Statistics Applications
Policy Learning with Observational Data: The Case of Hepatitis C Treatment for HIV/HCV Co-Infected Patients
Raphaël Langevin
Decision-makers frequently must choose a single action from a finite set of alternatives – for example, physicians selecting a treatment, investors choosing a portfolio risk level, or judges determining sentences. To improve outcomes, policymakers often issue policy rules or guidelines to inform such choices. In this paper, I show how to generally derive policy rules from observational data in a multi-action framework under relatively weak assumptions about the underlying structure of the heterogeneous sampled population. Conditional average treatment effects (CATEs) are consistently estimated via a weighted K-means
algorithm, assuming the outcome model is correctly specified within each homogeneous subgroup. I then use standard decision trees to implement feasible policy rules, allowing for both perfect and imperfect adherence to treatment. The methodology is applied to treatment options for Hepatitis C (HCV) among patients co-infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a setting in which no uniform guideline exists for modern pharmaceutical therapies. The results identify a subgroup of patients with approximately an 80% probability of spontaneous HCV clearance without treatment. Estimation results also show that reallocating treatments among treated patients could have reduced total treatment costs by CAN$2.5-4.5 million while increasing aggregate health benefits relative to the status quo. These findings demonstrate that the proposed approach can generate improved, data-driven treatment guidelines for the management of HIV/HCV co-infected patients.
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Machine Learning (Statistics)
Isotonic Survival Regression: Calibrated Survival Distributions from Deep Cox Models
Anchit Jain, Kevin Zhang and Stephen Bates
Time-to-event data is widespread across the life sciences and engineering, but it is typically encountered together with censoring, which complicates the application of standard machine learning methods. Deep Cox models have emerged as a popular method for analyzing time-to-event data because they gracefully handle censoring and can be used with unstructured data such as clinical text reports, genomic sequences, and pathology images. However, their predicted survival probabilities are often poorly calibrated, thus limiting their practical utility. In this paper, we propose a novel post hoc calibration method for Deep Cox models that uses isotonic regression to refine predicted survival probabilities without affecting discriminative power. We establish favorable theoretical guarantees, including a double-robustness property and asymptotic calibration. Experiments on synthetic and real-world clinical data demonstrate the empirical effectiveness of our method.
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Statistical Computation
A Cubing Strategy for Identifying Stable Hyperparameter Regions for Uncertainty Quantification in Spatial Deep Learning
Isaac Amouzou and Ben Seiyon Lee
Spatially referenced
datasets have become increasingly prevalent across many fields, largely driven by advances in data collection methods such as satellite remote sensing. In many applications, predictions at unobserved locations are accompanied by reliable uncertainty estimates. While deep learning methods provide both scalable and accurate models for spatial predictions, there remains no clear consensus for addressing uncertainty quantification in spatial deep learning. Monte Carlo (MC) dropout has become a popular approach for uncertainty quantification, yet existing implementations typically focus on tuning the dropout rate while fixing other influential hyperparameters, such as weight decay and the predictive standard deviation multiplier, often through ad-hoc or manual tuning. We propose a cubing-based diagnostic framework that recursively partitions the hyperparameter space to identify stable regions where MC dropout yields well-calibrated predictive intervals. The approach evaluates hyperparameter regions using scoring rules relative to a statistical baseline model, which serves as a calibration anchor. Through a simulation study spanning multiple spatial dependence regimes as well as a large remotely-sensed land surface temperature
dataset, we demonstrate that our approach produces competitive or superior predictive intervals compared to the baseline model. Our methodology provides practitioners with a systematic procedure for incorporating uncertainty quantification into spatial deep learning models.
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Machine Learning (Statistics)
StAD: Stein Amortized Divergence for Fast Likelihoods with Diffusion and Flow
Gurjeet Jagwani, Stephen Thorp, Sinan Deger et al. (+1 more)
Diffusion and flow-based models are ubiquitously used for generative modelling and density estimation. They admit a deterministic probability flow ordinary differential equation (PF-ODE), analogous to continuous normalizing flows (CNFs), which describes the transport of the probability mass. Obtaining the likelihood from these models is of interest to many workflows, especially
Bayesian analysis, and requires solving the trace of the Jacobian to compute the divergence of the learned PF-ODE, which is either $\mathcal{O}(D^2)$ to compute exactly or $\mathcal{O}(D)$ with a noisy estimate. We introduce StAD, a new
distillation method to predict and learn the divergence of the PF-ODE using the Langevin-Stein operator without ever computing the Jacobian. We show that our method is competitive with the Hutchinson and Hutch++ on CIFAR-10, ImageNet and other density estimation tasks, consistently improving the variance and speed of the likelihood predictions compared to the Hutchinson. We additionally show our method will generalize to a varied class of generative models, and show that under some regularity conditions these learned vector fields can be made to satisfy the Stein class.
