Related papers: The Broad Optimality of Profile Maximum Likelihood

Multi-distribution learning (MDL), which seeks to learn a shared model that minimizes the worst-case risk across $k$ distinct data distributions, has emerged as a unified framework in response to the evolving demand for robustness,…

Triangular distributions are a well-known class of distributions that are often used as elementary example of a probability model. In the past, enumeration and order statistic-based methods have been suggested for the maximum likelihood…

We consider the parameter estimation problem of a probabilistic generative model prescribed using a natural exponential family of distributions. For this problem, the typical maximum likelihood estimator usually overfits under limited…

Maximum pseudolikelihood (MPL) estimators are useful alternatives to maximum likelihood (ML) estimators when likelihood functions are more difficult to manipulate than their marginal and conditional components. Furthermore, MPL estimators…

Comprehensive evaluation of Large Language Models (LLMs) is an open research problem. Existing evaluations rely on deterministic point estimates generated via greedy decoding. However, we find that deterministic evaluations fail to capture…

We consider the classical problem of learning, with arbitrary accuracy, the natural parameters of a $k$-parameter truncated \textit{minimal} exponential family from i.i.d. samples in a computationally and statistically efficient manner. We…

It is believed that a model-based approach for reinforcement learning (RL) is the key to reduce sample complexity. However, the understanding of the sample optimality of model-based RL is still largely missing, even for the linear case.…

The problem of estimating the Kullback-Leibler divergence $D(P\|Q)$ between two unknown distributions $P$ and $Q$ is studied, under the assumption that the alphabet size $k$ of the distributions can scale to infinity. The estimation is…

We consider the problem of hypothesis testing for discrete distributions. In the standard model, where we have sample access to an underlying distribution $p$, extensive research has established optimal bounds for uniformity testing,…

Recently, preference optimization methods such as DPO have significantly enhanced large language models (LLMs) in wide tasks including dialogue and question-answering. However, current methods fail to account for the varying difficulty…

Machine learning models have exhibited exceptional results in various domains. The most prevalent approach for learning is the empirical risk minimizer (ERM), which adapts the model's weights to reduce the loss on a training set and…

Partial multi-label learning (PML) models the scenario where each training instance is annotated with a set of candidate labels, and only some of the labels are relevant. The PML problem is practical in real-world scenarios, as it is…

Consider the nonparametric logistic regression problem. In the logistic regression, we usually consider the maximum likelihood estimator, and the excess risk is the expectation of the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence between the true and…

A famous characterization theorem due to C.F. Gauss states that the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of the parameter in a location family is the sample mean for all samples of all sample sizes if and only if the family is Gaussian. There…

The maximum likelihood degree (ML degree) measures the algebraic complexity of a fundamental optimization problem in statistics: maximum likelihood estimation. In this problem, one maximizes the likelihood function over a statistical model.…

In this paper, a nonparametric maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for band-limited (BL) probability density functions (pdfs) is proposed. The BLML estimator is consistent and computationally efficient. To compute the BLML estimator, three…

Large margin nearest neighbor (LMNN) is a metric learner which optimizes the performance of the popular $k$NN classifier. However, its resulting metric relies on pre-selected target neighbors. In this paper, we address the feasibility of…

This paper provides a unified perspective for the Kullback-Leibler (KL)-divergence and the integral probability metrics (IPMs) from the perspective of maximum likelihood density-ratio estimation (DRE). Both the KL-divergence and the IPMs…

Determinantal point processes (DPPs) have wide-ranging applications in machine learning, where they are used to enforce the notion of diversity in subset selection problems. Many estimators have been proposed, but surprisingly the basic…

We consider an expected-value ranking and selection (R&S) problem where all k solutions' simulation outputs depend on a common parameter whose uncertainty can be modeled by a distribution. We define the most probable best (MPB) to be the…