Statistics Theory
Statistical inference using debiased group graphical lasso for multiple sparse precision matrices
Sayan Ranjan Bhowal, Debashis Paul, Gopal K Basak et al. (+1 more)
Debiasing group graphical lasso estimates enables statistical inference when multiple Gaussian graphical models share a common sparsity pattern. We analyze the estimation properties of group graphical lasso, establishing convergence rates and model selection consistency under irrepresentability conditions. Based on these results, we construct debiased
estimators that are asymptotically Gaussian, allowing hypothesis testing for linear combinations of precision
matrix entries across populations. We also investigate regimes where irrepresentibility conditions does not hold, showing that consistency can still be attained in moderately high-dimensional settings. Simulation studies confirm the theoretical results, and applications to real
datasets demonstrate the practical utility of the method.
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All authors Sayan Ranjan Bhowal, Debashis Paul, Gopal K Basak, Samarjit Das
Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from math.OC
On decomposability and subdifferential of the tensor nuclear norm
Jiewen Guan, Bo Jiang and Zhening Li
We study the decomposability and the subdifferential of the tensor
nuclear norm. Both concepts are well understood and widely applied in
matrices but remain unclear for higher-order tensors. We show that the tensor
nuclear norm admits a full decomposability over specific subspaces and determine the largest possible subspaces that allow the full decomposability. We derive novel inclusions of the subdifferential of the tensor
nuclear norm and study its subgradients in a variety of subspaces of interest. All the results hold for tensors of an arbitrary order. As an immediate application, we establish the statistical performance of the tensor robust principal component analysis, the first such result for tensors of an arbitrary order.
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Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from cs.LG
Closed-Form Last Layer Optimization
Alexandre Galashov, Nathaël Da Costa, Liyuan Xu et al. (+2 more)
Neural networks are typically optimized with variants of
stochastic gradient descent. Under a squared loss, however, the optimal solution to the linear last layer weights is known in closed-form. We propose to leverage this during optimization, treating the last layer as a function of the backbone parameters, and optimizing solely for these parameters. We show this is equivalent to alternating between gradient descent steps on the backbone and closed-form updates on the last layer. We adapt the method for the setting of
stochastic gradient descent, by trading off the loss on the current batch against the accumulated information from previous batches. We provide theoretical analyses showing convergence of the method to an optimal solution in the neural tangent kernel regime, as well as quantifying the gains compared to standard SGD in a one-step analysis. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach compared with SGD and Adam on a squared loss in several regression tasks, including neural operators and causal inference.
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All authors Alexandre Galashov, Nathaël Da Costa, Liyuan Xu, Philipp Hennig, Arthur Gretton
Machine Learning (Statistics)
Wasserstein Gradient Flows for Scalable and Regularized Barycenter Computation
Eduardo Fernandes Montesuma, Yassir Bendou and Mike Gartrell
Wasserstein barycenters provide a principled approach for aggregating probability measures, while preserving the geometry of their ambient space. Existing discrete methods are not because as they assume access to the complete set of samples from the input measures. Meanwhile, neural network approaches do scale well, but rely on complex optimization problems and cannot easily incorporate label information. We address these limitations through gradient flows in the space of probability measures. Through time discretization, we achieve a scalable
algorithm that i) relies on mini-batch optimal transport, ii) accepts modular regularization through task-aware functions, and iii) seamlessly integrates supervised information into the ground-cost. We empirically validate our approach on domain adaptation
benchmarks that span computer
vision, neuroscience, and chemical engineering. Our method establishes a new state-of-the-art Wasserstein barycenter solver, with labeled barycenters consistently outperforming unlabeled ones. Our code at https://github.com/SigmaNova/barycentric-gradient-flows
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Statistical Computation
Constrained Dikin-Langevin diffusion for polyhedra
James Chok and Domenic Petzinna
We propose a reflection-free Langevin framework for sampling and optimization on compact polyhedra. The method is based on the inverse Hessian of the logarithmic barrier, which defines a Dikin–Langevin
diffusion whose drift and noise adapt to the local interior-point geometry. We show that trajectories started in the interior remain feasible for all finite times almost surely, so the constrained domain is preserved without reflections or projections. For computation, we discretize the
diffusion using the Euler–Maruyama scheme and apply a Metropolis–Hastings correction, yielding a sampler that targets the exact constrained distribution. We also propose an annealed interacting variant for nonconvex optimization. Numerically, the Metropolis-adjusted method outperforms both the Dikin random walk and standard MALA on anisotropic box-constrained Gaussians, and the interacting optimizer escapes suboptimal basins more reliably than the non-interacting method.
