We consider the online version of the piercing set problem, where geometric objects arrive one by one, and the online algorithm must maintain a valid piercing set for the already arrived objects by making irrevocable decisions. It is easy to observe that any deterministic online algorithm that solves this problem has a competitive ratio of at least $\Omega(n)$, which even holds when the objects are intervals. This paper considers the piercing set problem when objects are bounded scaled. We propose deterministic algorithms for bounded scaled fat objects. Piercing translated copies of an object is equivalent to the unit covering problem, which is well-studied in the online setup. Surprisingly, no upper bound of the competitive ratio was known for the unit covering problem when unit objects are anything other than balls and hypercubes. Our result gives an upper bound of the competitive ratio for the unit covering problem for various unit objects. For fixed-oriented hypercubes in $\mathbb{R}^d$ with the scaling factor in the range $[1,k]$, we propose an algorithm having a competitive ratio of at most~$3^d\log_2 k+2^d$. In the end, we show a lower bound of the competitive ratio for bounded scaled objects of various types like $\alpha$-fat objects in $\mathbb{R}^2$, axis-aligned hypercubes in $\mathbb{R}^d$, and balls in $\mathbb{R}^2$ and~$\mathbb{R}^3$.
In this paper we study the threshold model of \emph{geometric inhomogeneous random graphs} (GIRGs); a generative random graph model that is closely related to \emph{hyperbolic random graphs} (HRGs). These models have been observed to capture complex real-world networks well with respect to the structural and algorithmic properties. Following comprehensive studies regarding their \emph{connectivity}, i.e., which parts of the graphs are connected, we have a good understanding under which circumstances a \emph{giant} component (containing a constant fraction of the graph) emerges. While previous results are rather technical and challenging to work with, the goal of this paper is to provide more accessible proofs. At the same time we significantly improve the previously known probabilistic guarantees, showing that GIRGs contain a giant component with probability $1 - \exp(-\Omega(n^{(3-\tau)/2}))$ for graph size $n$ and a degree distribution with power-law exponent $\tau \in (2, 3)$. Based on that we additionally derive insights about the connectivity of certain induced subgraphs of GIRGs.
In this paper we consider the weighted $k$-Hamming and $k$-Edit distances, that are natural generalizations of the classical Hamming and Edit distances. As main results of this paper we prove that for any $k\geq 2$ the DECIS-$k$-Hamming problem is $\mathbb{P}$-SPACE-complete and the DECIS-$k$-Edit problem is NEXPTIME-complete.
We show that corner polyhedra and 3-connected Schnyder labelings join the growing list of planar structures that can be set in exact correspondence with (weighted) models of quadrant walks via a bijection due to Kenyon, Miller, Sheffield and Wilson. Our approach leads to a first polynomial time algorithm to count these structures, and to the determination of their exact asymptotic growth constants: the number $p_n$ of corner polyhedra and $s_n$ of 3-connected Schnyder labelings of size $n$ respectively satisfy $(p_n)^{1/n}\to 9/2$ and $(s_n)^{1/n}\to 16/3$ as $n$ goes to infinity. While the growth rates are rational, like in the case of previously known instances of such correspondences, the exponent of the asymptotic polynomial correction to the exponential growth does not appear to follow from the now standard Denisov-Wachtel approach, due to a bimodal behavior of the step set of the underlying tandem walk. However a heuristic argument suggests that these exponents are $-1-\pi/\arccos(9/16)\approx -4.23$ for $p_n$ and $-1-\pi/\arccos(22/27)\approx -6.08$ for $s_n$, which would imply that the associated series are not D-finite.
Given subsets of uncertain values, we study the problem of identifying the subset of minimum total value (sum of the uncertain values) by querying as few values as possible. This set selection problem falls into the field of explorable uncertainty and is of intrinsic importance therein as it implies strong adversarial lower bounds for a wide range of interesting combinatorial problems such as knapsack and matchings. We consider a stochastic problem variant and give algorithms that, in expectation, improve upon these adversarial lower bounds. The key to our results is to prove a strong structural connection to a seemingly unrelated covering problem with uncertainty in the constraints via a linear programming formulation. We exploit this connection to derive an algorithmic framework that can be used to solve both problems under uncertainty, obtaining nearly tight bounds on the competitive ratio. This is the first non-trivial stochastic result concerning the sum of unknown values without further structure known for the set. With our novel methods, we lay the foundations for solving more general problems in the area of explorable uncertainty.
Representation learning based on multi-task pretraining has become a powerful approach in many domains. In particular, task-aware representation learning aims to learn an optimal representation for a specific target task by sampling data from a set of source tasks, while task-agnostic representation learning seeks to learn a universal representation for a class of tasks. In this paper, we propose a general and versatile algorithmic and theoretic framework for \textit{active representation learning}, where the learner optimally chooses which source tasks to sample from. This framework, along with a tractable meta algorithm, allows most arbitrary target and source task spaces (from discrete to continuous), covers both task-aware and task-agnostic settings, and is compatible with deep representation learning practices. We provide several instantiations under this framework, from bilinear and feature-based nonlinear to general nonlinear cases. In the bilinear case, by leveraging the non-uniform spectrum of the task representation and the calibrated source-target relevance, we prove that the sample complexity to achieve $\varepsilon$-excess risk on target scales with $ (k^*)^2 \|v^*\|_2^2 \varepsilon^{-2}$ where $k^*$ is the effective dimension of the target and $\|v^*\|_2^2 \in (0,1]$ represents the connection between source and target space. Compared to the passive one, this can save up to $\frac{1}{d_W}$ of sample complexity, where $d_W$ is the task space dimension. Finally, we demonstrate different instantiations of our meta algorithm in synthetic datasets and robotics problems, from pendulum simulations to real-world drone flight datasets. On average, our algorithms outperform baselines by $20\%-70\%$.
