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Confidence-Based Decoding is Provably Efficient for Diffusion Language Models
Diffusion language models (DLMs) have emerged as a promising alternative to autoregressive (AR) models for language modeling, allowing flexible generation order and parallel generation of multiple tokens. However, this flexibility introduces a challenge absent in AR models: the \emph{decoding strategy} -- which determines the order and number of tokens generated at each iteration -- critically affects sampling efficiency. Among decoding strategies explored in practice, confidence-based methods, which adaptively select which and how many tokens to unmask based on prediction confidence, have shown strong empirical performance. Despite this success, our theoretical understanding of confidence-based decoding remains limited. In this work, we develop the first theoretical analysis framework for confidence-based decoding in DLMs. We focus on an entropy sum-based strategy that continues unmasking tokens within each iteration until the cumulative entropy exceeds a threshold, and show that it achieves $\varepsilon$-accurate sampling in KL divergence with an expected number of iterations $\widetilde O(H(X_0)/\varepsilon)$, where $H(X_0)$ denotes the entropy of the target data distribution. Notably, this strategy yields substantial sampling acceleration when the data distribution has low entropy relative to the sequence length, while automatically adapting to the intrinsic complexity of data without requiring prior knowledge or hyperparameter tuning. Overall, our results provide a theoretical foundation for confidence-based decoding and may inform the design of more efficient decoding strategies for DLMs.
Appendices
The Hessian of f(Z) can be viewed as an KN KN matrix by vectorizing the matrix Z. For deeper linear networks, it can be shown that flat saddle points exist at the origin, but there are no spurious local minima [34,37]. While most of these results based on the bottom-up approach explain optimization and generalization of certain types of deep neural networks, they provided limited insights into the practice of deep learning. In fact, our proof techniques are inspired by recent results on low-rank matrix recovery [77,80]. Some of the metrics are similar to those presented in [1]. Figure 7 depicts the learning curves in terms of both the training and test accuracy for all three optimization algorithms (i.e., SGD, Adam, and LBFGS).
18a9042b3fc5b02fe3d57fea87d6992f-Supplemental.pdf
Projecting this differential equation on the last coordinate givesdHe+1t = dt, that is, He+1t = t. Finally,let (a(n))n N beaCauchysequencein T . Straightforward calculations yield the equality,valid for any x R, tanh(x)=2σ(2x) 1. But,foranyn 1, Next, it is clear that the signature of a constant path is equal to1 = (1,0,...,0,...) which is the nullelementinT . More precisely, fork = 1, C(1;0) = 1 00 = 1 and C(1;1) = 0 01 = 0. Assume that the formula is true at orderk. Then, at order k + 1, there are two cases.
Variational Estimators for Node Popularity Models
Karki, Jony, Huang, Dongzhou, Zhao, Yunpeng
Node popularity is recognized as a key factor in modeling real-world networks, capturing heterogeneity in connectivity across communities. This concept is equally important in bipartite networks, where nodes in different partitions may exhibit varying popularity patterns, motivating models such as the Two-Way Node Popularity Model (TNPM). Existing methods, such as the Two-Stage Divided Cosine (TSDC) algorithm, provide a scalable estimation approach but may have limitations in terms of accuracy or applicability across different types of networks. In this paper, we develop a computationally efficient and theoretically justified variational expectation-maximization (VEM) framework for the TNPM. We establish label consistency for the estimated community assignments produced by the proposed variational estimator in bipartite networks. Through extensive simulation studies, we show that our method achieves superior estimation accuracy across a range of bipartite as well as undirected networks compared to existing algorithms. Finally, we evaluate our method on real-world bipartite and undirected networks, further demonstrating its practical effectiveness and robustness.
Ledoit-Wolf linear shrinkage with unknown mean
Oriol, Benoit, Miot, Alexandre
The empirical covariance estimator fails when dimension and number of samples are proportional and tend to infinity, settings known as Kolmogorov asymptotics. When the mean is known, Ledoit and Wolf (2004) proposed a linear shrinkage estimator and proved its convergence under those asymptotics. To the best of our knowledge, no formal proof has been proposed when the mean is unknown. To address this issue, we propose a new estimator and prove its quadratic convergence under the Ledoit and Wolf assumptions. Finally, we show empirically that it outperforms other standard estimators.
Empowering Networks With Scale and Rotation Equivariance Using A Similarity Convolution
The translational equivariant nature of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) is a reason for its great success in computer vision. However, networks do not enjoy more general equivariance properties such as rotation or scaling, ultimately limiting their generalization performance. To address this limitation, we devise a method that endows CNNs with simultaneous equivariance with respect to translation, rotation, and scaling. Our approach defines a convolution-like operation and ensures equivariance based on our proposed scalable Fourier-Argand representation. The method maintains similar efficiency as a traditional network and hardly introduces any additional learnable parameters, since it does not face the computational issue that often occurs in group-convolution operators. We validate the efficacy of our approach in the image classification task, demonstrating its robustness and the generalization ability to both scaled and rotated inputs. The remarkable success of network architectures can be largely attributed to the availability of large datasets and a large number of parameters, enabling them to "remember" vast amounts of information. On the contrary, humans can learn new concepts with very little data and are able to generalize this knowledge.
Model-based Clustering with Missing Not At Random Data
Sportisse, Aude, Biernacki, Christophe, Boyer, Claire, Josse, Julie, Lourdelle, Matthieu Marbac, Celeux, Gilles, Laporte, Fabien
In recent decades, technological advances have made it possible to collect large data sets. In this context, the model-based clustering is a very popular, flexible and interpretable methodology for data exploration in a well-defined statistical framework. One of the ironies of the increase of large datasets is that missing values are more frequent. However, traditional ways (as discarding observations with missing values or imputation methods) are not designed for the clustering purpose. In addition, they rarely apply to the general case, though frequent in practice, of Missing Not At Random (MNAR) values, i.e. when the missingness depends on the unobserved data values and possibly on the observed data values. The goal of this paper is to propose a novel approach by embedding MNAR data directly within model-based clustering algorithms. We introduce a selection model for the joint distribution of data and missing-data indicator. It corresponds to a mixture model for the data distribution and a general MNAR model for the missing-data mechanism, which may depend on the underlying classes (unknown) and/or the values of the missing variables themselves. A large set of meaningful MNAR sub-models is derived and the identifiability of the parameters is studied for each of the sub-models, which is usually a key issue for any MNAR proposals. The EM and Stochastic EM algorithms are considered for estimation. Finally, we perform empirical evaluations for the proposed submodels on synthetic data and we illustrate the relevance of our method on a medical register, the TraumaBase (R) dataset.
Outlier detection in multivariate functional data through a contaminated mixture model
Amovin-Assagba, Martial, Gannaz, Irène, Jacques, Julien
This work is motivated by an application in an industrial context, where the activity of sensors is recorded at a high frequency. The objective is to automatically detect abnormal measurement behaviour. Considering the sensor measures as functional data, we are formally interested in detecting outliers in a multivariate functional data set. Due to the heterogeneity of this data set, the proposed contaminated mixture model both clusters the multivariate functional data into homogeneous groups and detects outliers. The main advantage of this procedure over its competitors is that it does not require us to specify the proportion of outliers. Model inference is performed through an Expectation-Conditional Maximization algorithm, and the BIC criterion is used to select the number of clusters. Numerical experiments on simulated data demonstrate the high performance achieved by the inference algorithm. In particular, the proposed model outperforms competitors. Its application on the real data which motivated this study allows us to correctly detect abnormal behaviours.