Crackovid: Optimizing Group Testing
Methodology
2020-05-14 v1 Machine Learning
Probability
Machine Learning
Abstract
We study the problem usually referred to as group testing in the context of COVID-19. Given samples taken from patients, how should we select mixtures of samples to be tested, so as to maximize information and minimize the number of tests? We consider both adaptive and non-adaptive strategies, and take a Bayesian approach with a prior both for infection of patients and test errors. We start by proposing a mathematically principled objective, grounded in information theory. We then optimize non-adaptive optimization strategies using genetic algorithms, and leverage the mathematical framework of adaptive sub-modularity to obtain theoretical guarantees for the greedy-adaptive method.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2005.06413,
title = {Crackovid: Optimizing Group Testing},
author = {Louis Abraham and Gary Bécigneul and Bernhard Schölkopf},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.06413},
year = {2020}
}