We consider the problem of parameter estimation for a class of continuous-time state space models. In particular, we explore the case of a partially observed diffusion, with data also arriving according to a diffusion process. Based upon a standard identity of the score function, we consider two particle filter based methodologies to estimate the score function. Both methods rely on an online estimation algorithm for the score function of $\mathcal{O}(N^2)$ cost, with $N\in\mathbb{N}$ the number of particles. The first approach employs a simple Euler discretization and standard particle smoothers and is of cost $\mathcal{O}(N^2 + N\Delta_l^{-1})$ per unit time, where $\Delta_l=2^{-l}$, $l\in\mathbb{N}_0$, is the time-discretization step. The second approach is new and based upon a novel diffusion bridge construction. It yields a new backward type Feynman-Kac formula in continuous-time for the score function and is presented along with a particle method for its approximation. Considering a time-discretization, the cost is $\mathcal{O}(N^2\Delta_l^{-1})$ per unit time. To improve computational costs, we then consider multilevel methodologies for the score function. We illustrate our parameter estimation method via stochastic gradient approaches in several numerical examples.
Interpretation of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) training as an optimal control problem with nonlinear dynamical systems has received considerable attention recently, yet the algorithmic development remains relatively limited. In this work, we make an attempt along this line by reformulating the training procedure from the trajectory optimization perspective. We first show that most widely-used algorithms for training DNNs can be linked to the Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP), a celebrated second-order trajectory optimization algorithm rooted in the Approximate Dynamic Programming. In this vein, we propose a new variant of DDP that can accept batch optimization for training feedforward networks, while integrating naturally with the recent progress in curvature approximation. The resulting algorithm features layer-wise feedback policies which improve convergence rate and reduce sensitivity to hyper-parameter over existing methods. We show that the algorithm is competitive against state-ofthe-art first and second order methods. Our work opens up new avenues for principled algorithmic design built upon the optimal control theory.
Sampling methods (e.g., node-wise, layer-wise, or subgraph) has become an indispensable strategy to speed up training large-scale Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). However, existing sampling methods are mostly based on the graph structural information and ignore the dynamicity of optimization, which leads to high variance in estimating the stochastic gradients. The high variance issue can be very pronounced in extremely large graphs, where it results in slow convergence and poor generalization. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the variance of sampling methods and show that, due to the composite structure of empirical risk, the variance of any sampling method can be decomposed into \textit{embedding approximation variance} in the forward stage and \textit{stochastic gradient variance} in the backward stage that necessities mitigating both types of variance to obtain faster convergence rate. We propose a decoupled variance reduction strategy that employs (approximate) gradient information to adaptively sample nodes with minimal variance, and explicitly reduces the variance introduced by embedding approximation. We show theoretically and empirically that the proposed method, even with smaller mini-batch sizes, enjoys a faster convergence rate and entails a better generalization compared to the existing methods.
We show that for the problem of testing if a matrix $A \in F^{n \times n}$ has rank at most $d$, or requires changing an $\epsilon$-fraction of entries to have rank at most $d$, there is a non-adaptive query algorithm making $\widetilde{O}(d^2/\epsilon)$ queries. Our algorithm works for any field $F$. This improves upon the previous $O(d^2/\epsilon^2)$ bound (SODA'03), and bypasses an $\Omega(d^2/\epsilon^2)$ lower bound of (KDD'14) which holds if the algorithm is required to read a submatrix. Our algorithm is the first such algorithm which does not read a submatrix, and instead reads a carefully selected non-adaptive pattern of entries in rows and columns of $A$. We complement our algorithm with a matching query complexity lower bound for non-adaptive testers over any field. We also give tight bounds of $\widetilde{\Theta}(d^2)$ queries in the sensing model for which query access comes in the form of $\langle X_i, A\rangle:=tr(X_i^\top A)$; perhaps surprisingly these bounds do not depend on $\epsilon$. We next develop a novel property testing framework for testing numerical properties of a real-valued matrix $A$ more generally, which includes the stable rank, Schatten-$p$ norms, and SVD entropy. Specifically, we propose a bounded entry model, where $A$ is required to have entries bounded by $1$ in absolute value. We give upper and lower bounds for a wide range of problems in this model, and discuss connections to the sensing model above.
Implicit probabilistic models are models defined naturally in terms of a sampling procedure and often induces a likelihood function that cannot be expressed explicitly. We develop a simple method for estimating parameters in implicit models that does not require knowledge of the form of the likelihood function or any derived quantities, but can be shown to be equivalent to maximizing likelihood under some conditions. Our result holds in the non-asymptotic parametric setting, where both the capacity of the model and the number of data examples are finite. We also demonstrate encouraging experimental results.
