Inferring the parameters of models describing biological systems is an important problem in the reverse engineering of the mechanisms underlying these systems. Much work has focused on parameter inference of stochastic and ordinary differential equation models using Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC). While there is some recent work on inference in spatial models, this remains an open problem. Simultaneously, advances in topological data analysis (TDA), a field of computational mathematics, have enabled spatial patterns in data to be characterised. Here we focus on recent work using topological data analysis to study different regimes of parameter space for a well-studied model of angiogenesis. We propose a method for combining TDA with ABC to infer parameters in the Anderson-Chaplain model of angiogenesis. We demonstrate that this topological approach outperforms ABC approaches that use simpler statistics based on spatial features of the data. This is a first step towards a general framework of spatial parameter inference for biological systems, for which there may be a variety of filtrations, vectorisations, and summary statistics to be considered. All code used to produce our results is available as a Snakemake workflow.
Existing high-dimensional statistical methods are largely established for analyzing individual-level data. In this work, we study estimation and inference for high-dimensional linear models where we only observe "proxy data", which include the marginal statistics and sample covariance matrix that are computed based on different sets of individuals. We develop a rate optimal method for estimation and inference for the regression coefficient vector and its linear functionals based on the proxy data. Moreover, we show the intrinsic limitations in the proxy-data based inference: the minimax optimal rate for estimation is slower than that in the conventional case where individual data are observed; the power for testing and multiple testing does not go to one as the signal strength goes to infinity. These interesting findings are illustrated through simulation studies and an analysis of a dataset concerning the genetic associations of hindlimb muscle weight in a mouse population.
In this article we investigate a system of geometric evolution equations describing a curvature driven motion of a family of 3D curves in the normal and binormal directions. Evolving curves may be subject of mutual interactions having both local or nonlocal character where the entire curve may influence evolution of other curves. Such an evolution and interaction can be found in applications. We explore the direct Lagrangian approach for treating the geometric flow of such interacting curves. Using the abstract theory of nonlinear analytic semi-flows, we are able to prove local existence, uniqueness and continuation of classical H\"older smooth solutions to the governing system of nonlinear parabolic equations. Using the finite volume method, we construct an efficient numerical scheme solving the governing system of nonlinear parabolic equations. Additionally, a nontrivial tangential velocity is considered allowing for redistribution of discretization nodes. We also present several computational studies of the flow combining the normal and binormal velocity and considering nonlocal interactions.
The immersed boundary (IB) method is a non-body conforming approach to fluid-structure interaction (FSI) that uses an Eulerian description of the momentum, viscosity, and incompressibility of a coupled fluid-structure system and a Lagrangian description of the deformations, stresses, and resultant forces of the immersed structure. Integral transforms with Dirac delta function kernels couple Eulerian and Lagrangian variables. In practice, discretizations of these integral transforms use regularized delta function kernels, and although a number of different types of regularized delta functions have been proposed, there has been limited prior work to investigate the impact of the choice of kernel function on the accuracy of the methodology. This work systematically studies the effect of the choice of regularized delta function in several fluid-structure interaction benchmark tests using the immersed finite element/difference (IFED) method, which is an extension of the IB method that uses finite element structural discretizations combined with a Cartesian grid finite difference method for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Further, many IB-type methods evaluate the delta functions at the nodes of the structural mesh, and this requires the Lagrangian mesh to be relatively fine compared to the background Eulerian grid to avoid leaks. The IFED formulation offers the possibility to avoid leaks with relatively coarse structural meshes by evaluating the delta function on a denser collection of interaction points. This study investigates the effect of varying the relative mesh widths of the Lagrangian and Eulerian discretizations. Although this study is done within the context of the IFED method, the effect of different kernels could be important not just for this method, but also for other IB-type methods more generally.
We show that the normal form of the Taylor expansion of a $\lambda$-term is isomorphic to its B\"ohm tree, improving Ehrhard and Regnier's original proof along three independent directions. First, we simplify the final step of the proof by following the left reduction strategy directly in the resource calculus, avoiding to introduce an abstract machine ad hoc. We also introduce a groupoid of permutations of copies of arguments in a rigid variant of the resource calculus, and relate the coefficients of Taylor expansion with this structure, while Ehrhard and Regnier worked with groups of permutations of occurrences of variables. Finally, we extend all the results to a nondeterministic setting: by contrast with previous attempts, we show that the uniformity property that was crucial in Ehrhard and Regnier's approach can be preserved in this setting.
Measure-preserving neural networks are well-developed invertible models, however, their approximation capabilities remain unexplored. This paper rigorously analyses the approximation capabilities of existing measure-preserving neural networks including NICE and RevNets. It is shown that for compact $U \subset \R^D$ with $D\geq 2$, the measure-preserving neural networks are able to approximate arbitrary measure-preserving map $\psi: U\to \R^D$ which is bounded and injective in the $L^p$-norm. In particular, any continuously differentiable injective map with $\pm 1$ determinant of Jacobian are measure-preserving, thus can be approximated.