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All authors Gurjeet Jagwani, Stephen Thorp, Sinan Deger, Hiranya Peiris
Machine Learning (Statistics)
Dimension-Uniform Discretization Analysis of Preconditioned Annealed Langevin Dynamics for Multimodal Gaussian Mixtures
Lorenzo Baldassari, Josselin Garnier, Knut Solna et al. (+1 more)
Obtaining stable
diffusion-based samplers in high- and infinite-dimensional settings is challenging because errors can accumulate across high-frequency coordinates and make the dynamics unstable under refinement of the finite-dimensional approximation of the underlying function-space problem. Discretization is a typical source of such errors, and preconditioning with a suitable spectral decay is one way to control their accumulation. In this paper, we study this problem for preconditioned annealed Langevin dynamics (ALD) applied to Gaussian mixtures. We first show that Euler-Maruyama (EM) discretization, by treating the stiff linear part of the annealed score with a forward Euler step, imposes a stability constraint coupling the preconditioner with the annealed covariance scale. Together with the conditions ensuring dimension-uniform control of the annealed dynamics, this constraint forces the initial smoothed law to remain uniformly close to the target across dimensions. We then consider an exponential-integrator scheme that integrates the stiff linear part of the annealed score exactly. Under explicit spectral summability conditions coupling the smoothing covariance, the component covariance spectra, and the preconditioner, we prove a dimension-uniform Kullback-Leibler (KL) bound for this scheme. This bound can be made arbitrarily small, uniformly in dimension, by allowing enough time for annealing and then refining the time mesh accordingly. Importantly, these conditions allow regimes in which the KL divergence between the target and the initial smoothed law diverges with dimension, showing that the restrictions imposed by EM are scheme-dependent rather than intrinsic to ALD.
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All authors Lorenzo Baldassari, Josselin Garnier, Knut Solna, Maarten V. de Hoop
Statistical Methodology
FRESH: Information-Geometric Calibration of Patient-Level Models to Aggregate Evidence
Franklin Fuller, Daniele Bertolini, Samantha Liang et al. (+2 more)
This note introduces FRESH (Fusion of Recent Evidence and Subject Histories), a method for incorporating population-level summary results – published clinical trials, registry summaries, prior natural-history studies, and peer-reviewed indirect comparisons – into predictive models trained on patient-level data. This method provides a principled means of combining both patient-level and aggregate-level data types into a unified data-efficient model for clinical decision making. FRESH assumes access to a generative model trained on patient-level data sources (e.g. clinical trial or real-world data). The method produces patient-level predictions from a re-calibrated model that matches a set of specified aggregate statistics for a target population. This can be understood as a patient-level recapitulation of the aggregate source – with the key property that the recalibration is a minimal perturbation of the original joint distribution in a specific information-
geometric sense. The resulting samples can be analyzed directly or combined into a post-training procedure to update the original generative model. This approach enables several applications where rigorously incorporating patient-level data with summary information is valuable, including (i) contextualizing single-arm trial results with respect to recent standard-of-care, (ii) clinical-trial simulations for design and probability-of-technical-success estimation, and (iii) comparative-effectiveness analyses of on-
market therapies.
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All authors Franklin Fuller, Daniele Bertolini, Samantha Liang, Jason Christopher, Aaron M. Smith
Statistics Theory · Cross-listed from cs.IT
Learning from Totally Unpaired Data via Minimum Conditional Entropy Coupling
Cheuk Ting Li, Jun Chen and Shahab Asoodeh
Consider an "unsupervised classification" setting, where the goal is to learn a predictor of the categorical class variable $X$ using the categorical feature variables $Y_1,\ldots,Y_m$, but we can only train the predictor on $m+1$ totally unpaired
datasets, where each
dataset only consists of unordered samples of one of the variables $X,Y_{1},\ldots,Y_{m}$. Although this problem is highly underdetermined, we demonstrate that, under the assumption that a predictor with small cross
entropy loss exists, we can find a good predictor by coupling the marginal distributions of $X,Y_1,\ldots,Y_m$ in a manner that minimizes the conditional
entropy $H(X|Y_1,\ldots,Y_m)$. This problem, which we call minimum conditional
entropy coupling (MCEC), is a generalization of the widely studied minimum
entropy coupling problem (where $m=1$). Although the MCEC problem is NP-hard, we give an
algorithm with a time complexity that is
polynomial in $N$, which gives a coupling with conditional
entropy within $O(\log \log N)$ from the optimum, where $N$ is the dimension of the output coupling. We also evaluate the performance of the MCEC predictor on synthetic and real-world
datasets.
