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 Statistical Learning


On-line Bayesian System Identification

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We consider an on-line system identification setting, in which new data become available at given time steps. In order to meet real-time estimation requirements, we propose a tailored Bayesian system identification procedure, in which the hyper-parameters are still updated through Marginal Likelihood maximization, but after only one iteration of a suitable iterative optimization algorithm. Both gradient methods and the EM algorithm are considered for the Marginal Likelihood optimization. We compare this "1-step" procedure with the standard one, in which the optimization method is run until convergence to a local minimum. The experiments we perform confirm the effectiveness of the approach we propose.


When Do Fewer Coordinates Suffice in DP-SGD?

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Differentially private stochastic gradient descent (DP-SGD) injects noise into every updated coordinate, making the injected noise energy scale with the ambient parameter dimension \(d\). We ask when private training can update fewer coordinates without losing the signal needed for optimization. We propose \textsc{TP-TopK} (Two-Phase TopK DP-SGD), a two-phase method for coordinate-sparse private training without public data, in which a private warm-up phase identifies a coordinate support used to guide the main training phase. We give a criterion characterizing when coordinate restriction can be beneficial, show via a nonconvex stationarity bound that under this condition the relevant noise term scales with the active dimension \(k\) rather than the full parameter dimension \(d\), and provide a lower bound on the reliability of warm-up-based coordinate ranking. Experiments on MNIST, FMNIST, and CIFAR-10 show that learned coordinate supports can retain more gradient energy than size-matched random supports, with the largest gains when the active dimension is small and warm-up scores are informative.


Tensor decompositions for learning latent variable models

arXiv.org Machine Learning

This work considers a computationally and statistically efficient parameter estimation method for a wide class of latent variable models---including Gaussian mixture models, hidden Markov models, and latent Dirichlet allocation---which exploits a certain tensor structure in their low-order observable moments (typically, of second- and third-order). Specifically, parameter estimation is reduced to the problem of extracting a certain (orthogonal) decomposition of a symmetric tensor derived from the moments; this decomposition can be viewed as a natural generalization of the singular value decomposition for matrices. Although tensor decompositions are generally intractable to compute, the decomposition of these specially structured tensors can be efficiently obtained by a variety of approaches, including power iterations and maximization approaches (similar to the case of matrices). A detailed analysis of a robust tensor power method is provided, establishing an analogue of Wedin's perturbation theorem for the singular vectors of matrices. This implies a robust and computationally tractable estimation approach for several popular latent variable models.


Set-Preserving Calibration from Conformal P-Values to E-Values

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Standard conformal prediction (CP) procedures are typically formulated in terms of p-values, but reliance on p-values alone limits flexibility, for example, when combining dependent evidence across models or data splits. Recent work has explored e-value formulations for conformal inference, yet a direct connection between p- and e-value formulations in CP has been missing, especially regarding their statistical efficiency. We first identify limitations of classical p-to-e calibrators in the CP setting, showing that they are not set-preserving and can lead to overly conservative prediction sets. To address this, we propose a novel P2E calibrator that converts conformal p-values into e-values without altering the prediction set induced by the original conformal p-value. We establish both theoretically and empirically that our calibrator can yield significant efficiency gains over existing p-to-e calibrators. This e-value formulation enables principled use of recent advances in e-value merging and randomization, where we demonstrate its impact in two applications: cross-conformal prediction (CCP), whose variants typically provide only approximate $1-2ฮฑ$ coverage, and conformal aggregation (CA). In both cases, our e-value-based methods satisfy the desired $1-ฮฑ$ coverage guarantee while improving efficiency over standard baselines. More broadly, our approach expands the flexibility of CP and opens new directions for efficient, distribution-free uncertainty quantification.


Sample Complexity and Decision-Theoretic Guarantees for Bayesian Model Averaging over Decision Trees with Catalan-Exponential Priors

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We ask: when do Bayesian model averaging (BMA) weights over decision trees carry sufficient epistemic information to justify committed exploitation of the averaging distribution? We answer this question in closed form for Bayesian decision trees (BDTs) with Dirichlet-Multinomial leaf models and a Catalan-exponential tree-size prior (Schetinin&Jakaite, 2025), establishing a complete non-asymptotic theory of rational commitment thresholds.


