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We present a new discriminative technique for the multiple-source adaptation, MSA, problem. Unlike previous work, which relies on density estimation for each source domain, our solution only requires conditional probabilities that can…

We explore the performance of sample average approximation in comparison with several other methods for stochastic optimization when there is information available on the underlying true probability distribution. The methods we evaluate are…

We consider a risk-averse stochastic capacity planning problem under uncertain demand in each period. Using a scenario tree representation of the uncertainty, we formulate a multistage stochastic integer program to adjust the capacity…

Inference is typically intractable in high-treewidth undirected graphical models, making maximum likelihood learning a challenge. One way to overcome this is to restrict parameters to a tractable set, most typically the set of…

Efficiently computing the optimal control policy concerning a complicated future with stochastic disturbance has always been a challenge. The predicted stochastic future disturbance can be represented by a scenario tree, but solving the…

Stochastic approximation (SA) that involves multiple coupled sequences, known as multiple-sequence SA (MSSA), finds diverse applications in the fields of signal processing and machine learning. However, existing theoretical understandings…

We propose dynamic sampled stochastic approximation (SA) methods for stochastic optimization with a heavy-tailed distribution (with finite 2nd moment). The objective is the sum of a smooth convex function with a convex regularizer.…

Stochastic saddle point (SSP) problems are, in general, less studied compared to stochastic minimization problems. However, SSP problems emerge from machine learning (adversarial training, e.g., GAN, AUC maximization), statistics (robust…

In this paper, we develop approximate dynamic programming methods for stochastic systems modeled as Markov Decision Processes, given both soft performance criteria and hard constraints in a class of probabilistic temporal logic called…

In this paper, we consider constrained optimization problems with convex, smooth objective and constraints. We propose a new stochastic gradient algorithm, called the Stochastic Moving Ball Approximation (SMBA) method, to solve this class…

We study the multi-stage stochastic unit commitment problem in which commitment and generation decisions can be made and adjusted in each time period. We formulate this problem as a Markov decision process, which is "weakly-coupled" in the…

We propose a stochastic approximation method for approximating the efficient frontier of chance-constrained nonlinear programs. Our approach is based on a bi-objective viewpoint of chance-constrained programs that seeks solutions on the…

Chance constrained optimization problems allow to model problems where constraints involving stochastic components should only be violated with a small probability. Evolutionary algorithms have been applied to this scenario and shown to…

This paper considers a class of reinforcement learning problems, which involve systems with two types of states: stochastic and pseudo-stochastic. In such systems, stochastic states follow a stochastic transition kernel while the…

A widely used heuristic for solving stochastic optimization problems is to use a deterministic rolling horizon procedure, which has been modified to handle uncertainty (e.g. buffer stocks, schedule slack). This approach has been criticized…

In recent years there has been a paradigm shift from the study of local task-related activation to the organization and functioning of large-scale functional and structural brain networks. However, a long-standing challenge in this…

Stochastic approximation Monte Carlo (SAMC) has recently been proposed by Liang, Liu and Carroll [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 102 (2007) 305--320] as a general simulation and optimization algorithm. In this paper, we propose to improve its…

This paper develops a novel stochastic tree ensemble method for nonlinear regression, which we refer to as XBART, short for Accelerated Bayesian Additive Regression Trees. By combining regularization and stochastic search strategies from…

We consider stochastic optimization problems where data is drawn from a Markov chain. Existing methods for this setting crucially rely on knowing the mixing time of the chain, which in real-world applications is usually unknown. We propose…

State-space models (SSMs) are a highly expressive model class for learning patterns in time series data and for system identification. Deterministic versions of SSMs (e.g. LSTMs) proved extremely successful in modeling complex time series…