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Statistical Methodology
Why Empirical p-Values Are Not Uniform: Reference Samples, Dependence, and PIT Backtesting
Jakub Lis
Probability integral transforms (PITs) and empirical $p$-values are widely used to assess the calibration of predictive distributions. While exact PIT values are uniformly distributed under correct model specification, practical implementations rely on empirical estimates constructed from finite samples. We show that this estimation step fundamentally alters the statistical structure of the problem. In particular, common-sample and rolling-window implementations introduce dependence and variance distortions that invalidate classical one-sample uniformity tests. When empirical percentiles are conditioned on a shared reference sample, the resulting statistics converge towards a two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov regime, while rolling windows induce autocorrelation and variance suppression. Our findings indicate that treating empirical percentiles as independent uniform draws can distort statistical inference and that backtesting procedures based on PITs require revised calibration methods accounting for the underlying two-stage sampling structure.
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Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from cs.LG
The Privacy Price of Tail-Risk Learning: Effective Tail Sample Size in Differentially Private CVaR Optimization
El Mustapha Mansouri
Differential
privacy changes the effective sample size governing CVaR learning. For tail mass $\tau$, the
privacy-relevant sample size is not $n$, but $n\tau$; equivalently, the effective private tail sample size is $\epsilon n\tau$. Private CVaR excess risk decomposes into ordinary tail-risk statistical error and a
privacy price. This decomposition is complete for scalar estimation and finite classes: scalar estimation has rate $\Theta(B \min\{1,(n\tau)^{-1/2}+(\epsilon n\tau)^{-1}\})$, and finite classes of size $M$ have rate $\Theta(B \min\{1,\sqrt{\log(2M)/(n\tau)}+\log(2M)/(\epsilon n\tau)\})$. These complete rates hold under pure DP, and their lower bounds extend to approximate DP in the stated small-$\delta$ regimes. For convex Lipschitz learning, modular upper and lower reductions show that the CVaR-specific
privacy term necessarily scales as $1/(\epsilon n\tau)$, with dimension dependence inherited from private
stochastic convex optimization. Together, these results identify ordinary private learning on $\Theta(n\tau)$ informative tail records as the canonical hard subproblem inside private CVaR learning.
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Machine Learning (Statistics)
A Scalable Nonparametric Continuous-Time Survival Model through Numerical Quadrature
Chaeyeon Lee, Sehwan Kim and Hyungrok Do
Flexible continuous-time survival modeling is critical for capturing complex time-varying hazard dynamics in high-dimensional data; however, training such models remains challenging due to the intractable integral required for likelihood estimation. We introduce QSurv, a scalable deep learning framework that enables nonparametric continuous-time modeling without relying on time discretization or restrictive distributional assumptions. We propose a training objective based on Gauss-Legendre numerical quadrature, which approximates the cumulative hazard with high-order accuracy while facilitating efficient end-to-end training via standard backpropagation. Furthermore, to effectively capture non-stationary hazard dynamics in complex architectures, we introduce time-conditioned low-rank adaptation, a mechanism that conditions general neural backbones on time by dynamically modulating weights via low-rank updates. We provide theoretical analysis establishing approximation error bounds for cumulative-hazard evaluation. Comprehensive experiments across synthetic
benchmarks, large-scale real-world tabular
datasets, and high-dimensional medical imaging tasks demonstrate that QSurv achieves competitive predictive performance with advantages in instantaneous hazard function estimation, enabling more interpretable characterization of time-varying risk patterns.
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Machine Learning (Statistics)
Skew-adaptive conformal prediction
Paulo C. Marques F. and Helton Graziadei
We develop a skew-adaptive extension of split conformal prediction for regression. The method starts from an asymmetric interval family centered at a point prediction and uses the gauge approach to deduce the conformity score induced by this family. The inverse
hyperbolic sine transform of signed scaled residuals provides the training target for an additional predictive model, whose role is to learn how predictive uncertainty should tilt across the feature space. The resulting procedure preserves the finite-sample marginal validity of split conformal prediction under exchangeability, while producing intervals that adapt to both local scale and local skewness. We also develop a calibration-sample-based
estimator for comparing the expected relative future width of the skew-adaptive and classical scaled-score intervals. Experiments on a variety of
datasets indicate gains in prediction interval efficiency over the scaled-score construction and conformalized
quantile regression, and show that the proposed
estimator closely matches the corresponding average width ratio observed on the test sample.
