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Related papers: Uniform inference for value functions

200 papers

Continuous and efficient experimentation is key to the practical success of user-facing applications on the web, both through online A/B-tests and off-policy evaluation. Despite their shared objective -- estimating the incremental value of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-10 Olivier Jeunen

We study the problem of estimating a function $T$ given independent samples from a distribution $P$ and from the pushforward distribution $T_\sharp P$. This setting is motivated by applications in the sciences, where $T$ represents the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-01-04 Vincent Divol , Jonathan Niles-Weed , Aram-Alexandre Pooladian

Given a Hilbert space $\mathcal H$ and a finite measure space $\Omega$, the approximation of a vector-valued function $f: \Omega \to \mathcal H$ by a $k$-dimensional subspace $\mathcal U \subset \mathcal H$ plays an important role in…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2024-08-07 Daniel Kressner , Tingting Ni , André Uschmajew

Motivated by canonical problems in medical diagnostics, we propose and study properties of an objective function that uniformly bounds uncertainties in quantities of interest extracted from classifiers and related data analysis tools. We…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-05 Paul N. Patrone , Anthony J. Kearsley

In this paper, we present a method for the accurate estimation of the derivative (aka.~sensitivity) of expectations of functions involving an indicator function by combining a stochastic algorithmic differentiation and a regression. The…

Computational Finance · Quantitative Finance 2019-11-13 Christian P. Fries

We propose an algorithmic framework, that employs active subspace techniques, for scalable global optimization of functions with low effective dimension (also referred to as low-rank functions). This proposal replaces the original…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-01 Coralia Cartis , Xinzhu Liang , Estelle Massart , Adilet Otemissov

We consider a multiobjective bilevel optimization problem with vector-valued upper- and lower-level objective functions. Such problems have attracted a lot of interest in recent years. However, so far, scalarization has appeared to be the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-01-05 Lahoussine Lafhim , Alain Zemkoho

We provide an improvement of the maximum principle of Pontryagin of the Optimal Control problems. We establish differentiability properties of the value function of problems of Optimal Control with assumptions as low as possible. Notably,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-28 Joël Blot , Hasan Yilmaz

This work concerns the global minimization of a prescribed eigenvalue or a weighted sum of prescribed eigenvalues of a Hermitian matrix-valued function depending on its parameters analytically in a box. We describe how the analytical…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2016-05-11 Emre Mengi , Emre Alper Yildirim , Mustafa Kilic

We describe a machine learning method for predicting the value of a real-valued function, given the values of multiple input variables. The method induces solutions from samples in the form of ordered disjunctive normal form (DNF) decision…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-11-17 S. M. Weiss , N. Indurkhya

Consider a Poisson point process with unknown support boundary curve $g$, which forms a prototype of an irregular statistical model. We address the problem of estimating non-linear functionals of the form $\int \Phi(g(x))\,dx$. Following a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-02-13 Markus Reiß , Martin Wahl

While guided decoding, especially value-guided methods, has emerged as a cost-effective alternative for controlling language model outputs without re-training models, its effectiveness is limited by the accuracy of the value function. We…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Zhenhua Liu , Lijun Li , Ruizhe Chen , Yuxian Jiang , Tong Zhu , Zhaochen Su , Wenliang Chen , Jing Shao

Motivated by portfolio allocation and linear discriminant analysis, we consider estimating a functional $\mathbf{\mu}^T \mathbf{\Sigma}^{-1} \mathbf{\mu}$ involving both the mean vector $\mathbf{\mu}$ and covariance matrix…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-02-12 Jianqing Fan , Haolei Weng , Yifeng Zhou

In this paper, we introduce a new functional point of view on bilevel optimization problems for machine learning, where the inner objective is minimized over a function space. These types of problems are most often solved by using methods…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-12-10 Ieva Petrulionyte , Julien Mairal , Michael Arbel

We consider the problem of adaptive stratified sampling for Monte Carlo integration of a differentiable function given a finite number of evaluations to the function. We construct a sampling scheme that samples more often in regions where…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-10-22 Alexandra Carpentier , Rémi Munos

We study non-parametric estimation of the value function of an infinite-horizon $\gamma$-discounted Markov reward process (MRP) using observations from a single trajectory. We provide non-asymptotic guarantees for a general family of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-11-09 Yaqi Duan , Martin J. Wainwright

Nonconvex optimization is central to modern machine learning, but the general framework of nonconvex optimization yields weak convergence guarantees that are too pessimistic compared to practice. On the other hand, while convexity enables…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-19 Artem Riabinin , Ahmed Khaled , Peter Richtárik

Arising in semi-parametric statistics, control applications, and as sub-problems in global optimization methods, certain optimization problems can have objective functions requiring numerical integration to evaluate, yet gradient function…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-06 Christian Varner , Vivak Patel

It is often desired that ordinal regression models yield unimodal predictions. However, in many recent works this characteristic is either absent, or implemented using soft targets, which do not guarantee unimodal outputs at inference. In…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-11-19 Uri Shaham , Igal Zaidman , Jonathan Svirsky

Decision-theoretic planning is a popular approach to sequential decision making problems, because it treats uncertainty in sensing and acting in a principled way. In single-agent frameworks like MDPs and POMDPs, planning can be carried out…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2011-11-02 Frans A. Oliehoek , Matthijs T. J. Spaan , Nikos Vlassis