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Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from cs.LG
Busemann Functions in the Wasserstein Space: Existence, Closed-Forms, and Applications to Slicing
Clément Bonet, Elsa Cazelles, Lucas Drumetz et al. (+1 more)
The Busemann function has recently found much interest in a variety of
geometric machine learning problems, as it naturally defines projections onto geodesic rays of Riemannian
manifolds and generalizes the notion of hyperplanes. As several sources of data can be conveniently modeled as probability distributions, it is natural to study this function in the Wasserstein space, which carries a rich formal Riemannian structure induced by Optimal Transport metrics. In this work, we investigate the existence and computation of Busemann functions in Wasserstein space, which admits geodesic rays. We establish closed-form expressions in two important cases: one-dimensional distributions and Gaussian measures. These results enable explicit projection schemes for probability distributions on $\mathbb{R}$, which in turn allow us to define novel Sliced-Wasserstein distances over Gaussian mixtures and labeled
datasets. We demonstrate the efficiency of those original schemes on synthetic
datasets as well as transfer learning problems.
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All authors Clément Bonet, Elsa Cazelles, Lucas Drumetz, Nicolas Courty
Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from cs.LG
SONA: Learning Conditional, Unconditional, and Mismatching-Aware Discriminator
Yuhta Takida, Satoshi Hayakawa, Takashi Shibuya et al. (+6 more)
Deep generative models have made significant advances in generating complex content, yet conditional generation remains a fundamental challenge. Existing conditional generative
adversarial networks often struggle to balance the dual objectives of assessing authenticity and conditional
alignment of input samples within their conditional discriminators. To address this, we propose a novel discriminator design that integrates three key capabilities: unconditional discrimination, matching-aware supervision to enhance
alignment sensitivity, and adaptive weighting to dynamically balance all objectives. Specifically, we introduce Sum of Naturalness and
Alignment (SONA), which employs separate projections for naturalness (authenticity) and
alignment in the final layer with an inductive bias, supported by dedicated objective functions and an adaptive weighting mechanism. Extensive experiments on class-conditional generation tasks show that \ours achieves superior sample quality and conditional
alignment compared to state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, we demonstrate its effectiveness in text-to-image generation, confirming the versatility and robustness of our approach.
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All authors Yuhta Takida, Satoshi Hayakawa, Takashi Shibuya, Masaaki Imaizumi, Naoki Murata, Bac Nguyen, Toshimitsu Uesaka, Chieh-Hsin Lai, Yuki Mitsufuji
Machine Learning (Statistics)
Model Monitoring: A General Framework with an Application to Non-life Insurance Pricing
Alexej Brauer, Paul Menzel and Mario V. Wüthrich
Maintaining the predictive performance of pricing models is challenging when insurance portfolios and data-generating mechanisms evolve over time. Focusing on non-life insurance, we adopt the concept-drift terminology from machine learning and distinguish virtual drift from real concept drift in an actuarial setting. Methodologically, we (i) formalize deviance loss and Murphy's score decomposition to assess global and local auto-calibration; (ii) study the Gini score as a rank-based performance measure, derive its asymptotic distribution, and develop a consistent bootstrap
estimator of its asymptotic variance; and (iii) combine these results into a statistically grounded, model-agnostic monitoring framework that integrates a Gini-based ranking drift test with global and local auto-calibration tests. An application to a modified motor insurance portfolio with controlled concept-drift scenarios illustrates how the framework guides decisions on refitting or recalibrating pricing models.
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Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from cond-mat.dis-nn
Learning Linear Regression with Low-Rank Tasks in-Context
Kaito Takanami, Takashi Takahashi and Yoshiyuki Kabashima
In-context learning (ICL) is a key building block of modern large
language models, yet its theoretical mechanisms remain poorly understood. It is particularly mysterious how ICL operates in real-world applications where tasks have a common structure. In this work, we address this problem by analyzing a linear
attention model trained on low-rank regression tasks. Within this setting, we precisely characterize the distribution of predictions and the generalization error in the high-dimensional limit. Moreover, we find that statistical fluctuations in finite pre-training data induce an implicit regularization. Finally, we identify a sharp phase transition of the generalization error governed by task structure. These results provide a framework for understanding how
transformers learn to learn the task structure.