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Statistics Theory · Cross-listed from cs.IT
Covert Bayesian Quickest Change Detection
Yun-Feng Lo and Matthieu R. Bloch
We investigate the problem of covert quickest change detection in a
Bayesian and infinite-horizon setting. A legitimate entity seeks to detect a change in the state of a discrete memoryless channel as quickly as possible by actively probing it. Simultaneously, the entity must ensure its probing remains covert from an adversary monitoring the channel for active sensing. We introduce the expected covertness budget (ECB) as an analytically tractable covertness metric that bounds from above the relative
entropy between the observation sequences induced by active and passive sensing. Under constraints on both the probability of false alarm (PFA) and the ECB, we establish a second-order asymptotic converse bound on the average detection delay as the PFA constraint approaches zero, for any positive ECB constraint, explicitly quantifying the maximum square-root-order covert sensing gain possible. Furthermore, we propose an achievability scheme utilizing a constant-sensing-probability Shiryaev-type policy and show that it matches the second-order asymptotic converse. We illustrate our result with a numerical example.
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Statistics Theory · Cross-listed from cs.LG
Entropy Across the Bridge: Conditional-Marginal Discretization for Flow and Schrödinger Samplers
Bruno Trentini, Dejan Stancevic, Michael M. Bronstein et al. (+2 more)
For a fixed flow-based generative model under a small inference budget, sample quality can depend strongly on where the sampler spends its few function evaluations. Flow matching and Schrödinger bridges define probability paths, yet their inference grids are usually heuristic or inherited from one-endpoint
diffusion. We derive a conditional-marginal
entropy-rate objective for bridge-aware discretization, separating endpoint-conditioned bridge geometry from marginal flow
evolution, and use it to build a training-free entropic inference-time scheduler from first principles. For Gaussian Brownian bridges this rate is closed-form and U-shaped, motivating boundary-heavy nonuniform grids. On trained two-dimensional bridge/flow models, the estimated profile recovers the predicted shape and improves 10-step ODE-Heun MMD over linear by 18.1%, with a paired 22.7% SDE-Heun improvement in the same low-NFE sweep. On EDM/CIFAR-10, the entropic time-discretization gives the best tested five-step FID (186.3 \pm 4.0 versus 200.5 \pm 2.9 for linear and 238.0 \pm 5.3 for cosine). On AlphaFlow
protein generation, entropic conditional-marginal (cond-marg) scheduling shows advantage in low-NFE regimes on both CAMEO22 and ATLAS
benchmarks. These results support
entropy-rate scheduling as a practical low-budget allocation signal for high-dimensional bridge and flow samplers.
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All authors Bruno Trentini, Dejan Stancevic, Michael M. Bronstein, Alexander Tong, Luca Ambrogioni
Statistical Methodology
Estimating marginal association between paired outcomes in clustered data with an application to analyzing caries and periodontal disease data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
Owen Visser, Steven Levy, Bruce Dye et al. (+3 more)
The within-cluster subgroup composition of units can inform on the marginal distribution of those units outcomes, denoted informative subgroup size (ISS). Moreover, within-cluster subgroup composition of paired outcomes can allow one outcome to inform upon the marginal distribution of the other. If this type of ISS ignored, it can bias marginal association estimates by allowing subgroup composition to influence how clusters contribute to the analysis. We develop two weighting approaches for estimating marginal association between paired outcomes in this setting. The weights are derived using within-cluster resampling arguments and extend conventional cluster weighting to paired response subgroups. We adapt an existing test of marginal dependence to assess ISS by examining this subgroup structure in both directions. In simulated data exhibiting this bidirectional ISS, pair-based weighting reduced bias when association was primarily carried through the paired observations. These weights also allow scientifically or clinically meaningful dichotomizations to enter directly into the weighting scheme, with the choice of subgroup definition further improving estimation in several simulated settings. Application to NHANES oral-health data showed strong evidence of ISS for filled-surface outcomes across subgroups defined by clinical attachment loss and pocket depth, with the corresponding periodontal–caries associations generally small and positive. These methods provide a practical approach for estimating marginal association when paired subgroup composition is informative.
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All authors Owen Visser, Steven Levy, Bruce Dye, Shaoping Zhang, Victor Agboli, Somnath Datta
Machine Learning (Statistics)
A numerical study into neural network surrogate model performance for uncertainty propagation
Noah Wade and Kirubel Teferra
Neural network surrogate models have emerged as a promising approach to model solution fields for a wide variety of boundary value problems encountered in physical modeling.
