It is known that the generating function associated with the enumeration of non-backtracking walks on finite graphs is a rational matrix-valued function of the parameter; such function is also closely related to graph-theoretical results such as Ihara's theorem and the zeta function on graphs. In [P. Grindrod, D. J. Higham, V. Noferini, The deformed graph Laplacian and its application to network centrality analysis, SIAM J. Matrix Anal. Appl. 39(1), 310--341, 2018], the radius of convergence of the generating function was studied for simple (i.e., undirected, unweighted and with no loops) graphs, and shown to depend on the number of cycles in the graph. In this paper, we use technologies from the theory of polynomial and rational matrices to greatly extend these results by studying the radius of convergence of the corresponding generating function for general, possibly directed and/or weighted, graphs. We give an analogous characterization of the radius of convergence for directed unweighted graphs, showing that it depends on the number of cycles in the undirectization of the graph. For weighted graphs, we provide for the first time an exact formula for the radius of convergence, improving a previous result that exhibited a lower bound. Finally, we consider also backtracking-downweighted walks on unweighted digraphs, and we prove a version of Ihara's theorem in that case.
The eigenvalue method, suggested by the developer of the extensively used Analytic Hierarchy Process methodology, exhibits right-left asymmetry: the priorities derived from the right eigenvector do not necessarily coincide with the priorities derived from the reciprocal left eigenvector. This paper offers a comprehensive numerical experiment to compare the two eigenvector-based weighting procedures and their reasonable alternative of the row geometric mean with respect to four measures. The underlying pairwise comparison matrices are constructed randomly with different dimensions and levels of inconsistency. The disagreement between the two eigenvectors turns out to be not always a monotonic function of these important characteristics of the matrix. The ranking contradictions can affect alternatives with relatively distant priorities. The row geometric mean is found to be almost at the midpoint between the right and inverse left eigenvectors, making it a straightforward compromise between them.
Stochastic memoization is a higher-order construct of probabilistic programming languages that is key in Bayesian nonparametrics, a modular approach that allows us to extend models beyond their parametric limitations and compose them in an elegant and principled manner. Stochastic memoization is simple and useful in practice, but semantically elusive, particularly regarding dataflow transformations. As the naive implementation resorts to the state monad, which is not commutative, it is not clear if stochastic memoization preserves the dataflow property -- i.e., whether we can reorder the lines of a program without changing its semantics, provided the dataflow graph is preserved. In this paper, we give an operational and categorical semantics to stochastic memoization and name generation in the context of a minimal probabilistic programming language, for a restricted class of functions. Our contribution is a first model of stochastic memoization of constant Bernoulli functions with a non-enumerable type, which validates data flow transformations, bridging the gap between traditional probability theory and higher-order probability models. Our model uses a presheaf category and a novel probability monad on it.
The Sinkhorn algorithm is a numerical method for the solution of optimal transport problems. Here, I give a brief survey of this algorithm, with a strong emphasis on its geometric origin: it is natural to view it as a discretization, by standard methods, of a non-linear integral equation. In the appendix, I also provide a short summary of an early result of Beurling on product measures, directly related to the Sinkhorn algorithm.
Hierarchical matrices approximate a given matrix by a decomposition into low-rank submatrices that can be handled efficiently in factorized form. $\mathcal{H}^2$-matrices refine this representation following the ideas of fast multipole methods in order to achieve linear, i.e., optimal complexity for a variety of important algorithms. The matrix multiplication, a key component of many more advanced numerical algorithms, has so far proven tricky: the only linear-time algorithms known so far either require the very special structure of HSS-matrices or need to know a suitable basis for all submatrices in advance. In this article, a new and fairly general algorithm for multiplying $\mathcal{H}^2$-matrices in linear complexity with adaptively constructed bases is presented. The algorithm consists of two phases: first an intermediate representation with a generalized block structure is constructed, then this representation is re-compressed in order to match the structure prescribed by the application. The complexity and accuracy are analysed and numerical experiments indicate that the new algorithm can indeed be significantly faster than previous attempts.
Complex networks are used to model many real-world systems. However, the dimensionality of these systems can make them challenging to analyze. Dimensionality reduction techniques like POD can be used in such cases. However, these models are susceptible to perturbations in the input data. We propose an algorithmic framework that combines techniques from pattern recognition (PR) and stochastic filtering theory to enhance the output of such models. The results of our study show that our method can improve the accuracy of the surrogate model under perturbed inputs. Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are susceptible to adversarial attacks. However, recent research has revealed that Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (neural ODEs) exhibit robustness in specific applications. We benchmark our algorithmic framework with the neural ODE-based approach as a reference.
