Statistical Learning
Predictive Uncertainty in Short-Term PV Forecasting under Missing Data: A Multiple Imputation Approach
Pashmchi, Parastoo, Benoit, Jérôme, Kanagawa, Motonobu
Missing values are common in photovoltaic (PV) power data, yet the uncertainty they induce is not propagated into predictive distributions. We develop a framework that incorporates missing-data uncertainty into short-term PV forecasting by combining stochastic multiple imputation with Rubin's rule. The approach is model-agnostic and can be integrated with standard machine-learning predictors. Empirical results show that ignoring missing-data uncertainty leads to overly narrow prediction intervals. Accounting for this uncertainty improves interval calibration while maintaining comparable point prediction accuracy. These results demonstrate the importance of propagating imputation uncertainty in data-driven PV forecasting.
Preconditioned One-Step Generative Modeling for Bayesian Inverse Problems in Function Spaces
Cheng, Zilan, Wang, Li-Lian, Wang, Zhongjian
We propose a machine-learning algorithm for Bayesian inverse problems in the function-space regime based on one-step generative transport. Building on the Mean Flows, we learn a fully conditional amortized sampler with a neural-operator backbone that maps a reference Gaussian noise to approximate posterior samples. We show that while white-noise references may be admissible at fixed discretization, they become incompatible with the function-space limit, leading to instability in inference for Bayesian problems arising from PDEs. To address this issue, we adopt a prior-aligned anisotropic Gaussian reference distribution and establish the Lipschitz regularity of the resulting transport. Our method is not distilled from MCMC: training relies only on prior samples and simulated partial and noisy observations. Once trained, it generates a $64\times64$ posterior sample in $\sim 10^{-3}$s, avoiding the repeated PDE solves of MCMC while matching key posterior summaries.
Understanding the geometry of deep learning with decision boundary volume
Burfitt, Matthew, Brodzki, Jacek, Dłotko, Pawel
For classification tasks, the performance of a deep neural network is determined by the structure of its decision boundary, whose geometry directly affects essential properties of the model, including accuracy and robustness. Motivated by a classical tube formula due to Weyl, we introduce a method to measure the decision boundary of a neural network through local surface volumes, providing a theoretically justifiable and efficient measure enabling a geometric interpretation of the effectiveness of the model applicable to the high dimensional feature spaces considered in deep learning. A smaller surface volume is expected to correspond to lower model complexity and better generalisation. We verify, on a number of image processing tasks with convolutional architectures that decision boundary volume is inversely proportional to classification accuracy. Meanwhile, the relationship between local surface volume and generalisation for fully connected architecture is observed to be less stable between tasks. Therefore, for network architectures suited to a particular data structure, we demonstrate that smoother decision boundaries lead to better performance, as our intuition would suggest.
Robust Sequential Tracking via Bounded Information Geometry and Non-Parametric Field Actions
Standard sequential inference architectures are compromised by a normalizability crisis when confronted with extreme, structured outliers. By operating on unbounded parameter spaces, state-of-the-art estimators lack the intrinsic geometry required to appropriately sever anomalies, resulting in unbounded covariance inflation and mean divergence. This paper resolves this structural failure by analyzing the abstraction sequence of inference at the meta-prior level (S_2). We demonstrate that extremizing the action over an infinite-dimensional space requires a non-parametric field anchored by a pre-prior, as a uniform volume element mathematically does not exist. By utilizing strictly invariant Delta (or ν) Information Separations on the statistical manifold, we physically truncate the infinite tails of the spatial distribution. When evaluated as a Radon-Nikodym derivative against the base measure, the active parameter space compresses into a strictly finite, normalizable probability droplet. Empirical benchmarks across three domains--LiDAR maneuvering target tracking, high-frequency cryptocurrency order flow, and quantum state tomography--demonstrate that this bounded information geometry analytically truncates outliers, ensuring robust estimation without relying on infinite-tailed distributional assumptions.
