arXiv subjects

Changwoo J. Lee

Publications and source records attributed to Changwoo J. Lee.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Physics-Informed Learning for Robust Acoustic Localization with Calibrated Uncertainty

Recent advances in Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) offer an opportunity to obtain ecological spatial point-process data at unprecedented scale. However, realizing this opportunity necessitates the development of accurate and scalable localization methods. In real-world outdoor soundscapes, however, the assumptions underlying classical localization methods such as hyperbolic and score-based localization are routinely violated by multipath dominance, near-field effects, and complex propagation. Under these conditions, classical localization methods become brittle, with extreme errors possible even in small detection arrays. Rather than statistically replacing the underlying physics, we propose a method to refine it and increase robustness outside of ideal operating conditions: a learned model operating on physics-informed acoustic features corrects a fast hyperbolic solver where it produces implausible solutions, substantially reducing catastrophic worst-case errors while matching its median accuracy on field data. We further provide calibrated, geometry-aware uncertainty estimates suitable for propagation into downstream spatial models. Evaluating on distributed microphone arrays in real and simulated outdoor environments, we demonstrate that the proposed method yields robust, uncertainty-aware localization, providing a step toward scalable automated wildlife monitoring in complex acoustic environments.

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arXiv2026

ForestIR: Physics-Informed Forest Sound Simulation for Array-Based Bioacoustic Remote Sensing

Microphone array-based passive acoustic monitoring is increasingly used for biodiversity sensing in forests. However, design and evaluation of array systems and configurations remains difficult since field recordings are costly, difficult to reproduce, and provide limited control over forest and atmospheric conditions. We present ForestIR, a physics-informed and reproducible simulation framework that links forest and environmental conditions to microphone-array recordings for bioacoustic remote sensing. Through a more realistic sound propagation method and a systematic control over array design and environmental factors, ForestIR provides a practical simulation framework for optimizing array-based monitoring systems, especially for sound source localization purposes. ForestIR generates source-microphone impulse responses (IRs) under user-controlled forest and atmospheric conditions, and renders synthetic array recordings by convolving test signals with controlled background noise. We evaluate and demonstrate realistic features of ForestIR through experiments based on localization sensitivity to forest layout and atmospheric conditions, and also comparison between simulated IRs with sine-sweep IR measurements from a field experiment. ForestIR provides a practical way to test how forest and ground conditions, atmospheric state, and array geometry affect bioacoustic localization, and can support microphone-array design, robustness testing, and synthetic-data generation for passive acoustic monitoring.

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arXiv2026

Transformers Can Learn Posterior Predictive Distributions In-Context

Prior-data fitted networks (PFNs) have recently emerged as a powerful approach for Bayesian prediction tasks, approximating the posterior predictive distribution (PPD) through in-context learning. Despite their strong empirical performance and ability to go beyond point predictions, theoretical understandings of the algorithmic capability of transformers to learn distributions in context are still lacking. Focusing on Gaussian process regression problems, we show by construction that transformers can implement a gradient descent algorithm targeting the posterior predictive mean and variance, followed by nonlinear mappings that yield binned probabilities of PPD. We study the error bounds of the approximated PPD in terms of attention depth and bin resolution. Based on these results, we further demonstrate the key role of normalization and the choice of attention depth in enabling the extrapolation abilities of transformers beyond the pretraining sample size range. We conduct simulations that corroborate our findings, providing insight into the expressivity of PFNs targeting PPDs and how architectural choices may influence generalization capabilities.

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arXiv2025

Marginally interpretable spatial logistic regression with bridge processes

In including random effects to account for dependent observations, the odds ratio interpretation of logistic regression coefficients is changed from population-averaged to subject-specific. This is unappealing in many applications, motivating a rich literature on methods that maintain the marginal logistic regression structure without random effects, such as generalized estimating equations. However, for spatial data, random effect approaches are appealing in providing a full probabilistic characterization of the data that can be used for prediction. We propose a new class of spatial logistic regression models that maintain both population-averaged and subject-specific interpretations through a novel class of bridge processes for spatial random effects. These processes are shown to have appealing computational and theoretical properties, including a scale mixture of normal representation. The new methodology is illustrated with simulations and an analysis of childhood malaria prevalence data in the Gambia.

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arXiv2025

Scalable and robust regression models for continuous proportional data

Beta regression is used routinely for continuous proportional data, but it often encounters practical issues such as a lack of robustness to misspecification of the beta distribution and sensitivity to outliers. We develop an improved class of generalized linear models starting with the continuous binomial (cobin) distribution and further extending to dispersion mixtures of cobin distributions (micobin). The proposed cobin regression and micobin regression models have attractive robustness, computation, and flexibility properties. A key innovation is the Kolmogorov-Gamma data augmentation scheme, which facilitates Gibbs sampling for Bayesian computation, including in hierarchical cases involving nested, longitudinal, or spatial data. We demonstrate robustness, ability to handle responses exactly at the boundary (0 or 1), and computational efficiency relative to beta regression in simulation experiments and through analysis of the benthic macroinvertebrate multimetric index of US lakes using lake watershed covariates.

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arXiv2025

Logistic-beta processes for dependent random probabilities with beta marginals

The beta distribution serves as a canonical tool for modeling probabilities in statistics and machine learning. However, there is limited work on flexible and computationally convenient stochastic process extensions for modeling dependent random probabilities. We propose a novel stochastic process called the logistic-beta process, whose logistic transformation yields a stochastic process with common beta marginals. Logistic-beta processes can model dependence on both discrete and continuous domains, such as space or time, and have a flexible dependence structure through correlation kernels. Moreover, its normal variance-mean mixture representation leads to effective posterior inference algorithms. We show how the proposed logistic-beta process can be used to design computationally tractable dependent Bayesian nonparametric models, including dependent Dirichlet processes and extensions. We illustrate the benefits through nonparametric binary regression and conditional density estimation examples, both in simulation studies and in a pregnancy outcome application.