Stochastic problems represent an area of particularly high interest because of the potential to significantly reduce the repeated evaluation of expensive forward models via traditional numerical solvers when conducting parametric analysis. However, many studies found in the literature primarily focus on the ability of neural network surrogate models to represent deterministic samples or mean field solutions and largely overlook surrogate model performance at the tails of the distribution. The present study examines in detail the ability of neural network surrogate models to capture the full distribution of solution fields over the entire probability space, while emphasis is placed at the tails of the distribution. Serving as a canonical problem is the heat conduction equation with a highly
stochastic source term, inducing extremely large variation in the thermal solution field. Comparisons are made between a classic feed-forward fully connected network and a Deep Operator Network architecture, using both data-driven and physics-informed loss functions. Results show that the worst-case prediction errors are an order of magnitude larger than the mean field error, highlighting the importance of the outlier samples. The large errors associated with extreme samples result from the networks having to extrapolate beyond the bounds of the training data. A method for identifying these samples is presented along with a discussion of potential approaches to account of their errors. Among the models considered, the fully connected neural network trained using a weak form residual loss performs best in handling these extrapolated inputs, achieving the highest prediction accuracy for the numerically produced
datasets.
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Statistical Methodology
REX-SUB: A Scalable Subsampling Strategy for Modeling Large Spatial Datasets
Nicholas Rios and Ben Seiyon Lee
Recent advances in data collection technologies have led to the emergence of massive spatial
datasets, with measurements obtained at millions of spatial locations. Geostatistical models typically employ Gaussian processes (GPs) to capture spatial dependence, but standard GP fitting becomes prohibitive at such scales. A promising solution is optimal subsampling, where a subset of locations is selected that optimizes a criterion. In this study, we propose a randomized exchange
algorithm for subsampling (REX-SUB) which efficiently selects small subsamples that minimize prediction errors in the fitted spatial GP models. To further improve computational efficiency, we embed a scalable Vecchia approximation to the GP's joint likelihood, which takes advantage of sparsity in the precision
matrix to enable fast inference on the selected subsamples. Through a simulation study and an application to a remotely sensed precipitable water
dataset, we show that REX-SUB yields lower mean squared prediction errors and interval scores compared to competing subsampling strategies.
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Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from cs.LG
SAFE Quantum Machine Learning with Variational Quantum Classifiers
Ying Chen, Paolo Giudici, Vasily Kolesnikov et al. (+1 more)
We propose a variational
quantum classifier operating on high dimensional deep representations via amplitude encoding, stabilized by a learnable classical pre encoding layer.By combining normalized amplitude
embeddings with bounded
quantum observables, the resulting model induces a structured and smooth hypothesis class with controlled sensitivity to input variations. Model reliability is assessed using SAFE-AI metrics derived from the Cramer von Mises divergence, enabling consistent evaluation across accuracy, robustness, and explainability dimensions. Empirical results show that the proposed
quantum model provides competitive predictive performance compared with strong classical baselines while exhibiting a more balanced SAFE reliability profile, with improved robustness to noise and stability under structured feature removal. These findings suggest that variational
quantum circuits offer a principled mechanism for stability oriented SAFE learning in safety critical settings.
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All authors Ying Chen, Paolo Giudici, Vasily Kolesnikov, Paolo Recchia
Statistics Applications
A market-calibrated accelerated failure time model for in-play football forecasting
Lawrence Clegg, Zixing Song and John Cartlidge
In-play football
forecasting models have struggled to match the accuracy of betting exchange prices, which aggregate information from many
market participants. We close this gap by combining two extensions to a Weibull accelerated failure time model: calibrating team strength parameters to Betfair Exchange prices at kick-off to capture pre-match
market information, and including post-shot expected goals as a time-varying
covariate to capture in-play information. The calibration approach, where we jointly fit team-strength parameters to 1X2 and over/under betting
markets via squared-error minimisation, applies to any intensity-based goal arrival model and enables stronger in-play
forecasting. Evaluated across 140 English Premier League matches at minute intervals, the calibrated model almost matches Betfair's classification accuracy (70.2% versus 70.6%) while retaining interpretable team-level parameters and
covariate effects. A comparison with two alternative continuous-time scoring models, both calibrated to the same pre-match odds, confirms that
market calibration is the dominant driver of predictive accuracy. A betting simulation against Betfair in-play odds yields a 4.5% return on investment (Sharpe ratio 5.94) over 17,458 bets, suggesting an inefficiency within in-play football
markets.
