Related papers: Estimating a Polya frequency function_2
Fitting an unknown number of hyperplanes to data is a fundamental yet challenging problem in machine learning, characterized by its non-convexity, non-differentiability, and unknown model order. Existing approaches often struggle with local…
We consider two problems of estimation in high-dimensional Gaussian models. The first problem is that of estimating a linear functional of the means of $n$ independent $p$-dimensional Gaussian vectors, under the assumption that most of…
When classical particle filtering algorithms are used for maximum likelihood parameter estimation in nonlinear state-space models, a key challenge is that estimates of the likelihood function and its derivatives are inherently noisy. The…
We investigate Bayesian nonparametric density estimation via orthogonal polynomial expansions in weighted Sobolev spaces. A core challenge is establishing minimax optimal posterior convergence rates, especially for densities on unbounded…
In this paper we consider the problem of computing the likelihood of the profile of a discrete distribution, i.e., the probability of observing the multiset of element frequencies, and computing a profile maximum likelihood (PML)…
In this paper, we consider a class of structured fractional programs, where the numerator part is the sum of a block-separable (possibly nonsmooth nonconvex) function and a locally Lipschitz differentiable (possibly nonconvex) function,…
We consider minimizing an objective function subject to constraints defined by the intersection of lower-level sets of convex functions. We study two cases: (i) strongly convex and Lipschitz-smooth objective function and (ii) convex but…
We introduce a novel type of approximation spaces for functions with values in a nonlinear manifold. The discrete functions are constructed by piecewise polynomial interpolation in a Euclidean embedding space, and then projecting pointwise…
The problem of minimizing convex functionals of probability distributions is solved under the assumption that the density of every distribution is bounded from above and below. A system of sufficient and necessary first-order optimality…
We study a class of nonlinear nonparametric inverse problems. Specifically, we propose a nonparametric estimator of the dynamics of a monotonically increasing trajectory defined on a finite time interval. Under suitable regularity…
Sobolev quantities (norms, inner products, and distances) of probability density functions are important in the theory of nonparametric statistics, but have rarely been used in practice, partly due to a lack of practical estimators. They…
In this paper, we consider non-convex optimization problems under \textit{unknown} yet safety-critical constraints. Such problems naturally arise in a variety of domains including robotics, manufacturing, and medical procedures, where it is…
This work studies the problem of maximizing a higher degree real homogeneous multivariate polynomial over the unit sphere. This problem is equivalent to finding the leading eigenvalue of the associated symmetric tensor of higher order,…
(Neal and Hinton, 1998) recast maximum likelihood estimation of any given latent variable model as the minimization of a free energy functional $F$, and the EM algorithm as coordinate descent applied to $F$. Here, we explore alternative…
In many applications, such as economics, operations research and reinforcement learning, one often needs to estimate a multivariate regression function f subject to a convexity constraint. For example, in sequential decision processes the…
Hirschman and Widder introduced a class of P\'olya frequency functions given by linear combinations of one-sided exponential functions. The members of this class are probability densities, and the class is closed under convolution but not…
We study a phase retrieval problem in the Poisson noise model. Motivated by the PhaseLift approach, we approximate the maximum-likelihood estimator by solving a convex program with a nuclear norm constraint. While the Frank-Wolfe algorithm,…
The thesis concentrates on two problems in discrete geometry, whose solutions are obtained by analytic, probabilistic and combinatoric tools. The first chapter deals with the strong polarization problem. This states that for any sequence…
The advent of data science has spurred interest in estimating properties of distributions over large alphabets. Fundamental symmetric properties such as support size, support coverage, entropy, and proximity to uniformity, received most…
We study the problem of nonparametric estimation under $\bL_p$-loss, $p\in [1,\infty)$, in the framework of the convolution structure density model on $\bR^d$. This observation scheme is a generalization of two classical statistical models,…