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 Uncertainty


Geometry-informed irreversible perturbations for accelerated convergence of Langevin dynamics

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We introduce a novel geometry-informed irreversible perturbation that accelerates convergence of the Langevin algorithm for Bayesian computation. It is well documented that there exist perturbations to the Langevin dynamics that preserve its invariant measure while accelerating its convergence. Irreversible perturbations and reversible perturbations (such as Riemannian manifold Langevin dynamics (RMLD)) have separately been shown to improve the performance of Langevin samplers. We consider these two perturbations simultaneously by presenting a novel form of irreversible perturbation for RMLD that is informed by the underlying geometry. Through numerical examples, we show that this new irreversible perturbation can improve performance of the estimator over reversible perturbations that do not take the geometry into account. Moreover we demonstrate that irreversible perturbations generally can be implemented in conjunction with the stochastic gradient version of the Langevin algorithm. Lastly, while continuous-time irreversible perturbations cannot impair the performance of a Langevin estimator, the situation can sometimes be more complicated when discretization is considered. To this end, we describe a discrete-time example in which irreversibility increases both the bias and variance of the resulting estimator.


Lossy Compression for Lossless Prediction

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Most data is automatically collected and only ever "seen" by algorithms. Yet, data compressors preserve perceptual fidelity rather than just the information needed by algorithms performing downstream tasks. In this paper, we characterize the bit-rate required to ensure high performance on all predictive tasks that are invariant under a set of transformations, such as data augmentations. Based on our theory, we design unsupervised objectives for training neural compressors. Using these objectives, we train a generic image compressor that achieves substantial rate savings (more than $1000\times$ on ImageNet) compared to JPEG on 8 datasets, without decreasing downstream classification performance.


Improving Accuracy of Permutation DAG Search using Best Order Score Search

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The Sparsest Permutation (SP) algorithm is accurate but limited to about 9 variables in practice; the Greedy Sparest Permutation (GSP) algorithm is faster but less weak theoretically. A compromise can be given, the Best Order Score Search, which gives results as accurate as SP but for much larger and denser graphs. BOSS (Best Order Score Search) is more accurate for two reason: (a) It assumes the "brute faithfuness" assumption, which is weaker than faithfulness, and (b) it uses a different traversal of permutations than the depth first traversal used by GSP, obtained by taking each variable in turn and moving it to the position in the permutation that optimizes the model score. Results are given comparing BOSS to several related papers in the literature in terms of performance, for linear, Gaussian data. In all cases, with the proper parameter settings, accuracy of BOSS is lifted considerably with respect to competing approaches. In configurations tested, models with 60 variables are feasible with large samples out to about an average degree of 12 in reasonable time, with near-perfect accuracy, and sparse models with an average degree of 4 are feasible out to about 300 variables on a laptop, again with near-perfect accuracy. Mixed continuous discrete and all-discrete datasets were also tested. The mixed data analysis showed advantage for BOSS over GES more apparent at higher depths with the same score; the discrete data analysis showed a very small advantage for BOSS over GES with the same score, perhaps not enough to prefer it.


Neural density estimation and uncertainty quantification for laser induced breakdown spectroscopy spectra

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Constructing probability densities for inference in high-dimensional spectral data is often intractable. In this work, we use normalizing flows on structured spectral latent spaces to estimate such densities, enabling downstream inference tasks. In addition, we evaluate a method for uncertainty quantification when predicting unobserved state vectors associated with each spectrum. We demonstrate the capability of this approach on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy data collected by the ChemCam instrument on the Mars rover Curiosity. Using our approach, we are able to generate realistic spectral samples and to accurately predict state vectors with associated well-calibrated uncertainties. We anticipate that this methodology will enable efficient probabilistic modeling of spectral data, leading to potential advances in several areas, including out-of-distribution detection and sensitivity analysis.


Hierarchical Infinite Relational Model

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This paper describes the hierarchical infinite relational model (HIRM), a new probabilistic generative model for noisy, sparse, and heterogeneous relational data. Given a set of relations defined over a collection of domains, the model first infers multiple non-overlapping clusters of relations using a top-level Chinese restaurant process. Within each cluster of relations, a Dirichlet process mixture is then used to partition the domain entities and model the probability distribution of relation values. The HIRM generalizes the standard infinite relational model and can be used for a variety of data analysis tasks including dependence detection, clustering, and density estimation. We present new algorithms for fully Bayesian posterior inference via Gibbs sampling. We illustrate the efficacy of the method on a density estimation benchmark of twenty object-attribute datasets with up to 18 million cells and use it to discover relational structure in real-world datasets from politics and genomics.