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arXiv2024

A scalable two-stage Bayesian approach accounting for exposure measurement error in environmental epidemiology

Accounting for exposure measurement errors has been recognized as a crucial problem in environmental epidemiology for over two decades. Bayesian hierarchical models offer a coherent probabilistic framework for evaluating associations between environmental exposures and health effects, which take into account exposure measurement errors introduced by uncertainty in the estimated exposure as well as spatial misalignment between the exposure and health outcome data. While two-stage Bayesian analyses are often regarded as a good alternative to fully Bayesian analyses when joint estimation is not feasible, there has been minimal research on how to properly propagate uncertainty from the first-stage exposure model to the second-stage health model, especially in the case of a large number of participant locations along with spatially correlated exposures. We propose a scalable two-stage Bayesian approach, called a sparse multivariate normal (sparse MVN) prior approach, based on the Vecchia approximation for assessing associations between exposure and health outcomes in environmental epidemiology. We compare its performance with existing approaches through simulation. Our sparse MVN prior approach shows comparable performance with the fully Bayesian approach, which is a gold standard but is impossible to implement in some cases. We investigate the association between source-specific exposures and pollutant (nitrogen dioxide (NO$_2$))-specific exposures and birth outcomes for 2012 in Harris County, Texas, using several approaches, including the newly developed method.

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arXiv2023

Loss-based Objective and Penalizing Priors for Model Selection Problems

Many Bayesian model selection problems, such as variable selection or cluster analysis, start by setting prior model probabilities on a structured model space. Based on a chosen loss function between models, model selection is often performed with a Bayes estimator that minimizes the posterior expected loss. The prior model probabilities and the choice of loss both highly affect the model selection results, especially for data with small sample sizes, and their proper calibration and careful reflection of no prior model preference are crucial in objective Bayesian analysis. We propose risk equilibrium priors as an objective choice for prior model probabilities that only depend on the model space and the choice of loss. Under the risk equilibrium priors, the Bayes action becomes indifferent before observing data, and the family of the risk equilibrium priors includes existing popular objective priors in Bayesian variable selection problems. We generalize the result to the elicitation of objective priors for Bayesian cluster analysis with Binder's loss. We also propose risk penalization priors, where the Bayes action chooses the simplest model before seeing data. The concept of risk equilibrium and penalization priors allows us to interpret prior properties in light of the effect of loss functions, and also provides new insight into the sensitivity of Bayes estimators under the same prior but different loss. We illustrate the proposed concepts with variable selection simulation studies and cluster analysis on a galaxy dataset.

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arXiv2022

Rapidly Mixing Multiple-try Metropolis Algorithms for Model Selection Problems

The multiple-try Metropolis (MTM) algorithm is an extension of the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm by selecting the proposed state among multiple trials according to some weight function. Although MTM has gained great popularity owing to its faster empirical convergence and mixing than the standard MH algorithm, its theoretical mixing property is rarely studied in the literature due to its complex proposal scheme. We prove that MTM can achieve a mixing time bound smaller than that of MH by a factor of the number of trials under a general setting applicable to high-dimensional model selection problems with discrete state spaces. Our theoretical results motivate a new class of weight functions called locally balanced weight functions and guide the choice of the number of trials, which leads to improved performance over standard MTM algorithms. We support our theoretical results by extensive simulation studies and real data applications with several Bayesian model selection problems.

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arXiv2022

Why the Rich Get Richer? On the Balancedness of Random Partition Models

Random partition models are widely used in Bayesian methods for various clustering tasks, such as mixture models, topic models, and community detection problems. While the number of clusters induced by random partition models has been studied extensively, another important model property regarding the balancedness of partition has been largely neglected. We formulate a framework to define and theoretically study the balancedness of exchangeable random partition models, by analyzing how a model assigns probabilities to partitions with different levels of balancedness. We demonstrate that the "rich-get-richer" characteristic of many existing popular random partition models is an inevitable consequence of two common assumptions: product-form exchangeability and projectivity. We propose a principled way to compare the balancedness of random partition models, which gives a better understanding of what model works better and what doesn't for different applications. We also introduce the "rich-get-poorer" random partition models and illustrate their application to entity resolution tasks.

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arXiv2021

T-LoHo: A Bayesian Regularization Model for Structured Sparsity and Smoothness on Graphs

Graphs have been commonly used to represent complex data structures. In models dealing with graph-structured data, multivariate parameters may not only exhibit sparse patterns but have structured sparsity and smoothness in the sense that both zero and non-zero parameters tend to cluster together. We propose a new prior for high-dimensional parameters with graphical relations, referred to as the Tree-based Low-rank Horseshoe (T-LoHo) model, that generalizes the popular univariate Bayesian horseshoe shrinkage prior to the multivariate setting to detect structured sparsity and smoothness simultaneously. The T-LoHo prior can be embedded in many high-dimensional hierarchical models. To illustrate its utility, we apply it to regularize a Bayesian high-dimensional regression problem where the regression coefficients are linked by a graph, so that the resulting clusters have flexible shapes and satisfy the cluster contiguity constraint with respect to the graph. We design an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm that delivers full Bayesian inference with uncertainty measures for model parameters such as the number of clusters. We offer theoretical investigations of the clustering effects and posterior concentration results. Finally, we illustrate the performance of the model with simulation studies and a real data application for anomaly detection on a road network. The results indicate substantial improvements over other competing methods such as the sparse fused lasso.

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