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 Statistical Learning


Certified Minimax Unlearning with Generalization Rates and Deletion Capacity

Neural Information Processing Systems

We study the problem of (ฯต,ฮด)-certified machine unlearning for minimax models. Most of the existing works focus on unlearning from standard statistical learning models that have a single variable and their unlearning steps hinge on the direct Hessian-based conventional Newton update. We develop a new (ฯต,ฮด)-certified machine unlearning algorithm for minimax models. It proposes a minimax unlearning step consisting of a total Hessian-based complete Newton update and the Gaussian mechanism borrowed from differential privacy. To obtain the unlearning certification, our method injects calibrated Gaussian noises by carefully analyzing the "sensitivity" of the minimax unlearning step (i.e., the closeness between the minimax unlearning variables and the retraining-from-scratch variables).




Reverse Engineering Self-Supervised Learning

Neural Information Processing Systems

Self-supervised learning (SSL) is a powerful tool in machine learning, but understanding the learned representations and their underlying mechanisms remains a challenge. This paper presents an in-depth empirical analysis of SSL-trained representations, encompassing diverse models, architectures, and hyperparameters. Our study reveals an intriguing aspect of the SSL training process: it inherently facilitates the clustering of samples with respect to semantic labels, which is surprisingly driven by the SSL objective's regularization term. This clustering process not only enhances downstream classification but also compresses the data information. Furthermore, we establish that SSL-trained representations align more closely with semantic classes rather than random classes. Remarkably, we show that learned representations align with semantic classes across various hierarchical levels, and this alignment increases during training and when moving deeper into the network. Our findings provide valuable insights into SSL's representation learning mechanisms and their impact on performance across different sets of classes.


Optimal Rates for Vector-Valued Spectral Regularization Learning Algorithms

Neural Information Processing Systems

We study theoretical properties of a broad class of regularized algorithms with vector-valued output. These spectral algorithms include kernel ridge regression, kernel principal component regression and various implementations of gradient descent.


Streaming Factor Trajectory Learning for Temporal Tensor Decomposition

Neural Information Processing Systems

Practical tensor data is often along with time information. Most existing temporal decomposition approaches estimate a set of fixed factors for the objects in each tensor mode, and hence cannot capture the temporal evolution of the objects' representation. More important, we lack an effective approach to capture such evolution from streaming data, which is common in real-world applications. To address these issues, we propose Streaming Factor Trajectory Learning (SFTL) for temporal tensor decomposition. We use Gaussian processes (GPs) to model the trajectory of factors so as to flexibly estimate their temporal evolution.




Diffusion Representation for Asymmetric Kernels via Magnetic Transform

Neural Information Processing Systems

As a nonlinear dimension reduction technique, the diffusion map (DM) has been widely used. In DM, kernels play an important role for capturing the nonlinear relationship of data. However, only symmetric kernels can be used now, which prevents the use of DM in directed graphs, trophic networks, and other real-world scenarios where the intrinsic and extrinsic geometries in data are asymmetric. A promising technique is the magnetic transform which converts an asymmetric matrix to a Hermitian one. However, we are facing essential problems, including how diffusion distance could be preserved and how divergence could be avoided during diffusion process. Via theoretical proof, we successfully establish a diffusion representation framework with the magnetic transform, named MagDM. The effectiveness and robustness for dealing data endowed with asymmetric proximity are demonstrated on three synthetic datasets and two trophic networks.