Related papers: Instance-Optimality in the Noisy Value-and Compari…
We use a Bayesian approach to optimally solve problems in noisy binary search. We deal with two variants: 1. Each comparison can be erroneous with some probability $1 - p$. 2. At each stage $k$ comparisons can be performed in parallel and a…
The common way to optimize auction and pricing systems is to set aside a small fraction of the traffic to run experiments. This leads to the question: how can we learn the most with the smallest amount of data? For truthful auctions, this…
Many decision-making processes involve evaluating and then selecting items; examples include scientific peer review, job hiring, school admissions, and investment decisions. The eventual selection is performed by applying rules or…
We study the problem of clustering a set of items from binary user feedback. Such a problem arises in crowdsourcing platforms solving large-scale labeling tasks with minimal effort put on the users. For example, in some of the recent…
In this paper, we consider large-scale ranking problems where one is given a set of (possibly non-redundant) pairwise comparisons and the underlying ranking explained by those comparisons is desired. We show that stochastic gradient descent…
In this work, we analyze the noisy importance sampling (IS), i.e., IS working with noisy evaluations of the target density. We present the general framework and derive optimal proposal densities for noisy IS estimators. The optimal…
In the problem of online unweighted interval selection, the objective is to maximize the number of non-conflicting intervals accepted by the algorithm. In the conventional online model of irrevocable decisions, there is an Omega(n) lower…
Randomized experiments are the gold standard for evaluating the effects of changes to real-world systems. Data in these tests may be difficult to collect and outcomes may have high variance, resulting in potentially large measurement error.…
Motivated by the need for efficient estimation of conditional expectations, we consider a least-squares function approximation problem with heavily polluted data. Existing methods that are effective in the small-noise regime are suboptimal…
We propose a method for variable selection in the intensity function of spatial point processes that combines sparsity-promoting estimation with noise-robust model selection. As high-resolution spatial data becomes increasingly available…
Assessment of practical quantum information processing (QIP) remains partial without understanding limits imposed by noise. Unfortunately, mere description of noise grows exponentially with system size, becoming cumbersome even for modest…
Many inverse problems include nuisance parameters which, while not of direct interest, are required to recover primary parameters. Structure present in these problems allows efficient optimization strategies - a well known example is…
We introduce the concept of strong high-order approximate minimizers for nonconvex optimization problems. These apply in both standard smooth and composite non-smooth settings, and additionally allow convex or inexpensive constraints. An…
This paper addresses the challenge of a particular class of noisy state observations in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), a common issue in various real-world applications. We focus on modeling this uncertainty through a confusion matrix…
In order to extract event information from text, a machine reading model must learn to accurately read and interpret the ways in which that information is expressed. But it must also, as the human reader must, aggregate numerous individual…
This paper studies the sample complexity (aka number of comparisons) bounds for the active best-$k$ items selection from pairwise comparisons. From a given set of items, the learner can make pairwise comparisons on every pair of items, and…
Not all instances in a data set are equally beneficial for inferring a model of the data. Some instances (such as outliers) are detrimental to inferring a model of the data. Several machine learning techniques treat instances in a data set…
We study the problem of learning an unknown mixture of $k$ rankings over $n$ elements, given access to noisy samples drawn from the unknown mixture. We consider a range of different noise models, including natural variants of the "heat…
Crowdworking is a cost-efficient solution for acquiring class labels. Since these labels are subject to noise, various approaches to learning from crowds have been proposed. Typically, these approaches are evaluated with default…
Recent studies indicate that deep neural networks degrade in generalization performance under noisy supervision. Existing methods focus on isolating clean subsets or correcting noisy labels, facing limitations such as high computational…