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Rahul Singh

Publications and source records attributed to Rahul Singh.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

On the Utility of Equal Batch Sizes for Inference in Stochastic Gradient Descent

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is an estimation tool for large data employed in machine learning and statistics. Due to the Markovian nature of the SGD process, inference is a challenging problem. An underlying asymptotic normality of the averaged SGD (ASGD) estimator allows for the construction of a batch-means estimator of the asymptotic covariance matrix. Instead of the usual increasing batch-size strategy, we propose a memory efficient equal batch-size strategy and show that under mild conditions, the batch-means estimator is consistent. A key feature of the proposed batching technique is that it allows for bias-correction of the variance, at no additional cost to memory. Further, since joint inference for large dimensional problems may be undesirable, we present marginal-friendly simultaneous confidence intervals, and show through an example on how covariance estimators of ASGD can be employed for improved predictions.

stat.CO↗

Model Risk Management for Generative AI In Financial Institutions

The success of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2023 has spurred financial enterprises into exploring Generative AI applications to reduce costs or drive revenue within different lines of businesses in the Financial Industry. While these applications offer strong potential for efficiencies, they introduce new model risks, primarily hallucinations and toxicity. As highly regulated entities, financial enterprises (primarily large US banks) are obligated to enhance their model risk framework with additional testing and controls to ensure safe deployment of such applications. This paper outlines the key aspects for model risk management of generative AI model with a special emphasis on additional practices required in model validation.

q-fin.RM↗

Sequential Kernel Embedding for Mediated and Time-Varying Dose Response Curves

We propose simple nonparametric estimators for mediated and time-varying dose response curves based on kernel ridge regression. By embedding Pearl's mediation formula and Robins' g-formula with kernels, we allow treatments, mediators, and covariates to be continuous in general spaces, and also allow for nonlinear treatment-confounder feedback. Our key innovation is a reproducing kernel Hilbert space technique called sequential kernel embedding, which we use to construct simple estimators that account for complex feedback. Our estimators preserve the generality of classic identification while also achieving nonasymptotic uniform rates. In nonlinear simulations with many covariates, we demonstrate strong performance. We estimate mediated and time-varying dose response curves of the US Job Corps, and clean data that may serve as a benchmark in future work. We extend our results to mediated and time-varying treatment effects and counterfactual distributions, verifying semiparametric efficiency and weak convergence.

stat.ME↗

Tunable Topological Phases in Quantum Kirigamis

Advances in engineering mesoscopic quantum devices have led to new material platforms where electronic transport can be achieved on foldable structures. In this respect, we study quantum phases and their transitions on a Kirigami structure, a Japanese craft form, where its individual building blocks are topologically non-trivial. In particular, we find that by mechanically deforming the Kirigami structure one can engineer topological phase transitions in the system. Using a multipronged approach, we show that the physics of the system can be captured within a transfer matrix formalism akin to Chalker-Coddington networks, where the junctions describe scattering between effective non-Hermitian one-dimensional edge channels. We further show that the nature of the Kirigami structure can affect the critical folding angles where the topological phase transitions occur. Our study shows the rich interplay between topological quantum phenomena and structural configuration of an underlying Kirigami network reflecting its potential as an intriguing platform.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Kernel methods for long term dose response curves

A core challenge in causal inference is how to extrapolate long term effects, of possibly continuous actions, from short term experimental data. It arises in artificial intelligence: the long term consequences of continuous actions may be of interest, yet only short term rewards may be collected in exploration. For this estimand, called the long term dose response curve, we propose a simple nonparametric estimator based on kernel ridge regression. By embedding the distribution of the short term experimental data with kernels, we derive interpretable weights for extrapolating long term effects. Our method allows actions, short term rewards, and long term rewards to be continuous in general spaces. It also allows for nonlinearity and heterogeneity in the link between short term effects and long term effects. We prove uniform consistency, with nonasymptotic error bounds reflecting the effective dimension of the data. As an application, we estimate the long term dose response curve of Project STAR, a social program which randomly assigned students to various class sizes. We extend our results to long term counterfactual distributions, proving weak convergence.

econ.EM↗

Explicit formulas for mixed Hodge polynomials of character varieties of nilpotent groups

Let $Hom^0(Γ,G)$ be the path-connected component of the identity representation of the variety of representations of a finitely generated nilpotent group $Γ$ into a connected reductive complex affine algebraic group $G$. With the formulas given by Florentino, Lawton and Silva, we provide explicit partition type formulas for the mixed Hodge polynomials of character varieties $Hom^0(Γ,G)// G$ when $G=Sp_{2n}$ and $G=SO_{n}$.