Statistical divergences (SDs), which quantify the dissimilarity between probability distributions, are a basic constituent of statistical inference and machine learning. A modern method for estimating those divergences relies on parametrizing an empirical variational form by a neural network (NN) and optimizing over parameter space. Such neural estimators are abundantly used in practice, but corresponding performance guarantees are partial and call for further exploration. In particular, there is a fundamental tradeoff between the two sources of error involved: approximation and empirical estimation. While the former needs the NN class to be rich and expressive, the latter relies on controlling complexity. We explore this tradeoff for an estimator based on a shallow NN by means of non-asymptotic error bounds, focusing on four popular $\mathsf{f}$-divergences -- Kullback-Leibler, chi-squared, squared Hellinger, and total variation. Our analysis relies on non-asymptotic function approximation theorems and tools from empirical process theory. The bounds reveal the tension between the NN size and the number of samples, and enable to characterize scaling rates thereof that ensure consistency. For compactly supported distributions, we further show that neural estimators of the first three divergences above with appropriate NN growth-rate are near minimax rate-optimal, achieving the parametric rate up to logarithmic factors.
Determining the adsorption isotherms is an issue of significant importance in preparative chromatography. A modern technique for estimating adsorption isotherms is to solve an inverse problem so that the simulated batch separation coincides with actual experimental results. However, due to the ill-posedness, the high non-linearity, and the uncertainty quantification of the corresponding physical model, the existing deterministic inversion methods are usually inefficient in real-world applications. To overcome these difficulties and study the uncertainties of the adsorption-isotherm parameters, in this work, based on the Bayesian sampling framework, we propose a statistical approach for estimating the adsorption isotherms in various chromatography systems. Two modified Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms are developed for a numerical realization of our statistical approach. Numerical experiments with both synthetic and real data are conducted and described to show the efficiency of the proposed new method.
Due to the falling costs of data acquisition and storage, researchers and industry analysts often want to find all instances of rare events in large datasets. For instance, scientists can cheaply capture thousands of hours of video, but are limited by the need to manually inspect long videos to identify relevant objects and events. To reduce this cost, recent work proposes to use cheap proxy models, such as image classifiers, to identify an approximate set of data points satisfying a data selection filter. Unfortunately, this recent work does not provide the statistical accuracy guarantees necessary in scientific and production settings. In this work, we introduce novel algorithms for approximate selection queries with statistical accuracy guarantees. Namely, given a limited number of exact identifications from an oracle, often a human or an expensive machine learning model, our algorithms meet a minimum precision or recall target with high probability. In contrast, existing approaches can catastrophically fail in satisfying these recall and precision targets. We show that our algorithms can improve query result quality by up to 30x for both the precision and recall targets in both real and synthetic datasets.
This article fits in the area of research that investigates the application of topological duality methods to problems that appear in theoretical computer science. One of the eventual goals of this approach is to derive results in computational complexity theory by studying appropriate topological objects which characterize them. The link which relates these two seemingly separated fields is logic, more precisely a subdomain of finite model theory known as logic on words. It allows for a description of complexity classes as certain families of languages, possibly non-regular, on a finite alphabet. Very few is known about the duality theory relative to fragments of first-order logic on words which lie outside of the scope of regular languages. The contribution of our work is a detailed study of such a fragment. Fixing an integer $k \geq 1$, we consider the Boolean algebra $\mathcal{B}\Sigma_1[\mathcal{N}^{u}_k]$. It corresponds to the fragment of logic on words consisting in Boolean combinations of sentences defined by using a block of at most $k$ existential quantifiers, letter predicates and uniform numerical predicates of arity $l \in \{1,...,k\}$. We give a detailed study of the dual space of this Boolean algebra, for any $k \geq 1$, and provide several characterizations of its points. In the particular case where $k=1$, we are able to construct a family of ultrafilter equations which characterize the Boolean algebra $\mathcal{B} \Sigma_1[\mathcal{N}^{u}_1]$. We use topological methods in order to prove that these equations are sound and complete with respect to the Boolean algebra we mentioned.
Since deep neural networks were developed, they have made huge contributions to everyday lives. Machine learning provides more rational advice than humans are capable of in almost every aspect of daily life. However, despite this achievement, the design and training of neural networks are still challenging and unpredictable procedures. To lower the technical thresholds for common users, automated hyper-parameter optimization (HPO) has become a popular topic in both academic and industrial areas. This paper provides a review of the most essential topics on HPO. The first section introduces the key hyper-parameters related to model training and structure, and discusses their importance and methods to define the value range. Then, the research focuses on major optimization algorithms and their applicability, covering their efficiency and accuracy especially for deep learning networks. This study next reviews major services and toolkits for HPO, comparing their support for state-of-the-art searching algorithms, feasibility with major deep learning frameworks, and extensibility for new modules designed by users. The paper concludes with problems that exist when HPO is applied to deep learning, a comparison between optimization algorithms, and prominent approaches for model evaluation with limited computational resources.