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Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from cs.LG
The Role of Feature Interactions in Graph-based Tabular Deep Learning
Elias Dubbeldam, Reza Mohammadi, Marit Schoonhoven et al. (+1 more)
Accurate predictions on tabular data rely on capturing complex,
dataset-specific feature interactions.
Attention-based methods and graph neural networks, referred to as graph-based tabular deep learning (GTDL), aim to improve predictions by modeling these interactions as a graph. In this work, we analyze how these methods model the feature interactions. Current GTDL approaches primarily focus on optimizing predictive accuracy, often neglecting the accurate modeling of the underlying graph structure. Using synthetic
datasets with known ground-truth graph structures, we find that current GTDL methods fail to recover meaningful feature interactions, as their edge recovery is close to random. This suggests that the
attention mechanism and message-passing schemes used in GTDL do not effectively capture feature interactions. Furthermore, when we impose the true interaction structure, we find that the predictive accuracy improves. This highlights the need for GTDL methods to prioritize accurate modeling of the graph structure, as it leads to better predictions.
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All authors Elias Dubbeldam, Reza Mohammadi, Marit Schoonhoven, S. Ilker Birbil
Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from cs.LG
Demystifying MaskGIT Sampler and Beyond: Adaptive Order Selection in Masked Diffusion
Satoshi Hayakawa, Yuhta Takida, Masaaki Imaizumi et al. (+2 more)
Masked
diffusion models have shown promising performance in generating high-quality samples in a wide range of domains, but accelerating their sampling process remains relatively underexplored. To investigate efficient samplers for masked
diffusion, this paper theoretically analyzes the MaskGIT sampler for image modeling, revealing its implicit temperature sampling mechanism. Through this analysis, we show that MaskGIT is asymptotically equivalent to a choose-then-sample (CTS) formulation, instantiated as the "moment sampler," which explicitly separates index selection from
token sampling. This CTS reformulation is essential: it yields unbiased
token sampling and exposes an algorithmic design space for index selection, both of which are inaccessible in MaskGIT's original formulation. Regarding
token sampling, we reveal that MaskGIT implicitly adopts a low-temperature sampler, which explains why MaskGIT often degrades with more sampling steps. The CTS reformulation of MaskGIT allows us to fix the temperature sampling to ensure unbiasedness. We also improve the index selection in CTS through two key innovations: a partial caching technique for
transformers that approximates longer sampling trajectories without proportional computational cost, and a hybrid approach formalizing the exploration-exploitation trade-off in adaptive unmasking. Experiments in image and text domains demonstrate our theory as well as the efficiency of our proposed methods, advancing both theoretical understanding and practical implementation of masked
diffusion samplers.
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All authors Satoshi Hayakawa, Yuhta Takida, Masaaki Imaizumi, Hiromi Wakaki, Yuki Mitsufuji
Statistical Methodology · Cross-listed from cs.AI
ChartAgent: A Multimodal Agent for Visually Grounded Reasoning in Complex Chart Question Answering
Rachneet Kaur, Nishan Srishankar, Zhen Zeng et al. (+2 more)
Recent
multimodal LLMs have shown promise in chart-based visual question answering, but their performance declines sharply on unannotated charts-those requiring precise visual interpretation rather than relying on textual shortcuts. To address this, we introduce ChartAgent, a novel agentic framework that explicitly performs visual
reasoning directly within the chart's spatial domain. Unlike textual chain-of-thought
reasoning, ChartAgent iteratively decomposes queries into visual subtasks and actively manipulates and interacts with chart images through specialized actions such as drawing annotations, cropping regions (e.g., segmenting pie slices, isolating bars), and localizing axes, using a library of chart-specific
vision tools to fulfill each subtask. This iterative
reasoning process closely mirrors human cognitive strategies for chart comprehension. ChartAgent achieves state-of-the-art accuracy on the ChartBench and ChartX
benchmarks, surpassing prior methods by up to 16.07% absolute gain overall and 17.31% on unannotated, numerically intensive queries. Furthermore, our analyses show that ChartAgent is (a) effective across diverse chart types, (b) achieves the highest scores across varying visual and
reasoning complexity levels, and (c) serves as a plug-and-play framework that boosts performance across diverse underlying LLMs. Our work is among the first to demonstrate visually grounded
reasoning for chart understanding using tool-augmented
multimodal agents.