What Are Probabilistic Models in Machine Learning?

#artificialintelligence

Probabilistic Models in Machine Learning is the use of the codes of statistics to data examination. It was one of the initial methods of machine learning. It's quite extensively used to this day. Individual of the best-known algorithms in this group is the Naive Bayes algorithm. Probabilistic modelling delivers a framework for accepting what learning is.


Minimising quantifier variance under prior probability shift

arXiv.org Machine Learning

For the binary prevalence quantification problem under prior probability shift, we determine the asymptotic variance of the maximum likelihood estimator. We find that it is a function of the Brier score for the regression of the class label against the features under the test data set distribution. This observation suggests that optimising the accuracy of a base classifier on the training data set helps to reduce the variance of the related quantifier on the test data set. Therefore, we also point out training criteria for the base classifier that imply optimisation of both of the Brier scores on the training and the test data sets.


Bayesian Parameter Estimations for Grey System Models in Online Traffic Speed Predictions

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This paper presents Bayesian parameter estimation for first order Grey system models' parameters (or sometimes referred to as hyperparameters). There are different forms of first-order Grey System Models. These include $GM(1,1)$, $GM(1,1| \cos(\omega t)$, $GM(1,1| \sin(\omega t)$, and $GM(1,1| \cos(\omega t), \sin(\omega t)$. The whitenization equation of these models is a first-order linear differential equation of the form \[ \frac{dx}{dt} + a x = f(t) \] where $a$ is a parameter and $f(t) = b$ in $GM(1,1|)$ , $f(t) = b_1\cos(\omega t) + b_2$ in $GM(1,1| cos(\omega t)$, $f(t) = b_1\sin(\omega t)+b_2$ in $GM(1,1| \sin(\omega t)$, $f(t) = b_1\sin(\omega t) + b_2\cos(\omega t) + b_3$ in $GM(1,1| \cos(\omega t), \sin(\omega t)$, $f(t) = b x^2$ in Grey Verhulst model (GVM), and where $b, b_1, b_2$, and $b_3$ are parameters. The results from Bayesian estimations are compared to the least square estimated models with fixed $\omega$. We found that using rolling Bayesian estimations for GM parameters can allow us to estimate the parameters in all possible forms. Based on the data used for the comparison, the numerical results showed that models with Bayesian parameter estimations are up to 45\% more accurate in mean squared errors.


Equity-Directed Bootstrapping: Examples and Analysis

arXiv.org Machine Learning

When faced with severely imbalanced binary classification problems, we often train models on bootstrapped data in which the number of instances of each class occur in a more favorable ratio, e.g., one. We view algorithmic inequity through the lens of imbalanced classification: in order to balance the performance of a classifier across groups, we can bootstrap to achieve training sets that are balanced with respect to both labels and group identity. For an example problem with severe class imbalance---prediction of suicide death from administrative patient records---we illustrate how an equity-directed bootstrap can bring test set sensitivities and specificities much closer to satisfying the equal odds criterion. In the context of na\"ive Bayes and logistic regression, we analyze the equity-directed bootstrap, demonstrating that it works by bringing odds ratios close to one, and linking it to methods involving intercept adjustment, thresholding, and weighting.


A fast asynchronous MCMC sampler for sparse Bayesian inference

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We propose a very fast approximate Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling framework that is applicable to a large class of sparse Bayesian inference problems, where the computational cost per iteration in several models is of order $O(ns)$, where $n$ is the sample size, and $s$ the underlying sparsity of the model. This cost can be further reduced by data sub-sampling when stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics are employed. The algorithm is an extension of the asynchronous Gibbs sampler of Johnson et al. (2013), but can be viewed from a statistical perspective as a form of Bayesian iterated sure independent screening (Fan et al. (2009)). We show that in high-dimensional linear regression problems, the Markov chain generated by the proposed algorithm admits an invariant distribution that recovers correctly the main signal with high probability under some statistical assumptions. Furthermore we show that its mixing time is at most linear in the number of regressors. We illustrate the algorithm with several models.