Data augmentation has been widely used for training deep learning systems for medical image segmentation and plays an important role in obtaining robust and transformation-invariant predictions. However, it has seldom been used at test time for segmentation and not been formulated in a consistent mathematical framework. In this paper, we first propose a theoretical formulation of test-time augmentation for deep learning in image recognition, where the prediction is obtained through estimating its expectation by Monte Carlo simulation with prior distributions of parameters in an image acquisition model that involves image transformations and noise. We then propose a novel uncertainty estimation method based on the formulated test-time augmentation. Experiments with segmentation of fetal brains and brain tumors from 2D and 3D Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) showed that 1) our test-time augmentation outperforms a single-prediction baseline and dropout-based multiple predictions, and 2) it provides a better uncertainty estimation than calculating the model-based uncertainty alone and helps to reduce overconfident incorrect predictions.
Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SGMCMC) has become a popular method for scalable Bayesian inference. These methods are based on sampling a discrete-time approximation to a continuous time process, such as the Langevin diffusion. When applied to distributions defined on a constrained space, such as the simplex, the time-discretisation error can dominate when we are near the boundary of the space. We demonstrate that while current SGMCMC methods for the simplex perform well in certain cases, they struggle with sparse simplex spaces; when many of the components are close to zero. However, most popular large-scale applications of Bayesian inference on simplex spaces, such as network or topic models, are sparse. We argue that this poor performance is due to the biases of SGMCMC caused by the discretization error. To get around this, we propose the stochastic CIR process, which removes all discretization error and we prove that samples from the stochastic CIR process are asymptotically unbiased. Use of the stochastic CIR process within a SGMCMC algorithm is shown to give substantially better performance for a topic model and a Dirichlet process mixture model than existing SGMCMC approaches.
We propose a new method of estimation in topic models, that is not a variation on the existing simplex finding algorithms, and that estimates the number of topics K from the observed data. We derive new finite sample minimax lower bounds for the estimation of A, as well as new upper bounds for our proposed estimator. We describe the scenarios where our estimator is minimax adaptive. Our finite sample analysis is valid for any number of documents (n), individual document length (N_i), dictionary size (p) and number of topics (K), and both p and K are allowed to increase with n, a situation not handled well by previous analyses. We complement our theoretical results with a detailed simulation study. We illustrate that the new algorithm is faster and more accurate than the current ones, although we start out with a computational and theoretical disadvantage of not knowing the correct number of topics K, while we provide the competing methods with the correct value in our simulations.
In this paper, a novel image moments based model for shape estimation and tracking of an object moving with a complex trajectory is presented. The camera is assumed to be stationary looking at a moving object. Point features inside the object are sampled as measurements. An ellipsoidal approximation of the shape is assumed as a primitive shape. The shape of an ellipse is estimated using a combination of image moments. Dynamic model of image moments when the object moves under the constant velocity or coordinated turn motion model is derived as a function for the shape estimation of the object. An Unscented Kalman Filter-Interacting Multiple Model (UKF-IMM) filter algorithm is applied to estimate the shape of the object (approximated as an ellipse) and track its position and velocity. A likelihood function based on average log-likelihood is derived for the IMM filter. Simulation results of the proposed UKF-IMM algorithm with the image moments based models are presented that show the estimations of the shape of the object moving in complex trajectories. Comparison results, using intersection over union (IOU), and position and velocity root mean square errors (RMSE) as metrics, with a benchmark algorithm from literature are presented. Results on real image data captured from the quadcopter are also presented.
Dynamic topic models (DTMs) model the evolution of prevalent themes in literature, online media, and other forms of text over time. DTMs assume that word co-occurrence statistics change continuously and therefore impose continuous stochastic process priors on their model parameters. These dynamical priors make inference much harder than in regular topic models, and also limit scalability. In this paper, we present several new results around DTMs. First, we extend the class of tractable priors from Wiener processes to the generic class of Gaussian processes (GPs). This allows us to explore topics that develop smoothly over time, that have a long-term memory or are temporally concentrated (for event detection). Second, we show how to perform scalable approximate inference in these models based on ideas around stochastic variational inference and sparse Gaussian processes. This way we can train a rich family of DTMs to massive data. Our experiments on several large-scale datasets show that our generalized model allows us to find interesting patterns that were not accessible by previous approaches.
We develop an approach to risk minimization and stochastic optimization that provides a convex surrogate for variance, allowing near-optimal and computationally efficient trading between approximation and estimation error. Our approach builds off of techniques for distributionally robust optimization and Owen's empirical likelihood, and we provide a number of finite-sample and asymptotic results characterizing the theoretical performance of the estimator. In particular, we show that our procedure comes with certificates of optimality, achieving (in some scenarios) faster rates of convergence than empirical risk minimization by virtue of automatically balancing bias and variance. We give corroborating empirical evidence showing that in practice, the estimator indeed trades between variance and absolute performance on a training sample, improving out-of-sample (test) performance over standard empirical risk minimization for a number of classification problems.