SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 2510.03650

LLM-Guided Evolutionary Program Synthesis for Quasi-Monte Carlo Design

Abstract

Low-discrepancy point sets and digital sequences underpin quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) methods for high-dimensional integration. We cast two long-standing QMC design problems as program synthesis and solve them with an LLM-guided evolutionary loop that mutates and selects code under task-specific fitness: (i) constructing finite 2D/3D point sets with low star discrepancy, and (ii) choosing Sobol' direction numbers that minimize randomized QMC error on downstream integrands. Our two-phase procedure combines constructive code proposals with iterative numerical refinement. On finite sets, we rediscover known optima in small 2D cases and set new best-known 2D benchmarks for N >= 40, while matching most known 3D optima up to the proven frontier (N <= 8) and reporting improved 3D benchmarks beyond. On digital sequences, evolving Sobol' parameters yields consistent reductions in randomized quasi-Monte Carlo (rQMC) mean-squared error for several 32-dimensional option-pricing tasks relative to widely used Joe--Kuo parameters, while preserving extensibility to any sample size and compatibility with standard randomizations. Taken together, the results demonstrate that LLM-driven evolutionary program synthesis can automate the discovery of high-quality QMC constructions, recovering classical designs where they are optimal and improving them where finite-N structure matters. Data and code are available at https://github.com/hockeyguy123/openevolve-star-discrepancy.git.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Amir Sadikov. 2025-10-04. LLM-Guided Evolutionary Program Synthesis for Quasi-Monte Carlo Design. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03650

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

AUC Maximization from Biased Positive-unlabeled Data with Confidence

Maximizing the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) is a standard approach to imbalanced binary classification. Although positive and negative data are required for maximizing the AUC, negative data are often difficult to collect in some real-world applications due to privacy concerns or the need for specialized expertise to annotate them. Thus, AUC maximization from positive and unlabeled (PU) data has been attracting attention. Existing methods assume that labeled positive data are unbiased samples from the true positive distribution. However, this ideal assumption is often violated in practice. In this paper, we propose a method to maximize the AUC from biased PU data. To address the bias, our key idea is to exploit {\it confidence}, i.e., the probability that an instance is positive, associated with the small number of labeled positive data. We derive an estimator of the AUC risk using biased PU data with confidence, enabling AUC maximization under such bias. We further show that the rewritten AUC risk induces a Bayes-optimal AUC ranking even when the available confidence is any strictly increasing transformation of the true posterior probability. We experimentally show the effectiveness of our method on eight real-world datasets.

cs.LG

Measuring the Value of World-Model Updates: A Counterfactual Utility Protocol for Continual Adaptation

Continual world models must decide whether new data justify changing the model. Fixed replay schedules and prediction-error triggers specify when to update, but neither reveals the value of an individual update: one deployment run cannot show how the same model would have performed at that moment had it held its parameters. We introduce the fork ledger, which branches a deployment stream at pre-registered decision points into matched update and hold continuations under common random numbers. It evaluates both continuations on the same episodes and records $\Delta R = R_{\mathrm{update}} - R_{\mathrm{hold}}$. Always applying one fixed update mechanism lowers return on all three simulated control tasks: CartPole ($-144.0$; checkpoint-bootstrap $95\%$ CI $[-185.4,-116.1]$, against a converged return near $650$), Walker ($-82.8$; $[-101.1,-61.7]$) and Cheetah ($-18.6$; $[-29.0,-6.6]$). Divergence is an outcome of applying the update, so the estimand counts every attempted fork; restricted to the $693$ of $720$ that did not collapse, CartPole and Walker are unchanged in sign ($-113.4$ and $-82.1$) and Cheetah becomes unresolved ($-3.9$; $[-17.5,+13.0]$). The task is the unit of inference: each contributes $240$ attempted forks over five pretrained checkpoints crossed with two drift directions. The ledger makes counterfactual utility observable for a fixed mechanism, allowing triggers to be judged by the updates they select rather than by surprise detection alone.

cs.LG

When More Is Not Better: Component Anti-Synergy in a P300 Speller

P300 brain-computer interface (BCI) spellers can provide hands-free communication for people with severe motor impairments. Modern pipelines combine multiple individually promising components, often assuming that 'more-is-better'. We tested this assumption using a four-component full-factorial experiment varying the inclusion of Euclidean Alignment (EA), xDAWN spatial filtering, subject calibration, and language model priors on a public P300 dataset. Performance was evaluated using accuracy, repetitions, and information transfer rate (ITR) with mixed-effects models. Results show that the value of components is conditional rather than additive. Calibration was the strongest singular contributor, while EA compensated for its absence in zero-calibration settings. Adding independently useful components could also reduce performance, revealing component anti-synergy. Contrary to conventional wisdom, LM support was not universally beneficial: its effect depends strongly on the strength of the underlying EEG pipeline, while results from a larger LM showed a similar pattern. Together, these findings challenge maximal 'all-on' pipeline design and highlight the value of selecting spatial and language-support components according to the quality of available EEG evidence.

cs.LG