Ibrahim Kaddouri | Searcharxiv

arXiv2024

On the impossibility of detecting a late change-point in the preferential attachment random graph model

We consider the problem of late change-point detection under the preferential attachment random graph model with time dependent attachment function. This can be formulated as a hypothesis testing problem where the null hypothesis corresponds to a preferential attachment model with a constant affine attachment parameter $\delta_0$ and the alternative corresponds to a preferential attachment model where the affine attachment parameter changes from $\delta_0$ to $\delta_1$ at a time $\tau_n = n - \Delta_n$ where $0\leq \Delta_n \leq n$ and $n$ is the size of the graph. It was conjectured in Bet et al. that when observing only the unlabeled graph, detection of the change is not possible for $\Delta_n = o(n^{1/2})$. In this work, we make a step towards proving the conjecture by proving the impossibility of detecting the change when $\Delta_n = o(n^{1/3})$. We also study change-point detection in the case where the labeled graph is observed and show that change-point detection is possible if and only if $\Delta_n \to \infty$, thereby exhibiting a strong difference between the two settings.

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arXiv2023

Clustering risk in Non-parametric Hidden Markov and I.I.D. Models

We conduct an in-depth analysis of the Bayes risk of clustering in the context of Hidden Markov and i.i.d. models. In both settings, we identify the situations where this risk is comparable to the Bayes risk of classification and those where its minimizer, the Bayes clusterer, can be derived from the Bayes classifier. While we demonstrate that clustering based on the Bayes classifier does not always match the optimal Bayes clusterer, we show that this difference is primarily theoretical and that the Bayes classifier remains nearly optimal for clustering. A key quantity emerges, capturing the fundamental difficulty of both classification and clustering tasks. Furthermore, by leveraging the identifiability of HMMs, we establish bounds on the clustering excess risk of a plug-in Bayes classifier in the general nonparametric setting, offering theoretical justification for its widespread use in practice. Simulations further illustrate our findings.

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