Thepaperprovesconvergenceofone-levelandmultilevelunsymmetriccollocationforsecondorderelliptic boundary value problems on the bounded domains. By using Schaback's linear discretization theory,L2 errors are obtained based on the kernel-based trial spaces generated by the compactly supported radial basis functions. For the one-level unsymmetric collocation case, we obtain convergence when the testing discretization is finer than the trial discretization. The convergence rates depend on the regularity of the solution, the smoothness of the computing domain, and the approximation of scaled kernel-based spaces. The multilevel process is implemented by employing successive refinement scattered data sets and scaled compactly supported radial basis functions with varying support radii. Convergence of multilevel collocation is further proved based on the theoretical results of one-level unsymmetric collocation. In addition to having the same dependencies as the one-level collocation, the convergence rates of multilevel unsymmetric collocation especially depends on the increasing rules of scattered data and the selection of scaling parameters.
Privacy-utility tradeoff remains as one of the fundamental issues of differentially private machine learning. This paper introduces a geometrically inspired kernel-based approach to mitigate the accuracy-loss issue in classification. In this approach, a representation of the affine hull of given data points is learned in Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHS). This leads to a novel distance measure that hides privacy-sensitive information about individual data points and improves the privacy-utility tradeoff via significantly reducing the risk of membership inference attacks. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated through experiments on MNIST dataset, Freiburg groceries dataset, and a real biomedical dataset. It is verified that the approach remains computationally practical. The application of the approach to federated learning is considered and it is observed that the accuracy-loss due to data being distributed is either marginal or not significantly high.
Predictive simulation of human motion could provide insight into optimal techniques. In repetitive or long-duration tasks, these simulations must predict fatigue-induced adaptation. However, most studies minimize cost function terms related to actuator activations, assuming it minimizes fatigue. An additional modeling layer is needed to consider the previous use of muscles to reveal adaptive strategies to the decreased force production capability. Here, we propose interfacing Xia's three-compartment fatigue dynamics model with rigid-body dynamics. A stabilization invariant was added to Xia's model. We simulated the maximum repetition of dumbbell biceps curls as an optimal control problem (OCP) using direct multiple shooting. We explored three cost functions (minimizing minimum torque, fatigue, or both) and two OCP formulations (full-horizon and sliding-horizon approaches). We found that Xia's model modified with the stabilization invariant (10 or 5) was adapted to direct multiple shooting. Sliding-horizon OCPs achieved 20 to 21 repetitions. The kinematic strategy slowly deviated from a plausible dumbbell lifting task to a swinging strategy as fatigue onset increasingly compromised the ability to keep the arm vertical. In full-horizon OCPs, the latter kinematic strategy was used over the whole motion, resulting in 32 repetitions. We showed that sliding-horizon OCPs revealed a reactive strategy to fatigue when only torque was included in the cost function, whereas an anticipatory strategy was revealed when the fatigue term was included in the cost function. Overall, the proposed approach has the potential to be a valuable tool in optimizing performance and helping reduce fatigue-related injuries in a variety of fields.
Neural network compression has been an increasingly important subject, due to its practical implications in terms of reducing the computational requirements and its theoretical implications, as there is an explicit connection between compressibility and the generalization error. Recent studies have shown that the choice of the hyperparameters of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) can have an effect on the compressibility of the learned parameter vector. Even though these results have shed some light on the role of the training dynamics over compressibility, they relied on unverifiable assumptions and the resulting theory does not provide a practical guideline due to its implicitness. In this study, we propose a simple modification for SGD, such that the outputs of the algorithm will be provably compressible without making any nontrivial assumptions. We consider a one-hidden-layer neural network trained with SGD and we inject additive heavy-tailed noise to the iterates at each iteration. We then show that, for any compression rate, there exists a level of overparametrization (i.e., the number of hidden units), such that the output of the algorithm will be compressible with high probability. To achieve this result, we make two main technical contributions: (i) we build on a recent study on stochastic analysis and prove a 'propagation of chaos' result with improved rates for a class of heavy-tailed stochastic differential equations, and (ii) we derive strong-error estimates for their Euler discretization. We finally illustrate our approach on experiments, where the results suggest that the proposed approach achieves compressibility with a slight compromise from the training and test error.
This paper considers the Westervelt equation, one of the most widely used models in nonlinear acoustics, and seeks to recover two spatially-dependent parameters of physical importance from time-trace boundary measurements. Specifically, these are the nonlinearity parameter $\kappa(x)$ often referred to as $B/A$ in the acoustics literature and the wave speed $c_0(x)$. The determination of the spatial change in these quantities can be used as a means of imaging. We consider identifiability from one or two boundary measurements as relevant in these applications. For a reformulation of the problem in terms of the squared slowness $\mathfrak{s}=1/c_0^2$ and the combined coefficient $\eta=\frac{B/A+2}{\varrho_0 c_0^4}$ we devise a frozen Newton method and prove its convergence. The effectiveness (and limitations) of this iterative scheme are demonstrated by numerical examples.