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The recent paper Cand\`es et al. (2018) introduced model-X knockoffs, a method for variable selection that provably and non-asymptotically controls the false discovery rate with no restrictions or assumptions on the dimensionality of the…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-06-16 Dongming Huang , Lucas Janson

In many research fields, researchers aim to identify significant associations between a set of explanatory variables and a response while controlling the FDR. The Knockoff filter has been recently proposed in the frequentist paradigm to…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-22 Lorenzo Focardi-Olmi , Anna Gottard , Michele Guindani , Marina Vannucci

We describe a series of algorithms that efficiently implement Gaussian model-X knockoffs to control the false discovery rate on large scale feature selection problems. Identifying the knockoff distribution requires solving a large scale…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-17 Armin Askari , Quentin Rebjock , Alexandre d'Aspremont , Laurent El Ghaoui

Model-X knockoffs is a flexible wrapper method for high-dimensional regression algorithms, which provides guaranteed control of the false discovery rate (FDR). Due to the randomness inherent to the method, different runs of model-X…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-01 Zhimei Ren , Rina Foygel Barber

The recently proposed fixed-X knockoff is a powerful variable selection procedure that controls the false discovery rate (FDR) in any finite-sample setting, yet its theoretical insights are difficult to show beyond Gaussian linear models.…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-11-28 Han Su , Panxu Yuan , Qingyang Sun , Mengxi Yi , Gaorong Li

Knockoffs is a new framework for controlling the false discovery rate (FDR) in multiple hypothesis testing problems involving complex statistical models. While there has been great emphasis on Type-I error control, Type-II errors have been…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-12-19 Asaf Weinstein , Rina Barber , Emmanuel Candes

Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are a promising technique for decomposing language model activations into interpretable linear features. However, current SAEs fall short of completely explaining model performance, resulting in "dark matter":…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-26 Joshua Engels , Logan Riggs , Max Tegmark

We address challenges in variable selection with highly correlated data that are frequently present in finance, economics, but also in complex natural systems as e.g. weather. We develop a robustified version of the knockoff framework,…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-06-14 Konstantin Görgen , Abdolreza Nazemi , Melanie Schienle

Large Language Models (LLMs) encode factual knowledge within hidden parametric spaces that are difficult to inspect or control. While Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) can decompose hidden activations into more fine-grained, interpretable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-14 Minglai Yang , Xinyu Guo , Zhengliang Shi , Jinhe Bi , Steven Bethard , Mihai Surdeanu , Liangming Pan

We propose a unified theoretical framework for studying the robustness of the model-X knockoffs framework by investigating the asymptotic false discovery rate (FDR) control of the practically implemented approximate knockoffs procedure.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-11 Yingying Fan , Lan Gao , Jinchi Lv , Xiaocong Xu

Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) have become a central tool for interpreting language models. However, two key SAE analyses that remain difficult to scale are (1) matching semantically similar features across multi-layers and (2) compressing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Tue M. Cao , Nguyen Do , My T. Thai

While sparse autoencoders (SAEs) have generated significant excitement, a series of negative results have added to skepticism about their usefulness. Here, we establish a conceptual distinction that reconciles competing narratives…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-01 Kenny Peng , Rajiv Movva , Jon Kleinberg , Emma Pierson , Nikhil Garg

Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) have emerged as a popular tool for interpreting the hidden states of large language models (LLMs). By learning to reconstruct activations from a sparse bottleneck layer, SAEs discover interpretable features from…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2025-09-19 Matthew Lyle Olson , Musashi Hinck , Neale Ratzlaff , Changbai Li , Phillip Howard , Vasudev Lal , Shao-Yen Tseng

In modern scientific research, the objective is often to identify which variables are associated with an outcome among a large class of potential predictors. This goal can be achieved by selecting variables in a manner that controls the the…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-10-10 Yushu Shi , Michael Martens

Recently, sparse autoencoders (SAEs) have emerged as a promising technique for interpreting activations in foundation models by disentangling features into a sparse set of concepts. However, identifying the optimal level of sparsity for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-17 Dongsheng Wang , Jinsen Zhang , Dawei Su , Hui Huang

Pathology plays an important role in disease diagnosis, treatment decision-making and drug development. Previous works on interpretability for machine learning models on pathology images have revolved around methods such as attention value…

Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) decompose large language model (LLM) activations into latent features that reveal mechanistic structure. Conventional SAEs train on broad data distributions, forcing a fixed latent budget to capture only…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-14 Charles O'Neill , Mudith Jayasekara , Max Kirkby

Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are a technique for sparse decomposition of neural network activations into human-interpretable features. However, current SAEs suffer from feature absorption, where specialized features capture instances of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-29 Anton Korznikov , Andrey Galichin , Alexey Dontsov , Oleg Rogov , Elena Tutubalina , Ivan Oseledets

Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are designed to extract interpretable features from language models by enforcing a sparsity constraint. Ideally, training an SAE would yield latents that are both sparse and semantically meaningful. However, many…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-06 Xiaoqing Sun , Alessandro Stolfo , Joshua Engels , Ben Wu , Senthooran Rajamanoharan , Mrinmaya Sachan , Max Tegmark

Continuous improvement in medical imaging techniques allows the acquisition of higher-resolution images. When these are used in a predictive setting, a greater number of explanatory variables are potentially related to the dependent…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-03-13 Tuan-Binh Nguyen , Jérôme-Alexis Chevalier , Bertrand Thirion