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One-Bit Clustering for Two Component Sub-Gaussian Mixture Models

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Clustering is a fundamental problem in statistics and machine learning. We propose the first one-bit clustering method for two-component sub-Gaussian mixture models. The method uses only one bit per entry of each sample obtained via a dithered quantizer. Under a mild non-spikiness condition on the cluster centers, we show that a variant of Lloyd's algorithm achieves a misclassification rate that decays exponentially with a signal-to-noise ratio comparable to that in the unquantized setting. This result further implies exact recovery under an explicit separation condition, which exceeds the optimal threshold for unquantized data by only a logarithmic factor. When the dimension $p$ is sufficiently large, the non-spikiness condition can be enforced by applying a random rotation using a Haar distributed matrix prior to quantization. In particular, it holds with high probability when $p \gtrsim 1$ for partial recovery and $p \gtrsim \log n \log\log n$ for exact recovery, where $n$ is the sample size. We also establish a minimax lower bound, showing that the misclassification rate and separation condition exhibit sharp constants in general. Numerical results are provided to corroborate the theory and demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.


Causal Discovery over Clusters of Variables in Markovian Systems

Neural Information Processing Systems

Causal discovery methods are powerful tools for uncovering the structure of relationships among variables, yet they face significant challenges in scalability and interpretability, especially in high-dimensional settings. In many domains, researchers are not only interested in causal links between individual variables, but also in relationships among sets or clusters of variables. Learning causal structure at the cluster level can both reveal higher-order relationships of interest and improve scalability. In this work, we introduce an approach for causal discovery over clusters in Markov causal systems. We propose a new graphical model that encodes knowledge of relationships between user-defined clusters while fully representing independencies and dependencies over clusters, faithful to a given distribution. We then define and characterize a graphical equivalence class of these models that share cluster-level independence information. Lastly, we present a sound and complete algorithm for causal discovery to represent learnable causal relationships between clusters of variables.


Learning Treatment Effects during Resource Allocation via Priority-Queue Randomization

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Public service programs often allocate limited resources under uncertainty about their benefits, creating a need for randomization to support credible evaluation. In practice, however, applicants commonly enter waitlists where resources are prioritized toward individuals judged to have higher need through tiered priority queues, making direct randomization difficult. Motivated by this, we develop an experimental design framework for learning treatment effects while treating those most in need where incoming applicants are randomized into priority queues based on their assessed risk scores. Treatments are then provided across queues in priority order and first-in-first-out within queue as budget becomes available. Our contributions are two-fold. First, we characterize what causal effects are identified under this priority-queue allocation. When arrivals are exogenous, treatments are conditionally randomized, and hence standard estimands are identified; when arrivals are endogenous, queue randomization instead provides an instrument for treatment, identifying local treatment effects induced by the queuing process. Second, we develop optimized queue-assignment designs that trade off statistical efficiency against prioritizing higher-need applicants. We show in the process that, despite dependence in treatment assignments induced by the design, usual iid efficiency bounds remain well-justified design objectives. We illustrate the proposed designs using data from a housing allocation program in a large U.S. county.


Ancestral Causal Inference

Neural Information Processing Systems

Constraint-based causal discovery from limited data is a notoriously difficult challenge due to the many borderline independence test decisions. Several approaches to improve the reliability of the predictions by exploiting redundancy in the independence information have been proposed recently. Though promising, existing approaches can still be greatly improved in terms of accuracy and scalability. We present a novel method that reduces the combinatorial explosion of the search space by using a more coarse-grained representation of causal information, drastically reducing computation time. Additionally, we propose a method to score causal predictions based on their confidence. Crucially, our implementation also allows one to easily combine observational and interventional data and to incorporate various types of available background knowledge. We prove soundness and asymptotic consistency of our method and demonstrate that it can outperform the state-ofthe-art on synthetic data, achieving a speedup of several orders of magnitude. We illustrate its practical feasibility by applying it to a challenging protein data set.


Bias-Corrected Adaptive Conformal Inference for Multi-Horizon Time Series Forecasting

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Adaptive Conformal Inference (ACI) provides distribution-free prediction intervals with asymptotic coverage guarantees for time series under distribution shift. However, ACI only adapts the quantile threshold -- it cannot shift the interval center. When a base forecaster develops persistent bias after a regime change, ACI compensates by widening intervals symmetrically, producing unnecessarily conservative bands. We propose Bias-Corrected ACI (BC-ACI), which augments standard ACI with an online exponentially weighted moving average (EWM) estimate of forecast bias. BC-ACI corrects nonconformity scores before quantile computation and re-centers prediction intervals, addressing the root cause of miscalibration rather than its symptom. An adaptive dead-zone threshold suppresses corrections when estimated bias is indistinguishable from noise, ensuring no degradation on well-calibrated data. In controlled experiments across 688 runs spanning two base models, four synthetic regimes, and three real datasets, BC-ACI reduces Winkler interval scores by 13--17% under mean and compound distribution shifts (Wilcoxon p < 0.001) while maintaining equivalent performance on stationary data (ratio 1.002x). We provide finite-sample analysis showing that coverage guarantees degrade gracefully with bias estimation error.





Adaptive Regime-Switching Forecasts with Distribution-Free Uncertainty: Deep Switching State-Space Models Meet Conformal Prediction

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Regime transitions routinely break stationarity in time series, making calibrated uncertainty as important as point accuracy. We study distribution-free uncertainty for regime-switching forecasting by coupling Deep Switching State Space Models with Adaptive Conformal Inference (ACI) and its aggregated variant (AgACI). We also introduce a unified conformal wrapper that sits atop strong sequence baselines including S4, MC-Dropout GRU, sparse Gaussian processes, and a change-point local model to produce online predictive bands with finite-sample marginal guarantees under nonstationarity and model misspecification. Across synthetic and real datasets, conformalized forecasters achieve near-nominal coverage with competitive accuracy and generally improved band efficiency.