Related papers: A Sigmoidal Approximation for Chance-Constrained N…
This paper considers the problem of semi-parametric proportional hazards model fitting for interval, left and right censored survival times. We adopt a more versatile penalized likelihood method to estimate the baseline hazard and the…
We develop flexible methods of deriving variational inference for models with complex latent variable structure. By splitting the variables in these models into "global" parameters and "local" latent variables, we define a class of…
In contrast with many other convex optimization classes, state-of-the-art semidefinite programming solvers are yet unable to efficiently solve large scale instances. This work aims to reduce this scalability gap by proposing a novel…
There has been an increasing interest in using neural networks in closed-loop control systems to improve performance and reduce computational costs for on-line implementation. However, providing safety and stability guarantees for these…
Robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) have received significant research interest, offering an alternative to standard Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that often assume fixed transition probabilities. RMDPs address this by optimizing…
CVaR (Conditional Value at Risk) is a risk metric widely used in finance. However, dynamically optimizing CVaR is difficult since it is not a standard Markov decision process (MDP) and the principle of dynamic programming fails. In this…
In economics, insurance and finance, value at risk (VaR) is a widely used measure of the risk of loss on a specific portfolio of financial assets. For a given portfolio, time horizon, and probability $\alpha$, the $100\alpha\%$ VaR is…
Optimizing static risk-averse objectives in Markov decision processes is difficult because they do not admit standard dynamic programming equations common in Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms. Dynamic programming decompositions that…
Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) are popular risk measures from academic, industrial and regulatory perspectives. The problem of minimizing CVaR is theoretically known to be of Neyman-Pearson type binary solution. We…
In this paper, we study the convergence properties of an iterative algorithm for fast nonlinear model predictive control of quasi-linear parameter-varying systems without inequality constraints. Compared to previous works considering this…
For complex latent variable models, the likelihood function is not available in closed form. In this context, a popular method to perform parameter estimation is Importance Weighted Variational Inference. It essentially maximizes the…
We introduce a semiparametric approach for forecasting Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) by modeling the conditional scale of financial returns, defined as the difference between two specified quantiles, via restricted…
Recently, Petrik et al. demonstrated that L1Regularized Approximate Linear Programming (RALP) could produce value functions and policies which compared favorably to established linear value function approximation techniques like LSPI.…
Convex risk measures play a foundational role in the area of stochastic optimization. However, in contrast to risk neutral models, their applications are still limited due to the lack of efficient solution methods. In particular, the mean…
In many contexts, there is interest in selecting the most important variables from a very large collection, commonly referred to as support recovery or variable, feature or subset selection. There is an enormous literature proposing a rich…
We provide the first importance sampling variants of variance reduced algorithms for empirical risk minimization with non-convex loss functions. In particular, we analyze non-convex versions of SVRG, SAGA and SARAH. Our methods have the…
This paper introduces a general method to approximate the convolution of an arbitrary program with a Gaussian kernel. This process has the effect of smoothing out a program. Our compiler framework models intermediate values in the program…
Factor analysis, a classical multivariate statistical technique is popularly used as a fundamental tool for dimensionality reduction in statistics, econometrics and data science. Estimation is often carried out via the Maximum Likelihood…
We study stochastic optimization problems with chance and risk constraints, where in the latter, risk is quantified in terms of the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). We consider the distributionally robust versions of these problems, where…
We introduce the first probabilistic framework tailored for sequential random projection, an approach rooted in the challenges of sequential decision-making under uncertainty. The analysis is complicated by the sequential dependence and…