Performance Analysis of Spectral Clustering on Compressed, Incomplete and Inaccurate Measurements

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Spectral clustering is a tool for extracting meaningful information from data by grouping similar objectsDtogether [1]. The method uses the eigenvector of an adjacency matrix for embedding the data into a space that captures the underlying group structure [2]. High-dimensional signals, magnetic resonance images, and hyperspectral images can be costly to acquire; even simple direct comparisons could be infeasible among such data sets. Our work shows that the meaningful organization extracted from spectral clustering is preserved under the perturbation from making compressed, incomplete and inaccurate measurements. Using bounds on the perturbation of eigenvectors, we establish error bounds of the spectral embedding when matrix completion and compressed sensing measurements are used. Given some error Nวซ in the entries of an affinity matrix A RN N, we show that the space spanned by the first k eigenvector are all within O(Nวซ) of the span of the unperturbed eigenvectors. We prove that the perturbed spectral coordinates are within O(Nวซ)of a unitary transform of the unperturbed coordinates and can give k-means cluster assignments within O(Nวซ) of the unperturbed case. This analysis holds true when the error perturbation in the entries of an affinity matrix |A(i,j) A (i,j)| วซ is caused from making compressed arXiv:1011.0997v1


A Unifying Analysis of Projected Gradient Descent for $\ell_p$-constrained Least Squares

arXiv.org Machine Learning

In this paper we study the performance of the Projected Gradient Descent(PGD) algorithm for $\ell_{p}$-constrained least squares problems that arise in the framework of Compressed Sensing. Relying on the Restricted Isometry Property, we provide convergence guarantees for this algorithm for the entire range of $0\leq p\leq1$, that include and generalize the existing results for the Iterative Hard Thresholding algorithm and provide a new accuracy guarantee for the Iterative Soft Thresholding algorithm as special cases. Our results suggest that in this group of algorithms, as $p$ increases from zero to one, conditions required to guarantee accuracy become stricter and robustness to noise deteriorates.


Hierarchies of Calibration: Classification meets Regression

arXiv.org Machine Learning

In a nutshell, the outcomes ought to be indistinguishable from random draws from the predictive distributions. In this paper, we review, extend, and bridge notions of calibration that have been proposed for classification and regression tasks. Particular emphasis is given to hierarchical relations between the various notions, as they apply to general real-valued data, continuous outcomes, count data, nominal classes, and binary outcomes. To highlight a number of contributions, we introduce the notion of modal calibration for nominal outcomes, we distinguish full, partial, and average calibration in this setting, and we show that double probability integral transform (PIT) calibration is logically independent of previously proposed concepts of calibration for discrete outcomes. Furthermore, we generalize extant results on concepts of calibration that are expressed in terms of properties or functionals of the predictive distributions, such as means, quantiles, or event probabilities. Throughout the paper, we illustrate the concepts and their hierarchical relations in worked examples, and we provide algorithmic tools that support the construction of instructive examples and counterexamples. Keywords: Auto-calibration, confidence calibration, diagnostic evaluation of probabilistic predictions, distributional properties, probability integral transform (PIT), reliability.


A Geometric Blind Source Separation Method Based on Facet Component Analysis

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Given a set of mixtures, blind source separation attempts to retrieve the source signals without or with very little information of the the mixing process. We present a geometric approach for blind separation of nonnegative linear mixtures termed {\em facet component analysis} (FCA). The approach is based on facet identification of the underlying cone structure of the data. Earlier works focus on recovering the cone by locating its vertices (vertex component analysis or VCA) based on a mutual sparsity condition which requires each source signal to possess a stand-alone peak in its spectrum. We formulate alternative conditions so that enough data points fall on the facets of a cone instead of accumulating around the vertices. To find a regime of unique solvability, we make use of both geometric and density properties of the data points, and develop an efficient facet identification method by combining data classification and linear regression. For noisy data, we show that denoising methods may be employed, such as the total variation technique in imaging processing, and principle component analysis. We show computational results on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic data to substantiate our method.


Large-scale Uncertainty Quantification for Latent Variable Models Using Subsampling Markov Chain Monte Carlo

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics combined with Gibbs updates (SGLD--Gibbs) provides a highly scalable approach to approximate Bayesian inference in latent variable models. However, it remains unclear how to tune the algorithm's hyperparameters in a principled manner to ensure the uncertainty estimates are statistically meaningful. In this work, we address this gap in tuning guidance by developing a statistical scaling limit theory for SGLD--Gibbs. We derive a joint asymptotic limit for the global parameters and latent variables under appropriate space-time rescaling. We show that global parameters converge to a diffusion-type limit, while each latent variable converges to a jump process, reflecting the use of intermittent Gibbs updates. This joint jump-diffusion structure reveals how latent-variable randomness contributes to the stationary distribution of the global parameters. We leverage our results to propose explicit guidance on hyperparameter tuning for SGLD--Gibbs that ensures meaningful uncertainty quantification. Numerical experiments show that SGLD--Gibbs with our tuning guidance leads to better parameter estimates, uncertainty quantification, and predictive performance than stochastic variational inference.