Leverage score sampling is crucial to the design of randomized algorithms for large-scale matrix problems, while the computation of leverage scores is a bottleneck of many applications. In this paper, we propose a quantum algorithm to accelerate this useful method. The speedup is at least quadratic and could be exponential for well-conditioned matrices. We also prove some quantum lower bounds, which suggest that our quantum algorithm is close to optimal. As an application, we propose a new quantum algorithm for rigid regression problems with vector solution outputs. It achieves polynomial speedups over the best classical algorithm known. In this process, we give an improved randomized algorithm for rigid regression.
Transition amplitudes and transition probabilities are relevant to many areas of physics simulation, including the calculation of response properties and correlation functions. These quantities can also be related to solving linear systems of equations. Here we present three related algorithms for calculating transition probabilities. First, we extend a previously published short-depth algorithm, allowing for the two input states to be non-orthogonal. Building on this first procedure, we then derive a higher-depth algorithm based on Trotterization and Richardson extrapolation that requires fewer circuit evaluations. Third, we introduce a tunable algorithm that allows for trading off circuit depth and measurement complexity, yielding an algorithm that can be tailored to specific hardware characteristics. Finally, we implement proof-of-principle numerics for models in physics and chemistry and for a subroutine in variational quantum linear solving (VQLS). The primary benefits of our approaches are that (a) arbitrary non-orthogonal states may now be used with small increases in quantum resources, (b) we (like another recently proposed method) entirely avoid subroutines such as the Hadamard test that may require three-qubit gates to be decomposed, and (c) in some cases fewer quantum circuit evaluations are required as compared to the previous state-of-the-art in NISQ algorithms for transition probabilities.
Current physics-informed (standard or operator) neural networks still rely on accurately learning the initial conditions of the system they are solving. In contrast, standard numerical methods evolve such initial conditions without needing to learn these. In this study, we propose to improve current physics-informed deep learning strategies such that initial conditions do not need to be learned and are represented exactly in the predicted solution. Moreover, this method guarantees that when a DeepONet is applied multiple times to time step a solution, the resulting function is continuous.
Although the applications of Non-Homogeneous Poisson Processes to model and study the threshold overshoots of interest in different time series of measurements have proven to provide good results, they needed to be complemented with an efficient and automatic diagnostic technique to establish the location of the change-points, which, when taken into account, make the estimated model fit poorly in regards of the information contained in the real model. For this reason, we propose a new method to solve the segmentation uncertainty of the time series of measurements, where the emission distribution of exceedances of a specific threshold is the focus of investigation. One of the great contributions of the present algorithm is that all the days that overflowed are candidates to be a change-point, so all the possible configurations of overflow days are the possible chromosomes, which will unite to have offspring. Under the heuristics of a genetic algorithm, the solution to the problem of finding such change points will be guaranteed to be non-local and the best possible one, reducing wasted machine time evaluating the least likely chromosomes to be a solution to the problem. The analytical evaluation technique will be by means of the Minimum Description Length (\textit{MDL}) as the objective function, which is the joint posterior distribution function of the parameters of each regime and the change points that determines them and which account as well for the influence of the presence of said times.
In real life, success is often contingent upon multiple critical steps that are distant in time from each other and from the final reward. These critical steps are challenging to identify with traditional reinforcement learning (RL) methods that rely on the Bellman equation for credit assignment. Here, we present a new RL algorithm that uses offline contrastive learning to hone in on critical steps. This algorithm, which we call contrastive introspection (ConSpec), can be added to any existing RL algorithm. ConSpec learns a set of prototypes for the critical steps in a task by a novel contrastive loss and delivers an intrinsic reward when the current state matches one of these prototypes. The prototypes in ConSpec provide two key benefits for credit assignment: (1) They enable rapid identification of all the critical steps. (2) They do so in a readily interpretable manner, enabling out-of-distribution generalization when sensory features are altered. Distinct from other contemporary RL approaches to credit assignment, ConSpec takes advantage of the fact that it is easier to retrospectively identify the small set of steps that success is contingent upon than it is to prospectively predict reward at every step taken in the environment. Altogether, ConSpec improves learning in a diverse set of RL tasks, including both those with explicit, discrete critical steps and those with complex, continuous critical steps.