Related papers: Minimizing Errors or Surprises?
While mixture of linear regressions (MLR) is a well-studied topic, prior works usually do not analyze such models for prediction error. In fact, {\em prediction} and {\em loss} are not well-defined in the context of mixtures. In this paper,…
Large language model (LLM) evaluation is increasingly costly, prompting interest in methods that speed up evaluation by shrinking benchmark datasets. Benchmark prediction (also called efficient LLM evaluation) aims to select a small subset…
LLM deployment in critical domains is currently impeded by persistent hallucinations--generating plausible but factually incorrect assertions. While scaling laws drove significant improvements in general capabilities, theoretical frameworks…
Offline (or batch) reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms seek to learn an optimal policy from a fixed dataset without active data collection. Based on the composition of the offline dataset, two main categories of methods are used:…
We present a computational motivation for restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimation in linear mixed models using an expectation--maximization (EM) algorithm. At each iteration, maximum likelihood (ML) and REML solve the same…
Structural equation modeling (SEM) and path analysis have long been central tools for studying complex causal relationships in the social and behavioral sciences, yet their reliance on parametric assumptions can lead to biased inference…
We consider learning methods based on the regularization of a convex empirical risk by a squared Hilbertian norm, a setting that includes linear predictors and non-linear predictors through positive-definite kernels. In order to go beyond…
The advent of pre-trained language models (PLMs) has enabled significant performance gains in the field of natural language processing. However, recent studies have found PLMs to suffer from miscalibration, indicating a lack of accuracy in…
Aligning the behavior of Large language models (LLMs) with human intentions and values remains a critical challenge. Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) aligns LLMs by training a reward model (RM) on human preferences and…
I introduce a survey of economic expectations formed by querying a large language model (LLM)'s expectations of various financial and macroeconomic variables based on a sample of news articles from the Wall Street Journal between 1984 and…
Finite-sample bias is a pervasive challenge in the estimation of structural equation models (SEMs), especially when sample sizes are small or measurement reliability is low. A range of methods have been proposed to improve finite-sample…
With the deluge of digitized information in the Big Data era, massive datasets are becoming increasingly available for learning predictive models. However, in many practical situations, the poor control of the data acquisition processes may…
Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a predominant technique to align language models (LMs) with human preferences or promote outputs which are deemed to be desirable by a given reward function. Standard RL approaches optimize average…
Context: Conducting experiments is central to research machine learning research to benchmark, evaluate and compare learning algorithms. Consequently it is important we conduct reliable, trustworthy experiments. Objective: We investigate…
Federated Learning (FL) is a promising paradigm for realizing edge intelligence, allowing collaborative learning among distributed edge devices by sharing models instead of raw data. However, the shared models are often assumed to be ideal,…
Tournament procedures, recently introduced in Lugosi & Mendelson (2016), offer an appealing alternative, from a theoretical perspective at least, to the principle of Empirical Risk Minimization in machine learning. Statistical learning by…
Reward models (RMs) play a crucial role in reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), aligning model behavior with human preferences. However, existing benchmarks for reward models show a weak correlation with the performance of…
Reasoning has emerged as the next major frontier for language models (LMs), with rapid advances from both academic and industrial labs. However, this progress often outpaces methodological rigor, with many evaluations relying on…
Random-effects models are central to meta-analysis, yet the between-study variance is often underestimated when the number of studies is small. In such settings, confidence intervals become unduly narrow and fail to attain the nominal…
Learning by examples, which learns to solve a new problem by looking into how similar problems are solved, is an effective learning method in human learning. When a student learns a new topic, he/she finds out exemplar topics that are…