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All authors Rachneet Kaur, Nishan Srishankar, Zhen Zeng, Sumitra Ganesh, Manuela Veloso
Statistical Methodology
MUSE: Multi-Treatment Experiment Design for Winner Selection and Effect Estimation
Jiachen Xu, Jian Qian and Zijun Gao
We study the design of experiments with multiple treatment levels, a setting common in clinical trials and online A/B/n testing. Unlike single-treatment studies, practical analyses of multi-treatment experiments typically first select a winning treatment, and then only estimate the effect therein. Motivated by this analysis paradigm, we propose a design for MUlti-treatment experiments that jointly maximizes the accuracy of winner Selection and effect Estimation (MUSE). Explicitly, we introduce a single objective that balances selection and estimation, and determine the unit allocation to treatments and control by optimizing this objective. Theoretically, we establish finite-sample guarantees and asymptotic equivalence between our proposal and the Neyman allocation for the true optimal treatment and control. Across simulations and a real data application, our method performs favorably in both selection and estimation compared to various standard alternatives.
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Statistics Theory · Cross-listed from math.PR
Perspectives on Stochastic Localization
Bobby Shi, Kevin Tian and Matthew S. Zhang
We survey different perspectives on the
stochastic localization process of Eldan, a powerful construction that has had many exciting recent applications in high-dimensional probability and
algorithm design. Unlike prior surveys on this topic, our focus is on giving a self-contained presentation of all known alternative constructions of Eldan's
stochastic localization, with an emphasis on connections between different constructions. Our hope is that by collecting these perspectives, some of which had primarily arisen within a particular community (e.g., probability theory, theoretical computer science, information theory, or machine learning), we can broaden the accessibility of
stochastic localization, and ease its future use.
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Statistical Methodology
Two approaches to multiple canonical correlation analysis for repeated measures data
Tomasz Górecki, Mirosław Krzyśko, Felix Gnettner et al. (+1 more)
In classical canonical correlation analysis (CCA), the goal is to determine the linear transformations of two random vectors into two new random variables that are most strongly correlated. Canonical variables are pairs of these new random variables, while canonical correlations are correlations between these pairs. In this paper, we propose and study two generalizations of this classical method: (1) Instead of two random vectors we study more complex data structures that appear in important applications. In these structures, there are $L$ features, each described by $p_l$ scalars, $1 \le l \le L$. We observe $n$ such objects over $T$ time points. We derive a suitable analog of the CCA for such data. Our approach relies on
embeddings into Reproducing Kernel
Hilbert Spaces, and covers several related data structures as well. (2) We develop an analogous approach for multidimensional random processes. In this case, the experimental units are multivariate continuous, square-integrable functions over a given interval. These functions are modeled as elements of a
Hilbert space, so in this case, we define the multiple functional canonical correlation analysis, MFCCA. We justify our approaches by their application to two data sets and suitable large sample theory. We derive consistency rates for the related transformation and correlation
estimators, and show that it is possible to relax two common assumptions on the compactness of the underlying cross-covariance operators and the independence of the data.
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All authors Tomasz Górecki, Mirosław Krzyśko, Felix Gnettner, Piotr Kokoszka
Statistics Theory · Cross-listed from math.OC
Inverse Mixed-Integer Programming: Learning Constraints then Objective Functions
Akira Kitaoka
Data-driven inverse optimization for mixed-integer linear programs (MILPs), which seeks to learn an objective function and constraints consistent with observed decisions, is important for building accurate mathematical models in a variety of domains, including power systems and scheduling. However, to the best of our knowledge, existing data-driven inverse optimization methods primarily focus on learning objective functions under known constraints, and learning both objective functions and constraints from data for MILPs remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we propose a two-stage approach for a class of inverse optimization problems in which the objective is a linear combination of given feature functions and the constraints are parameterized by unknown functions and thresholds. Our method first learns the constraints and then, conditioned on the learned constraints, estimates the objective-function weights. On the theoretical side, we provide finite-sample guarantees for solving the proposed inverse optimization problem. To this end, we develop statistical learning tools for pseudo-metric spaces under sub-Gaussian assumptions and use them to derive a learning-theoretic framework for inverse optimization with both unknown objectives and constraints. On the experimental side, we demonstrate that our method successfully solves inverse optimization problems on scheduling instances formulated as ILPs with up to 100 decision variables.
