Data deviations in electronic health records (EHR) refer to discrepancies between recorded entries and a patient's actual physiological state, indicating a decline in EHR data fidelity. Such deviations can result from pre-analytical variability, documentation errors, or unvalidated data sources. Effectively detecting data deviations is clinically valuable for identifying erroneous records, excluding them from downstream clinical workflows, and informing corrective actions. Despite its importance and practical relevance, this problem remains largely underexplored in existing research. To bridge this gap, we propose a bi-level knowledge distillation approach centered on a task-agnostic formulation of EHR data fidelity as an intrinsic measure of data reliability. Our approach performs layered knowledge distillation in two levels: from a computation-intensive, task-specific data Shapley oracle to a neural oracle for individual tasks, and then to a unified EHR data fidelity predictor. This design enables the integration of task-specific insights into a holistic assessment of a patient's EHR data fidelity from a multi-task perspective. By tracking the outputs of this learned predictor, we detect potential data deviations in EHR data.

Limited labeling budget severely impedes data-driven research, such as medical analysis, remote sensing and population census, and active inference is a solution to this problem. Prior works utilizing independent sampling have achieved improvements over uniform sampling, but its insufficient usage of available information undermines its statistical efficiency. In this paper, we propose balanced active inference, a novel algorithm that incorporates balancing constraints based on model uncertainty utilizing the cube method for label selection. Under regularity conditions, we establish its asymptotic properties and also prove that the statistical efficiency of the proposed algorithm is higher than its alternatives. Various numerical experiments, including regression and classification in both synthetic setups and real data analysis, demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms its alternatives while guaranteeing nominal coverage. Our code is available at: https://github.com/Uninfty/Balanced_Active_Inference

We investigate the semi-discrete Optimal Transport (OT) problem, where a continuous source measure $\mu$ is transported to a discrete target measure $\nu$, with particular attention to the OT map approximation. In this setting, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) based solvers have demonstrated strong empirical performance in recent machine learning applications, yet their theoretical guarantee to approximate the OT map is an open question. In this work, we answer it positively by providing both computational and statistical convergence guarantees of SGD. Specifically, we show that SGD methods can estimate the OT map with a minimax convergence rate of $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{n})$, where $n$ is the number of samples drawn from $\mu$. To establish this result, we study the averaged projected SGD algorithm, and identify a suitable projection set that contains a minimizer of the objective, even when the source measure is not compactly supported. Our analysis holds under mild assumptions on the source measure and applies to MTW cost functions,whic include $\|\cdot\|^p$ for $p \in (1, \infty)$. We finally provide numerical evidence for our theoretical results.

View missing remains a significant challenge in graph-based multi-view semisupervised learning, hindering their real-world applications. To address this issue, traditional methods introduce a missing indicator matrix and focus on mining partial structure among existing samples in each view for label propagation (LP). However, we argue that these disregarded missing samples sometimes induce discontinuous local structures, i.e., sub-clusters, breaking the fundamental smoothness assumption in LP. Consequently, such a Sub-Cluster Problem (SCP) would distort graph fusion and degrade classification performance. To alleviate SCP, we propose a novel incomplete multi-view semi-supervised learning method, termed AGF-TI.

Estimating the distribution of outcomes under counterfactual policies is critical for decision-making in domains such as recommendation, advertising, and healthcare. We propose and analyze a novel framework--Counterfactual Policy Mean Embedding (CPME)--that represents the entire counterfactual outcome distribution in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS), enabling flexible and nonparametric distributional off-policy evaluation. We introduce both a plug-in estimator and a doubly robust estimator; the latter enjoys improved convergence rates by correcting for bias in both the outcome embedding and propensity models. Building on this, we develop a doubly robust kernel test statistic for hypothesis testing, which achieves asymptotic normality and thus enables computationally efficient testing and straightforward construction of confidence intervals. Our framework also supports sampling from the counterfactual distribution. Numerical simulations illustrate the practical benefits of CPME over existing methods.

Oligonucleotide therapeutics offer great potential to address previously undruggable targets and enable personalized medicine. However, their progress is often hindered by insufficient safety and efficacy profiles. Predictive modeling and machine learning could significantly accelerate oligonucleotide drug discovery by identifying suboptimal compounds early on, but their application in this area lags behind other modalities. A key obstacle to the adoption of machine learning in the field is the scarcity of readily accessible and standardized datasets for model development, as data are often scattered across diverse experiments with inconsistent molecular representations. To overcome this challenge, we introduce OligoGym, a curated collection of standardized, machine learning-ready datasets encompassing various oligonucleotide therapeutic modalities and endpoints. We used OligoGym to benchmark diverse classical and deep learning methods, establishing performance baselines for each dataset across different featurization techniques, model configurations, and splitting strategies. Our work represents a crucial first step in creating a more unified framework for oligonucleotide therapeutic dataset generation and model training.

Quantifying uncertainty in deep regression models is important both for understanding the confidence of the model and for safe decision-making in high-risk domains. Existing approaches that yield prediction intervals overlook distributional information, neglecting the effect of multimodal or asymmetric distributions on decision-making.

Gaussian sketching, which consists of pre-multiplying the data with a random Gaussian matrix, is a widely used technique in data science and machine learning. Beyond computational benefits, this operation also provides differential privacy guarantees due to its inherent randomness. In this work, we revisit this operation through the lens of Rényi Differential Privacy (RDP), providing a refined privacy analysis that yields significantly tighter bounds than prior results. We then demonstrate how this improved analysis leads to performance improvement in different linear regression settings, establishing theoretical utility guarantees. Empirically, our methods improve performance across multiple datasets and, in several cases, reduce runtime.

Local search is a powerful clustering technique that provides high-quality solutions with theoretical guarantees. With distance-based sampling strategies, local search methods can achieve constant approximations for clustering with linear running time in data size. Despite their effectiveness, existing algorithms still face scalability issues as they require scanning the entire dataset for iterative center swaps. This typically leads to an O(ndk) running time, where nis the data size, dis the dimension, k is the number of clusters. To further improve the efficiency of local search algorithms, we propose new methods based on adaptive sampling and bandit strategies.

Counterfactual explanations provide individuals with cost-optimal recommendations to achieve their desired outcomes. However, when a significant number of individuals seek similar state modifications, this individual-centric approach can inadvertently create competition and introduce unforeseen costs. Additionally, disregarding the underlying data distribution may lead to recommendations that individuals perceive as unusual or impractical. To address these challenges, we propose a novel framework that extends standard counterfactual explanations by incorporating a population dynamics model. This framework penalizes deviations from equilibrium after individuals follow the recommendations, effectively mitigating externalities caused by correlated changes across the population. By balancing individual modification costs with their impact on others, our method ensures more equitable and efficient outcomes. We show how this approach reframes the counterfactual explanation problem from an individual-centric task to a collective optimization problem. Augmenting our theoretical insights, we design and implement scalable algorithms for computing collective counterfactuals, showcasing their effectiveness and advantages over existing recourse methods, particularly in aligning with collective objectives.