Power-Law Spectrum of the Random Feature Model
Paquette, Elliot, Xiao, Ke Liang, Zhu, Yizhe
Scaling laws for neural networks, in which the loss decays as a power-law in the number of parameters, data, and compute, depend fundamentally on the spectral structure of the data covariance, with power-law eigenvalue decay appearing ubiquitously in vision and language tasks. A central question is whether this spectral structure is preserved or destroyed when data passes through the basic building block of a neural network: a random linear projection followed by a nonlinear activation. We study this question for the random feature model: given data $x \sim N(0,H)\in \mathbb{R}^v$ where $H$ has $α$-power-law spectrum ($λ_j(H ) \asymp j^{-α}$, $α> 1$), a Gaussian sketch matrix $W \in \mathbb{R}^{v\times d}$, and an entrywise monomial $f(y) = y^{p}$, we characterize the eigenvalues of the population random-feature covariance $\mathbb{E}_{x }[\frac{1}{d}f(W^\top x )^{\otimes 2}]$. We prove matching upper and lower bounds: for all $1 \leq j \leq c_1 d \log^{-(p+1)}(d)$, the $j$-th eigenvalue is of order $\left(\log^{p-1}(j+1)/j\right)^α$. For $ c_1 d \log^{-(p+1)}(d)\leq j\leq d$, the $j$-th eigenvalue is of order $j^{-α}$ up to a polylog factor. That is, the power-law exponent $α$ is inherited exactly from the input covariance, modified only by a logarithmic correction that depends on the monomial degree $p$. The proof combines a dyadic head-tail decomposition with Wick chaos expansions for higher-order monomials and random matrix concentration inequalities.
BrainCast: A Spatio-Temporal Forecasting Model for Whole-Brain fMRI Time Series Prediction
Gao, Yunlong, Yang, Jinbo, Xiao, Li, Huo, Haiye, Ji, Yang, Wang, Hao, Zhang, Aiying, Wang, Yu-Ping
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) enables noninvasive investigation of brain function, while short clinical scan durations, arising from human and non-human factors, usually lead to reduced data quality and limited statistical power for neuroimaging research. In this paper, we propose BrainCast, a novel spatio-temporal forecasting framework specifically tailored for whole-brain fMRI time series forecasting, to extend informative fMRI time series without additional data acquisition. It formulates fMRI time series forecasting as a multivariate time series prediction task and jointly models temporal dynamics within regions of interest (ROIs) and spatial interactions across ROIs. Specifically, BrainCast integrates a Spatial Interaction Awareness module to characterize inter-ROI dependencies via embedding every ROI time series as a token, a Temporal Feature Refinement module to capture intrinsic neural dynamics within each ROI by enhancing both low- and high-energy temporal components of fMRI time series at the ROI level, and a Spatio-temporal Pattern Alignment module to combine spatial and temporal representations for producing informative whole-brain features. Experimental results on resting-state and task fMRI datasets from the Human Connectome Project demonstrate the superiority of BrainCast over state-of-the-art time series forecasting baselines. Moreover, fMRI time series extended by BrainCast improve downstream cognitive ability prediction, highlighting the clinical and neuroscientific impact brought by whole-brain fMRI time series forecasting in scenarios with restricted scan durations.
Label Noise Cleaning for Supervised Classification via Bernoulli Random Sampling
Liu, Yuxin, Jin, Xiong, Han, Yang
Label noise - incorrect labels assigned to observations - can substantially degrade the performance of supervised classifiers. This paper proposes a label noise cleaning method based on Bernoulli random sampling. We show that the mean label noise levels of subsets generated by Bernoulli random sampling containing a given observation are identically distributed for all clean observations, and identically distributed, with a different distribution, for all noisy observations. Although the mean label noise levels are not independent across observations, by introducing an independent coupling we further prove that they converge to a mixture of two well-separated distributions corresponding to clean and noisy observations. By establishing a linear model between cross-validated classification errors and label noise levels, we are able to approximate this mixture distribution and thereby separate clean and noisy observations without any prior label information. The proposed method is classifier-agnostic, theoretically justified, and demonstrates strong performance on both simulated and real datasets.
