We revisit the long-standing problem of \emph{learning from small sample}. In recent years major efforts have been invested into the generation of new samples from a small set of training data points. Some use classical transformations, others synthesize new examples. Our approach belongs to the second one. We propose a new model based on conditional Generative Latent Optimization (cGLO). Our model learns to synthesize completely new samples for every class just by interpolating between samples in the latent space. The proposed method samples the learned latent space using spherical interpolations (\emph{slerp}) and generates a new sample using the trained generator. Our empirical results show that the new sampled set is diverse enough, leading to improvement in image classification in comparison to the state of the art, when trained on small samples of CIFAR-100 and CUB-200.

We consider inference problems over probabilistic graphical models with aggregate data. In particular, we propose a new efficient belief propagation type algorithm over tree-structured graphs with polynomial computational complexity as well as a global convergence guarantee. This is in contrast to previous methods that either exhibit prohibitive complexity as the population grows or do not guarantee convergence. Our method is based on optimal transport, or more specifically, multi-marginal optimal transport theory. In particular, the inference problem with aggregate observations we consider in this paper can be seen as a structured multi-marginal optimal transport problem, where the cost function decomposes according to the underlying graph. Consequently, the celebrated Sinkhorn algorithm for multi-marginal optimal transport can be leveraged, together with the standard belief propagation algorithm to establish an efficient inference scheme. We demonstrate the performance of our algorithm on applications such as inferring population flow from aggregate observations.

We introduce manifold-modeling flows (MFMFs), a new class of generative models that simultaneously learn the data manifold as well as a tractable probability density on that manifold. Combining aspects of normalizing flows, GANs, autoencoders, and energy-based models, they have the potential to represent data sets with a manifold structure more faithfully and provide handles on dimensionality reduction, denoising, and out-of-distribution detection. We argue why such models should not be trained by maximum likelihood alone and present a new training algorithm that separates manifold and density updates. With two pedagogical examples we demonstrate how manifold-modeling flows let us learn the data manifold and allow for better inference than standard flows in the ambient data space.

The artificial segmentation of an investment management process into a workflow with silos of offline human operators can restrict silos from collectively and adaptively pursuing a unified optimal investment goal. To meet the investor's objectives, an online algorithm can provide an explicit incremental approach that makes sequential updates as data arrives at the process level. This is in stark contrast to offline (or batch) processes that are focused on making component level decisions prior to process level integration. Here we present and report results for an integrated, and online framework for algorithmic portfolio management. This article provides a workflow that can in-turn be embedded into a process level learning framework. The workflow can be enhanced to refine signal generation and asset-class evolution and definitions. Our results confirm that we can use our framework in conjunction with resampling methods to outperform naive market capitalisation benchmarks while making clear the extent of back-test over-fitting. We consider such an online update framework to be a crucial step towards developing intelligent portfolio selection algorithms that integrate financial theory, investor views, and data analysis with process-level learning.

In linear regression models, a fusion of the coefficients is used to identify the predictors having similar relationships with the response. This is called variable fusion. This paper presents a novel variable fusion method in terms of Bayesian linear regression models. We focus on hierarchical Bayesian models based on a spike-and-slab prior approach. A spike-and-slab prior is designed to perform variable fusion. To obtain estimates of parameters, we develop a Gibbs sampler for the parameters. Simulation studies and a real data analysis show that our proposed method has better performances than previous methods.

Dealing with massive data is a challenging task for machine learning. An important aspect of machine learning is function approximation. In the context of massive data, some of the commonly used tools for this purpose are sparsity, divide-and-conquer, and distributed learning. In this paper, we develop a very general theory of approximation by networks, which we have called eignets, to achieve local, stratified approximation. The very massive nature of the data allows us to use these eignets to solve inverse problems such as finding a good approximation to the probability law that governs the data, and finding the local smoothness of the target function near different points in the domain. In fact, we develop a wavelet-like representation using our eignets. Our theory is applicable to approximation on a general locally compact metric measure space. Special examples include approximation by periodic basis functions on the torus, zonal function networks on a Euclidean sphere (including smooth ReLU networks), Gaussian networks, and approximation on manifolds. We construct pre-fabricated networks so that no data-based training is required for the approximation.

Knowledge transfer between tasks can improve the performance of learned models, but requires an accurate estimate of inter-task relationships to identify the relevant knowledge to transfer. These inter-task relationships are typically estimated based on training data for each task, which is inefficient in lifelong learning settings where the goal is to learn each consecutive task rapidly from as little data as possible. To reduce this burden, we develop a lifelong learning method based on coupled dictionary learning that utilizes high-level task descriptions to model inter-task relationships. We show that using task descriptors improves the performance of the learned task policies, providing both theoretical justification for the benefit and empirical demonstration of the improvement across a variety of learning problems. Given only the descriptor for a new task, the lifelong learner is also able to accurately predict a model for the new task through zero-shot learning using the coupled dictionary, eliminating the need to gather training data before addressing the task.

To effect behavior change a successful algorithm must make high-quality decisions in real-time. For example, a mobile health (mHealth) application designed to increase physical activity must make contextually relevant suggestions to motivate users. While machine learning offers solutions for certain stylized settings, such as when batch data can be processed offline, there is a dearth of approaches which can deliver high-quality solutions under the specific constraints of mHealth. We propose an algorithm which provides users with contextualized and personalized physical activity suggestions. This algorithm is able to overcome a challenge critical to mHealth that complex models be trained efficiently. We propose a tractable streamlined empirical Bayes procedure which fits linear mixed effects models in large-data settings. Our procedure takes advantage of sparsity introduced by hierarchical random effects to efficiently learn the posterior distribution of a linear mixed effects model. A key contribution of this work is that we provide explicit updates in order to learn both fixed effects, random effects and hyper-parameter values. We demonstrate the success of this approach in a mobile health (mHealth) reinforcement learning application, a domain in which fast computations are crucial for real time interventions. Not only is our approach computationally efficient, it is also easily implemented with closed form matrix algebraic updates and we show improvements over state of the art approaches both in speed and accuracy of up to 99% and 56% respectively.

We present a multi-dimensional Bernoulli process model for spatial-temporal discrete event data with categorical marks, where the probability of an event of a specific category in a location may be influenced by past events at this and other locations. The focus is to introduce general forms of influence function which can capture an arbitrary shape of influence from historical events, between locations, and between different categories of events. The general form of influence function differs from the commonly adapted exponential delaying function over time, and more importantly, in our model, we can learn the delayed influence of prior events, which is an aspect seemingly largely ignored in prior literature. Prior knowledge or assumptions on the influence function are incorporated into our framework by allowing general convex constraints on the parameters specifying the influence function. We develop two approaches for recovering these parameters, using the constrained least-square (LS) and maximum likelihood (ML) estimations. We demonstrate the performance of our approach on synthetic examples and illustrate its promise using real data (crime data and novel coronavirus data), in extracting knowledge about the general influences and making predictions.

Deterministic models are approximations of reality that are easy to interpret and often easier to build than stochastic alternatives. Unfortunately, as nature is capricious, observational data can never be fully explained by deterministic models in practice. Observation and process noise need to be added to adapt deterministic models to behave stochastically, such that they are capable of explaining and extrapolating from noisy data. We investigate and address computational inefficiencies that arise from adding process noise to deterministic simulators that fail to return for certain inputs; a property we describe as "brittle." We show how to train a conditional normalizing flow to propose perturbations such that the simulator succeeds with high probability, increasing computational efficiency.