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We introduce a solution concept for extensive-form games of incomplete information in which players need not assign likelihoods to what they do not know about the game. This is embedded in a model in which players can hold multiple priors.…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-09-03 Karl Schlag , Andriy Zapechelnyuk

Learning or estimating game models from data typically entails inducing separate models for each setting, even if the games are parametrically related. In empirical mechanism design, for example, this approach requires learning a new game…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Madelyn Gatchel , Michael P. Wellman

When prior information is lacking, the go-to strategy for probabilistic inference is to combine a "default prior" and the likelihood via Bayes's theorem. Objective Bayes, (generalized) fiducial inference, etc. fall under this umbrella. This…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-05 Ryan Martin

Theoretical and applied research into privacy encompasses an incredibly broad swathe of differing approaches, emphasis and aims. This work introduces a new quantitative notion of privacy that is both contextual and specific. We argue that…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-03-05 Cameron Bell , Timothy Johnston , Antoine Luciano , Christian P Robert

We propose a new method for conducting Bayesian prediction that delivers accurate predictions without correctly specifying the unknown true data generating process. A prior is defined over a class of plausible predictive models. After…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-08-24 Ruben Loaiza-Maya , Gael M. Martin , David T. Frazier

I describe a Bayesian persuasion problem where Receiver has a private type representing a cutoff for choosing Sender's preferred action, and Sender has maxmin preferences over all Receiver type distributions with known mean and bounds. This…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-03 Eitan Sapiro-Gheiler

Causal discovery is crucial for understanding complex systems and informing decisions. While observational data can uncover causal relationships under certain assumptions, it often falls short, making active interventions necessary. Current…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Yuxuan Wang , Mingzhou Liu , Xinwei Sun , Wei Wang , Yizhou Wang

In the need for low assumption inferential methods in infinite-dimensional settings, Bayesian adaptive estimation via a prior distribution that does not depend on the regularity of the function to be estimated nor on the sample size is…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-09-23 Catia Scricciolo

The behavior of many Bayesian models used in machine learning critically depends on the choice of prior distributions, controlled by some hyperparameters that are typically selected by Bayesian optimization or cross-validation. This…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-10-09 Eliezer de Souza da Silva , Tomasz Kuśmierczyk , Marcelo Hartmann , Arto Klami

Information theoretic active learning has been widely studied for probabilistic models. For simple regression an optimal myopic policy is easily tractable. However, for other tasks and with more complex models, such as classification with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2011-12-30 Neil Houlsby , Ferenc Huszár , Zoubin Ghahramani , Máté Lengyel

We prove a new minimax theorem connecting the worst-case Bayesian regret and minimax regret under partial monitoring with no assumptions on the space of signals or decisions of the adversary. We then generalise the information-theoretic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-30 Tor Lattimore , Csaba Szepesvari

Bayesian methods are increasingly applied in these days in the theory and practice of statistics. Any Bayesian inference depends on a likelihood and a prior. Ideally one would like to elicit a prior from related sources of information or…

Methodology · Statistics 2011-08-11 Malay Ghosh

We consider how an agent should update her uncertainty when it is represented by a set P of probability distributions and the agent observes that a random variable X takes on value x, given that the agent makes decisions using the minimax…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-07-29 Peter D. Grunwald , Joseph Y. Halpern

Bayesian hierarchical models are frequently used in practical data analysis contexts. One interpretation of these models is that they provide an indirect way of assigning a prior for unknown parameters, through the introduction of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-01 Brendon J. Brewer

Achieving the Bayes optimal binary classification rule subject to group fairness constraints is known to be reducible, in some cases, to learning a group-wise thresholding rule over the Bayes regressor. In this paper, we extend this result…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-01 Ibrahim Alabdulmohsin

Using instruments comprising ordered responses to items are ubiquitous for studying many constructs of interest. However, using such an item response format may lead to items with response categories infrequently endorsed or unendorsed…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-05-02 R. Noah Padgett , Grant B. Morgan , Tim Lomas

Two main concepts studied in machine learning theory are generalization gap (difference between train and test error) and excess risk (difference between test error and the minimum possible error). While information-theoretic tools have…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-01 Hassan Hafez-Kolahi , Behrad Moniri , Shohreh Kasaei

Selective classification is a powerful tool for automated decision-making in high-risk scenarios, allowing classifiers to act only when confident and abstain when uncertainty is high. Given a target accuracy, our goal is to minimize…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-10-28 Mohamed Ndaoud , Peter Radchenko , Bradley Rava

The traditional approach to choosing moves in game-playing programs is the minimax procedure. The general belief underlying its use is that increasing search depth improves play. Recent research has shown that given certain simplifying…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-04-15 Bruce Abramson

We consider using an ensemble of binary classifiers for transductive prediction, when unlabeled test data are known in advance. We derive minimax optimal rules for confidence-rated prediction in this setting. By using PAC-Bayes analysis on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-01-19 Akshay Balsubramani , Yoav Freund