a very different and nonstandard use of cross-validation is investigated. Instead of focusing on the cross-validated parameters, the main interest is switched to the estimated value of the error criterion at optimal performance. It is shown that this approach is able to provide consistent and efficient estimates of some density functionals, with the noteworthy feature that these estimates do not rely on the choice of any further tuning parameter, so that, in that sense, they can be considered to be purely empirical. Here, a base case of application of this new paradigm is developed in full detail, while many other possible extensions are hinted as well.
Networks offer a powerful approach to modeling complex systems by representing the underlying set of pairwise interactions. Link prediction is the task that predicts links of a network that are not directly visible, with profound applications in biological, social, and other complex systems. Despite intensive utilization of the topological feature in this task, it is unclear to what extent a feature can be leveraged to infer missing links. Here, we aim to unveil the capability of a topological feature in link prediction by identifying its prediction performance upper bound. We introduce a theoretical framework that is compatible with different indexes to gauge the feature, different prediction approaches to utilize the feature, and different metrics to quantify the prediction performance. The maximum capability of a topological feature follows a simple yet theoretically validated expression, which only depends on the extent to which the feature is held in missing and nonexistent links. Because a family of indexes based on the same feature shares the same upper bound, the potential of all others can be estimated from one single index. Furthermore, a feature's capability is lifted in the supervised prediction, which can be mathematically quantified, allowing us to estimate the benefit of applying machine learning algorithms. The universality of the pattern uncovered is empirically verified by 550 structurally diverse networks. The findings have applications in feature and method selection, and shed light on network characteristics that make a topological feature effective in link prediction.
While computer modeling and simulation are crucial for understanding scientometrics, their practical use in literature remains somewhat limited. In this study, we establish a joint coauthorship and citation network using preferential attachment. As papers get published, we update the coauthorship network based on each paper's author list, representing the collaborative team behind it. This team is formed considering the number of collaborations each author has, and we introduce new authors at a fixed probability, expanding the coauthorship network. Simultaneously, as each paper cites a specific number of references, we add an equivalent number of citations to the citation network upon publication. The likelihood of a paper being cited depends on its existing citations, fitness value, and age. Then we calculate the journal impact factor and h-index, using them as examples of scientific impact indicators. After thorough validation, we conduct case studies to analyze the impact of different parameters on the journal impact factor and h-index. The findings reveal that increasing the reference number N or reducing the paper's lifetime {\theta} significantly boosts the journal impact factor and average h-index. On the other hand, enlarging the team size m without introducing new authors or decreasing the probability of newcomers p notably increases the average h-index. In conclusion, it is evident that various parameters influence scientific impact indicators, and their interpretation can be manipulated by authors. Thus, exploring the impact of these parameters and continually refining scientific impact indicators are essential. The modeling and simulation method serves as a powerful tool in this ongoing process, and the model can be easily extended to include other scientific impact indicators and scenarios.
One of the main challenges in surrogate modeling is the limited availability of data due to resource constraints associated with computationally expensive simulations. Multi-fidelity methods provide a solution by chaining models in a hierarchy with increasing fidelity, associated with lower error, but increasing cost. In this paper, we compare different multi-fidelity methods employed in constructing Gaussian process surrogates for regression. Non-linear autoregressive methods in the existing literature are primarily confined to two-fidelity models, and we extend these methods to handle more than two levels of fidelity. Additionally, we propose enhancements for an existing method incorporating delay terms by introducing a structured kernel. We demonstrate the performance of these methods across various academic and real-world scenarios. Our findings reveal that multi-fidelity methods generally have a smaller prediction error for the same computational cost as compared to the single-fidelity method, although their effectiveness varies across different scenarios.