Related papers: Optimal Learning of Mallows Block Model

As machine learning becomes more and more available to the general public, theoretical questions are turning into pressing practical issues. Possibly, one of the most relevant concerns is the assessment of our confidence in trusting machine…

Many real-world classification tasks require predicting multiple labels per instance, necessitating the optimization of complex evaluation metrics such as the $F$-measure and Jaccard index. While the Empirical Utility Maximization (EUM)…

We study the frontier between learnable and unlearnable hidden Markov models (HMMs). HMMs are flexible tools for clustering dependent data coming from unknown populations. The model parameters are known to be fully identifiable (up to…

Learning from Label Proportions (LLP) is a learning setting, where the training data is provided in groups, or "bags", and only the proportion of each class in each bag is known. The task is to learn a model to predict the class labels of…

This paper investigates the theoretical foundations of metric learning, focused on three key questions that are not fully addressed in prior work: 1) we consider learning general low-dimensional (low-rank) metrics as well as sparse metrics;…

We consider the problem of ranking a set of items from pairwise comparisons in the presence of features associated with the items. Recent works have established that $O(n\log(n))$ samples are needed to rank well when there is no feature…

In this paper, we consider mixtures of multinomial logistic models (MNL), which are known to $\epsilon$-approximate any random utility model. Despite its long history and broad use, rigorous results are only available for learning a uniform…

Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit remarkably powerful capabilities. One of the crucial factors to achieve success is aligning the LLM's output with human preferences. This alignment process often requires only a small amount of data to…

Ranking data arises in a wide variety of application areas but remains difficult to model, learn from, and predict. Datasets often exhibit multimodality, intransitivity, or incomplete rankings---particularly when generated by humans---yet…

Sparse Bayesian Learning is one of the most popular sparse signal recovery methods, and various algorithms exist under the SBL paradigm. However, given a performance metric and a sparse recovery problem, it is difficult to know a-priori the…

We resolve the open question regarding the sample complexity of policy learning for maximizing the long-run average reward associated with a uniformly ergodic Markov decision process (MDP), assuming a generative model. In this context, the…

Preference learning (PL) with large language models (LLMs) aims to align the LLMs' generations with human preferences. Previous work on reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has demonstrated promising results in in-distribution…

We study a fundamental class of regression models called the second order linear model (SLM). The SLM extends the linear model to high order functional space and has attracted considerable research interest recently. Yet how to efficiently…

A common approach to statistical learning with big-data is to randomly split it among $m$ machines and learn the parameter of interest by averaging the $m$ individual estimates. In this paper, focusing on empirical risk minimization, or…

A central problem in analyzing networks is partitioning them into modules or communities. One of the best tools for this is the stochastic block model, which clusters vertices into blocks with statistically homogeneous pattern of links.…

Large language models (LLMs) fine-tuned with alignment techniques, such as reinforcement learning from human feedback, have been instrumental in developing some of the most capable AI systems to date. Despite their success, existing methods…

We consider the situation where the observed sample contains some observations whose class of origin is known (that is, they are classified with respect to the g underlying classes of interest), and where the remaining observations in the…

In this paper we consider the problem of learning an $\epsilon$-optimal policy for a discounted Markov Decision Process (MDP). Given an MDP with $S$ states, $A$ actions, the discount factor $\gamma \in (0,1)$, and an approximation threshold…

Minimax optimization has served as the backbone of many machine learning (ML) problems. Although the convergence behavior of optimization algorithms has been extensively studied in the minimax settings, their generalization guarantees in…

In most machine learning tasks, we evaluate a model $M$ on a given data population $S$ by measuring a population-level metric $F(S;M)$. Examples of such evaluation metric $F$ include precision/recall for (binary) recognition, the F1 score…