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Function-Counting Theory for Low-Dimensional Data Structures

arXiv.org Machine Learning

The success of deep learning models in classification and regression is widely attributed to the low-dimensional structure that real-world data tend to exhibit, despite their high-dimensional representation. This work attempts to provide a mathematical framework for binary classification on low-dimensional data, building on Cover's (1965) function-counting theory. With our framework, we aim to address the question of how the low-dimensional structure of the data affects the classification capabilities of learning models. Cover's theory relies on a general position assumption that blinds it to the underlying data structure. We refine this assumption to account for the low-dimensionality of the data and derive dichotomy counts that reflect the data structure. We further extend Cover's separation capacity and problem of generalization to the low-dimensional setting, enabling the impact of the underlying data structure on both to be analyzed.


Adversarial Contamination Meets Hard Thresholding: An Iterative Algorithm with Signal Adaptivity and Minimax Optimality

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Pervasive data contamination -- stemming from measurement errors, outliers, or adversarial corruption -- has motivated the development of robust statistical methods. In this context, we propose a two-stage Adversarial Contamination-resistant Iterative Hard Thresholding (AC-IHT) algorithm for high-dimensional regression with contamination. Our nonconvex algorithm achieves minimax near-optimal (up to logarithmic terms) estimation by iteratively updating the coefficient vector and the contamination vector with different thresholding scales. We further demonstrate that our AC-IHT estimator is signal-adaptive: under proper signal conditions, it adaptively attains a sharper estimation rate and more accurate support recovery. Moreover, it enjoys the strong oracle property, laying a theoretical foundation for asymptotic inference. Numerical experiments confirm its superior finite-sample performance. Finally, we discuss theoretical extensions of the proposed procedure to generalized linear models and to heavy-tailed noise settings.


Bayesian Model Averaging under Predictor Redundancy via Density-Ratio Posterior Compression

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Bayesian model averaging in support-indexed regression induces a posterior distribution over active predictor supports. Under predictor redundancy, posterior mass can spread across many nearly interchangeable supports, making exact-support summaries unstable or hard to interpret even when prediction is stable. We study how to report an already fitted Bayesian model averaging posterior without changing the Bayesian target. A report uses hard or soft regions of support space, and its compressed reporting law is compared with the reference posterior through an explicit density ratio. This ratio gives computable total-variation and Kullback--Leibler distortion, bounds for bounded predictive summaries, retained-mass diagnostics, and fallback-weight diagnostics. The framework covers fixed hard regions, metric-ball regions, posterior-cluster regions, and pooled-pruned region dictionaries. We prove exact error formulas and validation bounds for these region reports, and give conditions under which a few regions can replace a long list of individual supports. In simulations, our region reports often give shorter and clearer summaries while preserving the main posterior information, and the density-ratio diagnostics show when too much information has been lost.


b98d5883da07b3b3b8afd3fd654dc57a-Paper-Conference.pdf

Neural Information Processing Systems

For such neural networks, we prove a non-constant lower bound of that are compatible with certain polyhedral complexes, more precisely with the the best known lower bound in general is still 2. We focus on neural networks linear functions on R .


Learning Juntas under Markov Random Fields

Neural Information Processing Systems

We give an algorithm for learning O(logn)juntas in polynomial-time with respect to Markov Random Fields (MRFs) in a smoothed analysis framework where only the external field has been randomly perturbed. This is a broad generalization1 of the work of Kalai and Teng, who gave an algorithm that succeeded with respect to smoothed product distributions (i.e., MRFs whose dependency graph has no edges). Our algorithm has two phases: (1) an unsupervised structure learning phase and (2) a greedy supervised learning algorithm. This is the first example where algorithms for learning the structure of undirected graphical models have downstream applications to supervised learning.


