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Orthogonal Survival Learners for Estimating Heterogeneous Treatment Effects from Time-to-Event Data
Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects (HTEs) is crucial for personalized decision-making. However, this task is challenging in survival analysis, which includes time-to-event data with censored outcomes (e.g., due to study dropout). In this paper, we propose a toolbox of orthogonal survival learners to estimate HTEs from time-to-event data under censoring. Our learners have three main advantages: (i) we show that learners from our toolbox are guaranteed to be orthogonal and thus robust with respect to nuisance estimation errors; (ii) our toolbox allows for incorporating a custom weighting function, which can lead to robustness against different types of low overlap, and (iii) our learners are modelagnostic (i.e., they can be combined with arbitrary machine learning models). We instantiate the learners from our toolbox using several weighting functions and, as a result, propose various neural orthogonal survival learners. Some of these coincide with existing survival learners (including survival versions of the DRand R-learner), while others are novel and further robust w.r.t.
Information-Theoretic Generalization Bounds for Sequential Decision Making
Futami, Futoshi, Fujisawa, Masahiro
Information-theoretic generalization bounds based on the supersample construction are a central tool for algorithm-dependent generalization analysis in the batch i.i.d.~setting. However, existing supersample conditional mutual information (CMI) bounds do not directly apply to sequential decision-making problems such as online learning, streaming active learning, and bandits, where data are revealed adaptively and the learner evolves along a causal trajectory. To address this limitation, we develop a sequential supersample framework that separates the learner filtration from a proof-side enlargement used for ghost-coordinate comparisons. Under a row-wise exchangeability assumption, the sequential generalization gap is controlled by sequential CMI, a sum of roundwise selector--loss information terms. We also establish a Bernstein-type refinement that yields faster rates under suitable variance conditions. The selector-SCMI proof strategy applies to online learning, streaming active learning with importance weighting, and stochastic multi-armed bandits.
Star-Shaped Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models
Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPMs) provide the foundation for the recent breakthroughs in generative modeling. Their Markovian structure makes it difficult to define DDPMs with distributions other than Gaussian or discrete. In this paper, we introduce Star-Shaped DDPM (SS-DDPM). Its star-shaped diffusion process allows us to bypass the need to define the transition probabilities or compute posteriors. We establish duality between star-shaped and specific Markovian diffusions for the exponential family of distributions and derive efficient algorithms for training and sampling from SS-DDPMs. In the case of Gaussian distributions, SS-DDPM is equivalent to DDPM. However, SS-DDPMs provide a simple recipe for designing diffusion models with distributions such as Beta, von Mises-Fisher, Dirichlet, Wishart and others, which can be especially useful when data lies on a constrained manifold. We evaluate the model in different settings and find it competitive even on image data, where Beta SS-DDPM achieves results comparable to a Gaussian DDPM.
The Adaptive Doubly Robust Estimator and a Paradox Concerning Logging Policy
The doubly robust (DR) estimator, which consists of two nuisance parameters, the conditional mean outcome and the logging policy (the probability of choosing an action), is crucial in causal inference. This paper proposes a DR estimator for dependent samples obtained from adaptive experiments. To obtain an asymptotically normal semiparametric estimator from dependent samples with non-Donsker nuisance estimators, we propose adaptive-fitting as a variant of sample-splitting. We also report an empirical paradox that our proposed DR estimator tends to show better performances compared to other estimators utilizing the true logging policy. While a similar phenomenon is known for estimators with i.i.d.
Online Conformal Prediction with Adversarial Semi-bandit Feedback via Regret Minimization
Yang, Junyoung, Kim, Kyungmin, Park, Sangdon
Uncertainty quantification is crucial in safety-critical systems, where decisions must be made under uncertainty. In particular, we consider the problem of online uncertainty quantification, where data points arrive sequentially. Online conformal prediction is a principled online uncertainty quantification method that dynamically constructs a prediction set at each time step. While existing methods for online conformal prediction provide long-run coverage guarantees without any distributional assumptions, they typically assume a full feedback setting in which the true label is always observed. In this paper, we propose a novel learning method for online conformal prediction with partial feedback from an adaptive adversary-a more challenging setup where the true label is revealed only when it lies inside the constructed prediction set. Specifically, we formulate online conformal prediction as an adversarial bandit problem by treating each candidate prediction set as an arm. Building on an existing algorithm for adversarial bandits, our method achieves a long-run coverage guarantee by explicitly establishing its connection to the regret of the learner. Finally, we empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in both independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) and non-i.i.d. settings, showing that it successfully controls the miscoverage rate while maintaining a reasonable size of the prediction set.
Gradient-Variation Regret Bounds for Unconstrained Online Learning
Zhao, Yuheng, Jacobsen, Andrew, Cesa-Bianchi, Nicolรฒ, Zhao, Peng
We develop parameter-free algorithms for unconstrained online learning with regret guarantees that scale with the gradient variation $V_T(u) = \sum_{t=2}^T \|\nabla f_t(u)-\nabla f_{t-1}(u)\|^2$. For $L$-smooth convex loss, we provide fully-adaptive algorithms achieving regret of order $\widetilde{O}(\|u\|\sqrt{V_T(u)} + L\|u\|^2+G^4)$ without requiring prior knowledge of comparator norm $\|u\|$, Lipschitz constant $G$, or smoothness $L$. The update in each round can be computed efficiently via a closed-form expression. Our results extend to dynamic regret and find immediate implications to the stochastically-extended adversarial (SEA) model, which significantly improves upon the previous best-known result [Wang et al., 2025].