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Machine Learning (Statistics)
Explainable AI Isn't Enough! Rethinking Algorithmic Contestability
Timo Freiesleben, Kristof Meding and Gunnar König
Machine learning systems increasingly make life-changing decisions about individuals, such as loan approvals, hiring, and cheating detection, raising a pressing question: how can individuals respond to negative decisions made by these opaque systems? While explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) has largely focused on algorithmic recourse – helping individuals change their features to obtain a desired outcome – the parallel problem of algorithmic contestability – helping individuals review and correct erroneous algorithmic decisions – has received far less
attention, despite its central ethical and legal importance. We trace this neglect to the absence of clear formal definitions and a systematic operationalization of contestability as an algorithmic problem. To address it, we propose an operational definition of contestability as a natural complement to recourse: contestability starts from the presumption that a decision may be incorrect and focuses on identifying evidence to challenge and potentially overturn it, whereas recourse assumes the decision is valid and instead provides pathways for changing it. We show that standard XAI explanations, such as counterfactuals, LIME, or Anchors, even when combined with human intuitions about decision continuity or monotonicity, reveal only errors in the neighborhood of the individual, but provide insufficient grounds for overturning the decision at hand. Going thus beyond traditional XAI, we identify three types of evidence warranting reversal according to the decision maker's own ethical standards: predictive multiplicity, incorrect feature values, and neglected overruling evidence. We argue that these render decisions normatively indefensible and thus successfully contestable. Finally, we analyze how existing EU legislation connects to our framework and argue that individuals already hold some legal rights to these forms of evidence.
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Statistics Theory
Tests for the mean of high-dimensional data
Dietmar Ferger
We consider the problem of testing the mean of high-dimensional data when the dimension may grow without explicit rate restrictions relative to the sample size. The proposed procedure is based on the statistic V_n = n||Xn||^2, which avoids inversion of the covariance
matrix and is therefore suitable for high-dimensional settings.We establish asymptotic distributional results for both fixed and increasing dimension by
embedding the observations into the
Hilbert space l2. Furthermore, we prove the asymptotic validity of a bootstrap approximation for the distribution of the test statistic. The resulting bootstrap test yields asymptotic level-a procedures without requiring sparsity assumptions or structural conditions on the covariance
matrix. In all this, a new Central Limit
Theorem in l2 is proving to be an extremely useful tool.
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Statistics Theory
Nearest-Neighbour Matching on Unbounded Supports and Covariate Shift Transfer
Simon Viel
Expectations of multivariate functions with missing labels occur in various fields such as transfer learning and average treatment effects. Although non-parametric
estimators based on nearest-neighbour matching are frequently used in this context, the existing literature assumes that the
covariates live in some well-shaped compact subset of $\R^d$, with densities that are bounded away from zero. In this paper, we show that the usual rates of convergence can be achieved with minimal assumptions on the
covariate supports. These assumptions are replaced with conditions on the source and target distributions, among which a measure of the tranferability between the two probability measures. We show that these conditions are general, can be applied to distributions supported on
manifolds, and allow the target distribution to have a heavier tail than the source distribution. We also show that this control of the transferability is needed for any
estimator to achieve good rates of convergence. Finally, applying our results to the estimation of treatment effects, we could relax the assumption that the assignment probabilities had to be bounded away from zero and one.
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Machine Learning (Statistics)
Testing properties of trees in graphical models with covariance queries
Sofiya Burova, Francisco Calvillo, Gábor Lugosi et al. (+1 more)
We consider the problem of testing properties of graphs underlying high-dimensional graphical models. We adopt the model of covariance queries introduced by Lugosi, Truszkowski, Velona, and Zwiernik (2021). We study the case when the underlying graph is a tree. The main results of the paper show that, while reconstructing the entire tree may be costly, certain global structural properties can be tested efficiently. In particular, we design randomized tests for global structural properties that use a sub-quadratic number of queries. We develop testing procedures for several fundamental properties, including the number of leaves, the maximum degree, the typical distance, and the diameter of the tree. For each property, we obtain explicit query complexity bounds that depend on the target threshold and tolerance parameters.
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All authors Sofiya Burova, Francisco Calvillo, Gábor Lugosi, Piotr Zwiernik
Statistical Methodology · Cross-listed from econ.EM
Quasi-Bayesian Local Projection Instrumental-Variables Method: Application to Renewable Energy and Electricity Prices
Masahiro Tanaka
This paper introduces a quasi-
Bayesian approach for local projection instrumental-variables (LP-IV) estimation. It builds a moment-based quasi-posterior using the generalized method of moments (GMM) objective and applies a roughness-penalty prior to smooth impulse responses over different horizons. The approach maintains the key first-order features of traditional LP-IV methods, while enhancing stability in finite samples and allowing for joint inference through simultaneous bands. Simulations indicate that this regularization decreases root mean squared error compared to standard GMM, especially at medium and longer horizons. An application to Danish electricity
markets highlights the method's practical usefulness.