An Interpretable and Stable Framework for Sparse Principal Component Analysis
Sparse principal component analysis (SPCA) addresses the poor interpretability and variable redundancy often encountered by principal component analysis (PCA) in high-dimensional data. However, SPCA typically imposes uniform penalties on variables and does not account for differences in variable importance, which may lead to unstable performance in highly noisy or structurally complex settings. We propose SP-SPCA, a method that introduces a single equilibrium parameter into the regularization framework to adaptively adjust variable penalties. This modification of the L2 penalty provides flexible control over the trade-off between sparsity and explained variance while maintaining computational efficiency. Simulation studies show that the proposed method consistently outperforms standard sparse principal component methods in identifying sparse loading patterns, filtering noise variables, and preserving cumulative variance, especially in high-dimensional and noisy settings. Empirical applications to crime and financial market data further demonstrate its practical utility. In real data analyses, the method selects fewer but more relevant variables, thereby reducing model complexity while maintaining explanatory power. Overall, the proposed approach offers a robust and efficient alternative for sparse modeling in complex high-dimensional data, with clear advantages in stability, feature selection, and interpretability
Unbiased and Biased Variance-Reduced Forward-Reflected-Backward Splitting Methods for Stochastic Composite Inclusions
Tran-Dinh, Quoc, Nguyen-Trung, Nghia
This paper develops new variance-reduction techniques for the forward-reflected-backward splitting (FRBS) method to solve a class of possibly nonmonotone stochastic composite inclusions. Unlike unbiased estimators such as mini-batching, developing stochastic biased variants faces a fundamental technical challenge and has not been utilized before for inclusions and fixed-point problems. We fill this gap by designing a new framework that can handle both unbiased and biased estimators. Our main idea is to construct stochastic variance-reduced estimators for the forward-reflected direction and use them to perform iterate updates. First, we propose a class of unbiased variance-reduced estimators and show that increasing mini-batch SGD, loopless-SVRG, and SAGA estimators fall within this class. For these unbiased estimators, we establish a $\mathcal{O}(1/k)$ best-iterate convergence rate for the expected squared residual norm, together with almost-sure convergence of the iterate sequence to a solution. Consequently, we prove that the best oracle complexities for the $n$-finite-sum and expectation settings are $\mathcal{O}(n^{2/3}ε^{-2})$ and $\mathcal{O}(ε^{-10/3})$, respectively, when employing loopless-SVRG or SAGA, where $ε$ is a desired accuracy. Second, we introduce a new class of biased variance-reduced estimators for the forward-reflected direction, which includes SARAH, Hybrid SGD, and Hybrid SVRG as special instances. While the convergence rates remain valid for these biased estimators, the resulting oracle complexities are $\mathcal{O}(n^{3/4}ε^{-2})$ and $\mathcal{O}(ε^{-5})$ for the $n$-finite-sum and expectation settings, respectively. Finally, we conduct two numerical experiments on AUC optimization for imbalanced classification and policy evaluation in reinforcement learning.
Locally Linear Continual Learning for Time Series based on VC-Theoretical Generalization Bounds
Ferreira, Yan V. G., Lima, Igor B., S., Pedro H. G. Mapa, Campos, Felipe V., Braga, Antonio P.
Most machine learning methods assume fixed probability distributions, limiting their applicability in nonstationary real-world scenarios. While continual learning methods address this issue, current approaches often rely on black-box models or require extensive user intervention for interpretability. We propose SyMPLER (Systems Modeling through Piecewise Linear Evolving Regression), an explainable model for time series forecasting in nonstationary environments based on dynamic piecewise-linear approximations. Unlike other locally linear models, SyMPLER uses generalization bounds from Statistical Learning Theory to automatically determine when to add new local models based on prediction errors, eliminating the need for explicit clustering of the data. Experiments show that SyMPLER can achieve comparable performance to both black-box and existing explainable models while maintaining a human-interpretable structure that reveals insights about the system's behavior. In this sense, our approach conciliates accuracy and interpretability, offering a transparent and adaptive solution for forecasting nonstationary time series.