Bayesian optimisation presents a sample-efficient methodology for global optimisation. Within this framework, a crucial performance-determining subroutine is the maximisation of the acquisition function, a task complicated by the fact that acquisition functions tend to be non-convex and thus nontrivial to optimise. In this paper, we undertake a comprehensive empirical study of approaches to maximise the acquisition function. Additionally, by deriving novel, yet mathematically equivalent, compositional forms for popular acquisition functions, we recast the maximisation task as a compositional optimisation problem, allowing us to benefit from the extensive literature in this field. We highlight the empirical advantages of the compositional approach to acquisition function maximisation across 3958 individual experiments comprising synthetic optimisation tasks as well as tasks from Bayesmark. Given the generality of the acquisition function maximisation subroutine, we posit that the adoption of compositional optimisers has the potential to yield performance improvements across all domains in which Bayesian optimisation is currently being applied.

Level Set Estimation (LSE) is an important problem with applications in various fields such as material design, biotechnology, machine operational testing, etc. Existing techniques suffer from the scalability issue, that is, these methods do not work well with high dimensional inputs. This paper proposes novel methods to solve the high dimensional LSE problems using Bayesian Neural Networks. In particular, we consider two types of LSE problems: (1) \textit{explicit} LSE problem where the threshold level is a fixed user-specified value, and, (2) \textit{implicit} LSE problem where the threshold level is defined as a percentage of the (unknown) maximum of the objective function. For each problem, we derive the corresponding theoretic information based acquisition function to sample the data points so as to maximally increase the level set accuracy. Furthermore, we also analyse the theoretical time complexity of our proposed acquisition functions, and suggest a practical methodology to efficiently tune the network hyper-parameters to achieve high model accuracy. Numerical experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets show that our proposed method can achieve better results compared to existing state-of-the-art approaches.

Graphical modeling plays a key role in causal theory, allowing A key characteristic of an MEC is its size, i. e., the number to express complex causal phenomena in an elegant, of DAGs in the class. It indicates uncertainty of the causal mathematically sound way. One of the most popular graphical model inferred from observational data and it serves as an models are directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), which represent indicator for the performance of recovering true causal effects.

Maximum entropy (MAXENT) method has a large number of applications in theoretical and applied machine learning, since it provides a convenient non-parametric tool for estimating unknown probabilities. The method is a major contribution of statistical physics to probabilistic inference. However, a systematic approach towards its validity limits is currently missing. Here we study MAXENT in a Bayesian decision theory set-up, i.e. assuming that there exists a well-defined prior Dirichlet density for unknown probabilities, and that the average Kullback-Leibler (KL) distance can be employed for deciding on the quality and applicability of various estimators. These allow to evaluate the relevance of various MAXENT constraints, check its general applicability, and compare MAXENT with estimators having various degrees of dependence on the prior, viz. the regularized maximum likelihood (ML) and the Bayesian estimators. We show that MAXENT applies in sparse data regimes, but needs specific types of prior information. In particular, MAXENT can outperform the optimally regularized ML provided that there are prior rank correlations between the estimated random quantity and its probabilities.

L\'evy walks are found in the migratory behaviour patterns of various organisms, and the reason for this phenomenon has been much discussed. We use simulations to demonstrate that learning causes the changes in confidence level during decision-making in non-stationary environments, and results in L\'evy-walk-like patterns. One inference algorithm involving confidence is Bayesian inference. We propose an algorithm that introduces the effects of learning and forgetting into Bayesian inference, and simulate an imitation game in which two decision-making agents incorporating the algorithm estimate each other's internal models from their opponent's observational data. For forgetting without learning, agent confidence levels remained low due to a lack of information on the counterpart and Brownian walks occurred for a wide range of forgetting rates. Conversely, when learning was introduced, high confidence levels occasionally occurred even at high forgetting rates, and Brownian walks universally became L\'evy walks through a mixture of high- and low-confidence states.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been used to advance different fields, such as education, healthcare, and finance. However, the application of AI in the field of project management (PM) has not progressed equally. This paper reports on a systematic review of the published studies used to investigate the application of AI in PM. This systematic review identified relevant papers using Web of Science, Science Direct, and Google Scholar databases. Of the 652 articles found, 58 met the predefined criteria and were included in the review. Included papers were classified per the following dimensions: PM knowledge areas, PM processes, and AI techniques. The results indicated that the application of AI in PM was in its early stages and AI models have not applied for multiple PM processes especially in processes groups of project stakeholder management, project procurements management, and project communication management. However, the most popular PM processes among included papers were project effort prediction and cost estimation, and the most popular AI techniques were support vector machines, neural networks, and genetic algorithms.

A connection between the General Linear Model (GLM) in combination with classical statistical inference and the machine learning (MLE)-based inference is described in this paper. Firstly, the estimation of the GLM parameters is expressed as a Linear Regression Model (LRM) of an indicator matrix, that is, in terms of the inverse problem of regressing the observations. In other words, both approaches, i.e. GLM and LRM, apply to different domains, the observation and the label domains, and are linked by a normalization value at the least-squares solution. Subsequently, from this relationship we derive a statistical test based on a more refined predictive algorithm, i.e. the (non)linear Support Vector Machine (SVM) that maximizes the class margin of separation, within a permutation analysis. The MLE-based inference employs a residual score and includes the upper bound to compute a better estimation of the actual (real) error. Experimental results demonstrate how the parameter estimations derived from each model resulted in different classification performances in the equivalent inverse problem. Moreover, using real data the aforementioned predictive algorithms within permutation tests, including such model-free estimators, are able to provide a good trade-off between type I error and statistical power.

Detecting semantic concept of columns in tabular data is of particular interest to many applications ranging from data integration, cleaning, search to feature engineering and model building in machine learning. Recently, several works have proposed supervised learning-based or heuristic pattern-based approaches to semantic type annotation. Both have shortcomings that prevent them from generalizing over a large number of concepts or examples. Many neural network based methods also present scalability issues. Additionally, none of the known methods works well for numerical data. We propose $C^2$, a column to concept mapper that is based on a maximum likelihood estimation approach through ensembles. It is able to effectively utilize vast amounts of, albeit somewhat noisy, openly available table corpora in addition to two popular knowledge graphs to perform effective and efficient concept prediction for structured data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of $C^2$ over available techniques on 9 datasets, the most comprehensive comparison on this topic so far.

The goal of this paper is to generalize classical d-separation and classical Belief Propagation (BP) to the quantum realm. Classical d-separation is an essential ingredient of most of Judea Pearl's work. It is crucial to all 3 rungs of what Pearl calls the 3 rungs of Causation. So having a quantum version of d-separation and BP probably implies that most of Pearl's Bayesian networks work, including his theory of causality, can be translated in a straightforward manner to the quantum realm.

Policy Optimization (PO) is a widely used approach to address continuous control tasks. In this paper, we introduce the notion of mediator feedback that frames PO as an online learning problem over the policy space. The additional available information, compared to the standard bandit feedback, allows reusing samples generated by one policy to estimate the performance of other policies. Based on this observation, we propose an algorithm, RANDomized-exploration policy Optimization via Multiple Importance Sampling with Truncation (RANDOMIST), for regret minimization in PO, that employs a randomized exploration strategy, differently from the existing optimistic approaches. When the policy space is finite, we show that under certain circumstances, it is possible to achieve constant regret, while always enjoying logarithmic regret. We also derive problem-dependent regret lower bounds. Then, we extend RANDOMIST to compact policy spaces. Finally, we provide numerical simulations on finite and compact policy spaces, in comparison with PO and bandit baselines.