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Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from cs.LG
Domain Generalization Under Posterior Drift
Yilun Zhu, Naihao Deng, Naichen Shi et al. (+2 more)
Domain generalization (DG) is the problem of generalizing from several distributions (or domains), for which labeled training data are available, to a new test domain for which no labeled data is available. For the prevailing
benchmark datasets in DG, there exists a single classifier that performs well across all domains. In this work, we study a fundamentally different regime where the domains satisfy a posterior drift assumption, in which the optimal classifier might vary substantially with domain. We establish a decision-theoretic framework for DG under posterior drift, and investigate the practical implications of this framework through experiments on
language and
vision tasks.
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All authors Yilun Zhu, Naihao Deng, Naichen Shi, Aditya Gangrade, Clayton Scott
Statistical Computation
spd-metrics-id: A Python Package for SPD-Aware Distance Metrics in Connectome Fingerprinting and Beyond
Kaosar Uddin
We present spd-metrics-id, a Python package for computing distances and divergences between symmetric positive-definite (SPD)
matrices. Unlike traditional toolkits that focus on specific applications, spd-metrics-id provides a unified, extensible, and reproducible framework for SPD distance computation. The package supports a wide variety of geometry-aware metrics, including Alpha-z Bures-Wasserstein, Alpha-Procrustes, affine-invariant Riemannian, log-Euclidean, and others, and is accessible both via a command-line interface and a Python API. Reproducibility is ensured through Docker images and Zenodo archiving. We illustrate usage through a connectome fingerprinting example, but the package is broadly applicable to covariance analysis,
diffusion tensor imaging, and other domains requiring SPD
matrix comparison. The package is openly available at https://pypi.org/project/spd-metrics-id/.
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Machine Learning (Statistics)
Divergence Phase Index: A Riesz-Transform Framework for Multidimensional Phase Difference Analysis
Magaly Catanzariti, Hugo Aimar and Diego M. Mateos
We introduce the Divergence Phase Index (DPI), a novel framework for quantifying phase differences in one and multidimensional signals, grounded in harmonic analysis via the Riesz transform. Based on classical
Hilbert Transform phase measures, the DPI extends these principles to higher dimensions, offering a geometry-aware metric that is invariant to intensity scaling and sensitive to structural changes. We applied this method on both synthetic and real-world
datasets, including intracranial
EEG (iEEG) recordings during epileptic seizures, high-resolution microscopy images, and paintings. In the 1D case, the DPI robustly detects hypersynchronization associated with generalized epilepsy, while in 2D, it reveals subtle, imperceptible changes in images and artworks. Additionally, it can detect rotational variations in highly isotropic microscopy images. The DPI's robustness to amplitude variations and its adaptability across domains enable its use in diverse applications from nonlinear dynamics, complex systems analysis, to multidimensional signal processing.
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Machine Learning (Statistics)
Learning Survival Models with Right-Censored Reporting Delays
Yuta Shikuri and Hironori Fujisawa
Survival analysis provides statistical methods to model the time until an event occurs. Reporting delays arise when event times are not observed at their occurrence but are only revealed upon reporting. This issue is particularly critical for timely risk evaluation when the observation window is short due to administrative censoring. In this study, we incorporate right-censored reporting delays by jointly modeling parametric hazards for the event and reporting processes. We then construct a consistent
estimator for the model parameters and develop a Monte Carlo expectation-maximization
algorithm to compute it. To address the challenges posed by administrative censoring, we leverage these findings and propose a transfer-learning procedure. Experimental results demonstrate that our method improves the accuracy of timely risk evaluation under administrative censoring.
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Machine Learning (Statistics)
Decomposition-Based Modular Conformal Prediction for Two-Stage Modeling
William Zhang, Saurabh Amin and Georgia Perakis
Conformal prediction offers finite-sample coverage guarantees under minimal assumptions. However, existing methods treat the entire modeling process as a black box, overlooking opportunities to exploit and understand modular structure. We introduce a conformal prediction framework for two-stage sequential models, where an upstream predictor generates intermediate representations for a downstream model. By decomposing the overall prediction residual into stage-specific components, our method enables practitioners to attribute uncertainty to specific pipeline stages. We develop a risk-controlled parameter selection procedure using family-wise error rate (FWER) control to calibrate stage-wise scaling parameters, and introduce an adaptive extension for non-stationary settings. Experiments on synthetic distribution shifts, as well as real-world supply chain and stock
market data, demonstrate that our approach improves coverage under structural, stage-wise shifts compared to standard conformal methods, while identifying stage-wise error contribution. This framework offers diagnostic advantages and robust coverage that standard conformal methods lack.
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