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In this work, we investigate Batch Normalization technique and propose its probabilistic interpretation. We propose a probabilistic model and show that Batch Normalization maximazes the lower bound of its marginalized log-likelihood. Then,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-22 Andrei Atanov , Arsenii Ashukha , Dmitry Molchanov , Kirill Neklyudov , Dmitry Vetrov

We consider online statistical inference of constrained stochastic nonlinear optimization problems. We apply the Stochastic Sequential Quadratic Programming (StoSQP) method to solve these problems, which can be regarded as applying…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-02-19 Sen Na , Michael W. Mahoney

Constrained stochastic nonlinear optimization problems have attracted significant attention for their ability to model complex real-world scenarios in physics, economics, and biology. As datasets continue to grow, online inference methods…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-27 Xinchen Du , Wanrong Zhu , Wei Biao Wu , Sen Na

In experimental causal inference, we distinguish between two sources of uncertainty: design uncertainty, due to the treatment assignment mechanism, and sampling uncertainty, when the sample is drawn from a super-population. This distinction…

Optimal control of stochastic nonlinear dynamical systems is a major challenge in the domain of robot learning. Given the intractability of the global control problem, state-of-the-art algorithms focus on approximate sequential optimization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-23 Joe Watson , Hany Abdulsamad , Jan Peters

Many stochastic optimization problems include chance constraints that enforce constraint satisfaction with a specific probability; however, solving an optimization problem with chance constraints assumes that the solver has access to the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-21 Joshua Comden , Ahmed S. Zamzam , Andrey Bernstein

We consider the problem of finding confidence intervals for the risk of forecasting the future of a stationary, ergodic stochastic process, using a model estimated from the past of the process. We show that a bootstrap procedure provides…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2017-12-01 Robert Lunde , Cosma Rohilla Shalizi

We here adapt an extended version of the adaptive cubic regularisation method with dynamic inexact Hessian information for nonconvex optimisation in [3] to the stochastic optimisation setting. While exact function evaluations are still…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2020-09-15 Stefania Bellavia , Gianmarco Gurioli

We study statistical inference and distributionally robust solution methods for stochastic optimization problems, focusing on confidence intervals for optimal values and solutions that achieve exact coverage asymptotically. We develop a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-07-03 John Duchi , Peter Glynn , Hongseok Namkoong

In the setting of nonparametric regression, we propose and study a combination of stochastic gradient methods with Nystr\"om subsampling, allowing multiple passes over the data and mini-batches. Generalization error bounds for the studied…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-10-24 Junhong Lin , Lorenzo Rosasco

We consider stochastic optimization under distributional uncertainty, where the unknown distributional parameter is estimated from streaming data that arrive sequentially over time. Moreover, data may depend on the decision of the time when…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-17 Tianyi Liu , Yifan Lin , Enlu Zhou

This technical note presents a new approach to carrying out the kind of exploration achieved by Thompson sampling, but without explicitly maintaining or sampling from posterior distributions. The approach is based on a bootstrap technique…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-07-02 Ian Osband , Benjamin Van Roy

We consider penalized extremum estimation of a high-dimensional, possibly nonlinear model that is sparse in the sense that most of its parameters are zero but some are not. We use the SCAD penalty function, which provides model selection…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-02-23 Joel L. Horowitz , Ahnaf Rafi

Meta-analyses require an effect-size estimate and its corresponding sampling variance from primary studies. In some cases, estimators for the sampling variance of a given effect size statistic may not exist, necessitating the derivation of…

This paper presents an algorithmic framework for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems using only stochastic function evaluations. We employ central finite-difference based gradient estimation methods to approximate the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-14 Raghu Bollapragada , Cem Karamanli

Westling and Carone (2020) proposed a framework for studying the large sample distributional properties of generalized Grenander-type estimators, a versatile class of nonparametric estimators of monotone functions. The limiting distribution…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-07-08 Matias D. Cattaneo , Michael Jansson , Kenichi Nagasawa

In this paper, we propose a stochastic optimization method that adaptively controls the sample size used in the computation of gradient approximations. Unlike other variance reduction techniques that either require additional storage or the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-11-01 Raghu Bollapragada , Richard Byrd , Jorge Nocedal

We propose multiplier bootstrap procedures for nonparametric inference and uncertainty quantification of the target mean function, based on a novel framework of integrating target and source data. We begin with the relatively easier…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-01-06 Zuofeng Shang , Peijun Sang , Chong Jin

In a regression model, prediction is typically performed after model selection. The large variability in the model selection makes the prediction unstable. Thus, it is essential to reduce the variability in model selection and improve…

Computation · Statistics 2024-04-11 Wataru Yoshida , Kei Hirose

Stochastic gradient methods for machine learning and optimization problems are usually analyzed assuming data points are sampled \emph{with} replacement. In practice, however, sampling \emph{without} replacement is very common, easier to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-10-18 Ohad Shamir