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Machine Learning (Statistics) · Cross-listed from eess.SP
Topological Kalman Filtering on Cell Complexes
Chengen Liu, Rohan Money, Ting Gao et al. (+3 more)
Inferring latent dynamics from multivariate time-series defined over topological
cell complexes is crucial for capturing the complex, higher-order interactions inherent in real-world systems such as in water, sensor, and transportation networks. However, reconstructing these latent states is challenging because the signals are coupled across higher-order
topologies, while high dimensionality, nonlinear observations, and unknown structures increase the difficulty. To address this, we propose a
topology-aware state space framework derived from
stochastic partial differential equations on
cell complexes. State
evolution follows heat-like topological
diffusion, with perturbations propagating along boundary operators. Under partial observability, we model observations using a
cell complex convolution of latent states coupled with a nonlinear mapping. We perform recursive state estimation via an Extended Kalman Filter, simultaneously learning model parameters and uncertainties through an online Expectation-Maximization
algorithm. Finally, for scenarios where only lower-order topological structure is known, e.g., nodes and edges, as in critical infrastructure networks, we introduce a heuristic
cell identification
algorithm to explicitly infer the second-order
cell structures. Validations on synthetic and real
datasets from water, sensor and transportation networks demonstrate that our approach yields reliable estimates under partial observability and successfully recovers the underlying topological structures.
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All authors Chengen Liu, Rohan Money, Ting Gao, Mohammad Sabbaqi, Baltasar Beferull-Lozano, Elvin Isufi
Statistics Theory
Node-private community estimation in stochastic block models: Tractable algorithms and lower bounds
Laurentiu Marchis, Ethan D'souza, Tomáš Flídr et al. (+1 more)
We study the classical problem of community recovery in
stochastic block models with a fixed number of communities, with a twist: We seek
algorithms that are stable with respect to node-wise changes in the graph structure, formally defined as a differential
privacy constraint. The
algorithms we develop are based on spectral clustering, where we introduce
privacy to the community recovery pipeline in the form of directly privatizing the adjacency
matrix; private PCA; private convex optimization; private low-rank
matrix estimation; and private approximate subspace estimation. Straightforward applications of existing private
algorithms lead to a rapid increase in the
privacy parameter $\epsilon$ in order to ensure consistent estimation under node differential
privacy, in contrast with the simpler setting of edge
privacy. To alleviate these issues, we develop novel
algorithms based on (1) sampling from an exponential mechanism with a Lipschitz extension and (2) a general framework for constructing smooth projections from the space of undirected graphs to the space of bounded-degree graphs, which can then be combined with various edge-private
algorithms. Importantly, the methods we develop are all computable in
polynomial-time as a function of the number of nodes in the graph. We also develop novel lower bounds on the growth rate of $\epsilon$ required in order to achieve consistent community estimation under node
privacy. On a technical note, our paper highlights the complications that arise when analyzing private
algorithms under the non-standard scaling $\epsilon \rightarrow \infty$ and proposes some solutions. We also provide a novel application of the HGR maximal correlation from information theory in the context of accuracy amplification in PAC learning, which may be of independent interest.
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All authors Laurentiu Marchis, Ethan D'souza, Tomáš Flídr, Po-Ling Loh
Machine Learning (Statistics)
Unsupervised Domain Shift Detection with Interpretable Subspace Attribution
Sebastian Springer and Alessandro Laio
We developed a tool for detecting domain shifts, namely subtle differences in the probability distributions of
datasets. We identify these shifts using an
algorithm designed to detect localised density anomalies in high-dimensional feature spaces. If an anomaly is present, we then identify the feature subspace in which the anomaly is most pronounced. This allows us to trace the domain shift to a small set of features, making the shift interpretable. Moreover, we provide a protocol for compensating domain shifts by extracting, from two unlabelled
datasets, subsets of samples with no detectable residual distributional difference. We validate the framework on controlled 20-dimensional
benchmarks with known ground truth, recovering both broad and localized shifts together with their supporting feature subspaces. We then apply it to healthy electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings represented by 782 features. In age- and sex-matched cohort comparisons differing in measurement-device composition, the method detects device-induced shifts, extracts representative subsets enriched in the imbalanced device components, and identifies ECG features associated with the acquisition contrast. These results suggest that density-shift detection and subspace attribution provide a practical framework for uncovering hidden cohort biases before downstream modelling.
