Constraint-Based Reasoning
Controlling False Discovery in Arbitrarily Structured Hypothesis Spaces via Reproducing Kernels
Perets, Binyamin, Mannor, Shie
Large-scale hypothesis testing is central to modern science, where controlling the False Discovery Rate (FDR) has become the standard approach to managing false positives across many simultaneous tests. Hypotheses rarely exist in isolation; they often exhibit structure through proximity, connectivity, or hierarchy. This structure represents both a challenge and an opportunity: while classical methods treat these dependencies as obstacles requiring conservative correction, leveraging them can substantially increase discovery power. Here, we reframe structured FDR control as a regularized learning problem. By optimizing within a suitable Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS), we introduce a framework that unifies continuous domains, graphs, and hierarchies under a single algorithm through kernel choice alone. This formulation enables smooth solutions in place of the piecewise-constant fits of prior methods, principled likelihood-based hyperparameter selection rather than heuristic tuning, and inference at unobserved locations which in turn supports sample-efficient experimental design. Building on this estimator, we provide two decision rules which we prove to control the FDR. We validate our method on two sources: spatial locations derived from high-dimensional real-world datasets, and a differential gene expression task utilizing protein-protein interaction graphs.
Tight Generalization Bounds for Noiseless Inverse Optimization
Fatemi, Pouria, Maskan, Hoomaan, Sra, Suvrit, Esfahani, Peyman Mohajerin
Inverse optimization (IO) seeks to infer the parameters of a decision-maker's objective from observed context--action data. We study noiseless IO, where demonstrations are generated by a ground-truth objective. We provide a high-probability ${O}(\frac{d}{T})$ generalization bound for the induced action set, where $d$ is the number of unknown parameters and $T$ is the size of the training dataset. We strengthen these guarantees under additional conditions that ensure uniqueness of the chosen action, bringing our IO guarantees in line with best-arm identification results in the bandit literature. We further show that the ${O}(\frac{d}{T})$ rate is tight over all consistent estimators considered here, and extend the result to both instantaneous and cumulative regret. Notably, the resulting regret lower bound matches the corresponding upper bounds in the adversarial setting, indicating that the stochastic IO setting is effectively adversarial for the class of estimators studied here. Finally, we propose a parameter-free algorithm with lower per-iteration complexity than generic solvers. Experiments validate the predicted rates and illustrate the tightness of our bounds.
Private estimation algorithms for stochastic block models and mixture models
We introduce general tools for designing efficient private estimation algorithms, in the high-dimensional settings, whose statistical guarantees almost match those of the best known non-private algorithms. To illustrate our techniques, we consider two problems: recovery of stochastic block models and learning mixtures of spherical Gaussians. For the former, we present the first efficient (ε,δ)-differentially private algorithms for both weak recovery and exact recovery. Previously known algorithms achieving comparable guarantees required quasi-polynomial time. We complement these results with an information-theoretic lower bound that highlights how the guarantees of our algorithms are almost tight. For the latter, we design an (ε,δ)-differentially private algorithm that recovers the centers of the k-mixture when the minimum separation is at least O(k1/t t). For all choices of t, this algorithm requires sample complexity n kO(1)dO(t) and time complexity (nd)O(t). Prior work required either an additional additive Ω( logn) term in the minimum separation or an explicit upper bound on the Euclidean norm of the centers.
Breaking the $O(\sqrt{T})$ Cumulative Constraint Violation Barrier while Achieving $O(\sqrt{T})$ Static Regret in Constrained Online Convex Optimization
Balasundaram, Haricharan, Mahendran, Karthick Krishna, Vaze, Rahul
The problem of constrained online convex optimization is considered, where at each round, once a learner commits to an action $x_t \in \mathcal{X} \subset \mathbb{R}^d$, a convex loss function $f_t$ and a convex constraint function $g_t$ that drives the constraint $g_t(x)\le 0$ are revealed. The objective is to simultaneously minimize the static regret and cumulative constraint violation (CCV) compared to the benchmark that knows the loss functions and constraint functions $f_t$ and $g_t$ for all $t$ ahead of time, and chooses a static optimal action that is feasible with respect to all $g_t(x)\le 0$. In recent prior work Sinha and Vaze [2024], algorithms with simultaneous regret of $O(\sqrt{T})$ and CCV of $O(\sqrt{T})$ or (CCV of $O(1)$ in specific cases Vaze and Sinha [2025], e.g. when $d=1$) have been proposed. It is widely believed that CCV is $Ω(\sqrt{T})$ for all algorithms that ensure that regret is $O(\sqrt{T})$ with the worst case input for any $d\ge 2$. In this paper, we refute this and show that the algorithm of Vaze and Sinha [2025] simultaneously achieves regret of $O(\sqrt{T})$ regret and CCV of $O(T^{1/3})$ when $d=2$.
Constrained Online Convex Optimization with Memory and Predictions
Abdullah, Mohammed, Iosifidis, George, Elayoubi, Salah Eddine, Chahed, Tijani
We study Constrained Online Convex Optimization with Memory (COCO-M), where both the loss and the constraints depend on a finite window of past decisions made by the learner. This setting extends the previously studied unconstrained online optimization with memory framework and captures practical problems such as the control of constrained dynamical systems and scheduling with reconfiguration budgets. For this problem, we propose the first algorithms that achieve sublinear regret and sublinear cumulative constraint violation under time-varying constraints, both with and without predictions of future loss and constraint functions. Without predictions, we introduce an adaptive penalty approach that guarantees sublinear regret and constraint violation. When short-horizon and potentially unreliable predictions are available, we reinterpret the problem as online learning with delayed feedback and design an optimistic algorithm whose performance improves as prediction accuracy improves, while remaining robust when predictions are inaccurate. Our results bridge the gap between classical constrained online convex optimization and memory-dependent settings, and provide a versatile learning toolbox with diverse applications.
Noisy Dual Mirror Descent: A Near Optimal Algorithm for Jointly-DP Convex Resource Allocation
We study convex resource allocation problems with $m$ hard constraints under $(\varepsilon,\delta)$-joint differential privacy (Joint-DP or JDP) in an offline setting. To approximately solve the problem, we propose a generic algorithm called Noisy Dual Mirror Descent. The algorithm applies noisy Mirror Descent to a dual problem from relaxing the hard constraints for private shadow prices, and then uses the shadow prices to coordinate allocations in the primal problem.