Related papers: Horseshoe Priors and MDP
Censored response variables--where outcomes are only partially observed due to known bounds--arise in numerous scientific domains and present serious challenges for regression analysis. The Tobit model, a classical solution for handling…
We present a general framework for applying learning algorithms and heuristical guidance to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of our techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive…
We consider a discrete-time version of a Hawkes process defined as a Poisson auto-regressive process whose parameters depend on the past of the trajectory. We allow these parameters to take on negative values, modelling inhibition. More…
The Bayesian perspective on inverse problems has attracted much mathematical attention in recent years. Particular attention has been paid to Bayesian inverse problems (BIPs) in which the parameter to be inferred lies in an…
Use of continuous shrinkage priors -- with a "spike" near zero and heavy-tails towards infinity -- is an increasingly popular approach to induce sparsity in parameter estimates. When the parameters are only weakly identified by the…
Sparsity and entropy are pillar notions of modern theories in signal processing and information theory. However, there is no clear consensus among scientists on the characterization of these notions. Previous efforts have contributed to…
Good large sample performance is typically a minimum requirement of any model selection criterion. This article focuses on the consistency property of the Bayes factor, a commonly used model comparison tool, which has experienced a recent…
We prove the following asymptotic behavior for solutions to the generalized Becker-D\"oring system for general initial data: under a detailed balance assumption and in situations where density is conserved in time, there is a critical…
Optimization is widely used in statistics, and often efficiently delivers point estimates on useful spaces involving structural constraints or combinatorial structure. To quantify uncertainty, Gibbs posterior exponentiates the negative loss…
Much is now known about the consistency of Bayesian updating on infinite-dimensional parameter spaces with independent or Markovian data. Necessary conditions for consistency include the prior putting enough weight on the correct…
We present a new algorithm based on posterior sampling for learning in Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDP) in the infinite-horizon undiscounted setting. The algorithm achieves near-optimal regret bounds while being advantageous…
Estimating boundary curves has many applications such as economics, climate science, and medicine. Bayesian trend filtering has been developed as one of locally adaptive smoothing methods to estimate the non-stationary trend of data. This…
Bayesian belief network learning algorithms have three basic components: a measure of a network structure and a database, a search heuristic that chooses network structures to be considered, and a method of estimating the probability tables…
``Localization'' has proven to be a valuable tool in the Statistical Learning literature as it allows sharp risk bounds in terms of the problem geometry. Localized bounds seem to be much less exploited in the Stochastic Optimization…
There lies a latent danger in utilizing some known mathematical results in ecology. Some results do not apply to the problem at hand. We identify one such trend. Based on a couple of theorems in mathematical statistics, Link (2013) cautions…
We present a general framework for applying machine-learning algorithms to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of these techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive exploration of the…
The Moderate Deviations Principle (MDP) is well-understood for sums of independent random variables, worse understood for stationary random sequences, and scantily understood for random fields. Here it is established for some planary random…
Bayesian density deconvolution using nonparametric prior distributions is a useful alternative to the frequentist kernel based deconvolution estimators due to its potentially wide range of applicability, straightforward uncertainty…
Motivated by Tweedie's formula for the Compound Decision problem, we examine the theoretical foundations of empirical Bayes estimators that directly model the marginal density $m(y)$. Our main result shows that polynomial log-marginals of…
Constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) model scenarios of sequential decision making with multiple objectives that are increasingly important in many applications. However, the model is often unknown and must be learned online while…