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Statistical Methodology
Statistical Inference for Smoothed Support Vector Machines in High Dimensions: From Offline to Online Data
Shuya Zhou, Junwen Xia and Jingxiao Zhang
High-dimensional classification problems often rely on the Lasso-penalized linear Support Vector Machines (SVMs). However, the double non-smoothness induced by the hinge loss and Lasso penalty in this model makes statistical inference challenging and impedes computational efficiency. In this paper, we propose a unified inference framework in both offline and online settings. In the offline case, by applying a convolution smoothing technique to the hinge loss, we construct a debiased
estimator that eliminates the shrinkage bias, thereby building a valid confidence interval. For online streaming data, we develop a real-time
estimator and inference procedure that relies only on summary statistics of historical data. Theoretically, we provide rigorous proofs for the asymptotic normality of our offline and online debiased
estimators. Simulation studies and real data applications demonstrate that our methods achieve valid statistical inference and improved computational efficiency.
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Statistics Theory
Edge-indexed network time series with graph Ornstein-Uhlenbeck dynamics
Jiaming Chen and Almut E. D. Veraart
We introduce a class of Lévy-driven graph Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (grOU) models for edge-indexed network time series. The proposed framework extends generalized network autoregressive (GNAR) processes for edge-indexed network time series to continuous time and adapts graph Ornstein-Uhlenbeck dynamics, originally developed for node-indexed processes, to the edge-indexed setting. The model accommodates general Lévy noise and therefore captures both Brownian and jump behavior. We show that the model parameters can be estimated via a maximum-likelihood framework and derive the asymptotic properties of the
estimator. We examine the finite-sample performance of the methodology through simulation studies and illustrate its practical relevance in an empirical application to high-frequency financial data. The results indicate that grOU models for edge-indexed network time series improve
forecasting accuracy and reduce computational time relative to standard
benchmarks while maintaining robustness through their network-based parametrization.
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Statistical Methodology · Cross-listed from econ.EM
Tweedie's Formula and Score-Driven Updating
Peter Reinhard Hansen and Chen Tong
Tweedie's formula expresses a conditional mean in terms of a score function, and this connects score-driven models with
Bayesian updating. We show that the score-driven update is identical to a
Bayesian update in some special cases. More generally, we show that score-driven updating is a local approximation to
Bayesian updating, with an error of second order in the predictive variance. The second-order approximation error has two components, one from the
curvature of the log likelihood and one from the asymmetry of the posterior distribution. Implicit score-driven (ISD) updating, which evaluates the score at the updated parameter, corrects for the former but not the latter. A simple correction for the second component leads to an improved third-order approximation, which we denote ISD*. Numerical experiments show substantial gains from ISD and ISD*.
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Statistical Methodology
Conditional Prediction for Macro-Level Claims Reserving: What a Single Paid Triangle Identifies
Robin Van Oirbeek and Tim Verdonck
Macro-level reserve uncertainty is assessed from a single realised run-off triangle. The target is therefore the conditional predictive distribution $p(R \mid D)$ of the outstanding amount given that triangle. We state the requirements for targeting it and supply, in a Dirichlet-Gamma hierarchy, a closed-form conditional predictive that attaches to any method producing a development pattern (Chain-Ladder, Bornhuetter-Ferguson, Cape Cod), the latter two previously lacking a conditional predictive bootstrap. Three results bound what the construction can deliver. First, the concentration $c$ governing allocation uncertainty is estimated from partial-column proportions that form a Dirichlet subcomposition, carrying concentration $cF_k$ rather than $c$; the corrected
estimator is consistent but slow ($E[\hat{c}]/c = 1.31$ at $I = 10$), and substituting it costs 6.4 coverage points at that size, of which integrating over its posterior recovers about two. Second, the closed form is exact only under diffuse anchoring, so an oracle supplied with the true parameters remains conditionally miscalibrated by roughly ten points at the ultimate dispersion typical of macro-level portfolios. Third, contrary to the intuition that motivated this work, a residual bootstrap with free accident-year effects does not omit accident-year frailty uncertainty: its resampling of the diagonal reproduces the diffuse-limit posterior of the row level, and under the count hierarchy its coverage is nominal at every frailty variance tested. The under-coverage that Meyers (2015) documents on paid data is therefore not explained by omitted frailty, and the residual bootstrap is a correctly targeted
benchmark at practical triangle sizes. The paper's contribution is the accounting: which parameters a single paid triangle determines, what each substitution costs, and where the closed form itself gives way.
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