Transferring Causal Effects using Proxies

Neural Information Processing Systems

We consider the problem of estimating a causal effect in a multi-domain setting. The causal effect of interest is confounded by an unobserved confounder and can change between the different domains. We assume that we have access to a proxy of the hidden confounder and that all variables are discrete or categorical. We propose methodology to estimate the causal effect in the target domain, where we assume to observe only the proxy variable. Under these conditions, we prove identifiability (even when treatment and response variables are continuous). We introduce two estimation techniques, prove consistency, and derive confidence intervals. The theoretical results are supported by simulation studies and a real-world example studying the causal effect of website rankings on consumer choices.


8c2e2925e75e501088004dd685f0ae81-Paper-Conference.pdf

Neural Information Processing Systems

We study the sample complexity of Bayesian recovery for solving inverse problems with general prior, forward operator and noise distributions. We consider posterior sampling according to an approximate prior P, and establish sufficient conditions for stable and accurate recovery with high probability. Our main result is a non-asymptotic bound that shows that the sample complexity depends on (i) the intrinsic complexity of P, quantified by its approximate covering number, and (ii) concentration bounds for the forward operator and noise distributions. As a key application, we specialize to generative priors, where P is the pushforward of a latent distribution via a Deep Neural Network (DNN). We show that the sample complexity scales log-linearly with the latent dimension k, thus establishing the efficacy of DNN-based priors. Generalizing existing results on deterministic (i.e., non-Bayesian) recovery for the important problem of random sampling with an orthogonal matrix U, we show how the sample complexity is determined by the coherence of U with respect to the support of P. Hence, we establish that coherence plays a fundamental role in Bayesian recovery as well. Overall, our framework unifies and extends prior work, providing rigorous guarantees for the sample complexity of solving Bayesian inverse problems with arbitrary distributions.


Multi-Objective One-Shot Pruning for Large Language Models

Neural Information Processing Systems

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities across various tasks but require substantial computational resources, limiting their deployment in resource-constrained environments. While one-shot pruning methods can reduce model size without expensive retraining, they typically optimize for single objectives, ignoring LLMs' multi-faceted applications. We introduce Multi-Objective One-Shot Pruning (MOSP), which formulates LLM pruning as a multi-objective optimization problem. MOSP efficiently generates a Pareto set of pruned models representing different capability trade-offs, allowing users to select solutions aligned with their preferences. The proposed approach identifies share core support while enabling specialized support. Experiments across various LLMs and sparsity levels demonstrate MOSP's superior performance in navigating multi-objective trade-offs compared to baseline methods.


Instance-Dependent Regret Bounds for Nonstochastic Linear Partial Monitoring

Neural Information Processing Systems

In contrast to the classic formulation of partial monitoring, linear partial monitoring can model infinite outcome spaces, while imposing a linear structure on both the losses and the observations. This setting can be viewed as a generalization of linear bandits where loss and feedback are decoupled in a flexible manner. In this work, we address a nonstochastic (adversarial), finite-actions version of the problem through a simple instance of the exploration-by-optimization method that is amenable to efficient implementation. We derive regret bounds that depend on the game structure in a more transparent manner than previous theoretical guarantees for this paradigm. Our bounds feature instance-specific quantities that reflect the degree of alignment between observations and losses, and resemble known guarantees in the stochastic setting. Notably, they achieve the standard T rate in easy (locally observable) games and T2/3 in hard (globally observable) games, where T is the time horizon. We instantiate these bounds in a selection of old and new partial information settings subsumed by this model, and illustrate that the achieved dependence on the game structure can be tight in interesting cases.


Flexible inference for animal learning rules using neural networks

Neural Information Processing Systems

Understanding how animals learn is a central challenge in neuroscience, with growing relevance to the development of animal-or human-aligned artificial intelligence. However, existing approaches tend to assume fixed parametric forms for the learning rule (e.g., Q-learning, policy gradient), which may not accurately describe the complex forms of learning employed by animals in realistic settings. Here we address this gap by developing a framework to infer learning rules directly from behavioral data collected during de novo task learning. We assume that animals follow a decision policy parameterized by a generalized linear model (GLM), and we model their learning rule--the mapping from task covariates to per-trial weight updates--using a deep neural network (DNN). This formulation allows flexible, data-driven inference of learning rules while maintaining an interpretable form of the decision policy itself.