math.AG↗

Latent Representation Learning for Multimodal Brain Activity Translation

Neuroscience employs diverse neuroimaging techniques, each offering distinct insights into brain activity, from electrophysiological recordings such as EEG, which have high temporal resolution, to hemodynamic modalities such as fMRI, which have increased spatial precision. However, integrating these heterogeneous data sources remains a challenge, which limits a comprehensive understanding of brain function. We present the Spatiotemporal Alignment of Multimodal Brain Activity (SAMBA) framework, which bridges the spatial and temporal resolution gaps across modalities by learning a unified latent space free of modality-specific biases. SAMBA introduces a novel attention-based wavelet decomposition for spectral filtering of electrophysiological recordings, graph attention networks to model functional connectivity between functional brain units, and recurrent layers to capture temporal autocorrelations in brain signal. We show that the training of SAMBA, aside from achieving translation, also learns a rich representation of brain information processing. We showcase this classify external stimuli driving brain activity from the representation learned in hidden layers of SAMBA, paving the way for broad downstream applications in neuroscience research and clinical contexts.

cs.LG↗

Looking through the mind's eye via multimodal encoder-decoder networks

In this work, we explore the decoding of mental imagery from subjects using their fMRI measurements. In order to achieve this decoding, we first created a mapping between a subject's fMRI signals elicited by the videos the subjects watched. This mapping associates the high dimensional fMRI activation states with visual imagery. Next, we prompted the subjects textually, primarily with emotion labels which had no direct reference to visual objects. Then to decode visual imagery that may have been in a person's mind's eye, we align a latent representation of these fMRI measurements with a corresponding video-fMRI based on textual labels given to the videos themselves. This alignment has the effect of overlapping the video fMRI embedding with the text-prompted fMRI embedding, thus allowing us to use our fMRI-to-video mapping to decode. Additionally, we enhance an existing fMRI dataset, initially consisting of data from five subjects, by including recordings from three more subjects gathered by our team. We demonstrate the efficacy of our model on this augmented dataset both in accurately creating a mapping, as well as in plausibly decoding mental imagery.

eess.IV↗

Downstream bias mitigation is all you need

The advent of transformer-based architectures and large language models (LLMs) have significantly advanced the performance of natural language processing (NLP) models. Since these LLMs are trained on huge corpuses of data from the web and other sources, there has been a major concern about harmful prejudices that may potentially be transferred from the data. In many applications, these pre-trained LLMs are fine-tuned on task specific datasets, which can further contribute to biases. This paper studies the extent of biases absorbed by LLMs during pre-training as well as task-specific behaviour after fine-tuning. We found that controlled interventions on pre-trained LLMs, prior to fine-tuning, have minimal effect on lowering biases in classifiers. However, the biases present in domain-specific datasets play a much bigger role, and hence mitigating them at this stage has a bigger impact. While pre-training does matter, but after the model has been pre-trained, even slight changes to co-occurrence rates in the fine-tuning dataset has a significant effect on the bias of the model.

cs.CL↗

Automatic Generation of Behavioral Test Cases For Natural Language Processing Using Clustering and Prompting

Recent work in behavioral testing for natural language processing (NLP) models, such as Checklist, is inspired by related paradigms in software engineering testing. They allow evaluation of general linguistic capabilities and domain understanding, hence can help evaluate conceptual soundness and identify model weaknesses. However, a major challenge is the creation of test cases. The current packages rely on semi-automated approach using manual development which requires domain expertise and can be time consuming. This paper introduces an automated approach to develop test cases by exploiting the power of large language models and statistical techniques. It clusters the text representations to carefully construct meaningful groups and then apply prompting techniques to automatically generate Minimal Functionality Tests (MFT). The well-known Amazon Reviews corpus is used to demonstrate our approach. We analyze the behavioral test profiles across four different classification algorithms and discuss the limitations and strengths of those models.

cs.CL↗

Positivity of Peterson Schubert Calculus

The Peterson variety is a subvariety of the flag manifold $G/B$ equipped with an action of a one-dimensional torus, and a torus invariant paving by affine cells, called Peterson cells. We prove that the equivariant pull-backs of Schubert classes indexed by arbitrary Coxeter elements are dual (up to an intersection multiplicity) to the fundamental classes of Peterson cell closures. Dividing these classes by the intersection multiplicities yields a $\mathbb Z$-basis for the equivariant cohomology of the Peterson variety. We prove several properties of this basis, including a Graham positivity property for its structure constants, and stability with respect to inclusion in a larger Peterson variety. We also find formulae for intersection multiplicities with Peterson classes. This explains geometrically, in arbitrary Lie type, recent positivity statements proved in type A by Goldin and Gorbutt.

math.AG↗

Excitation of nonlinear second order betatron sidebands for Knock Out slow extraction at the third-integer resonance

Radio Frequency Knock Out resonant slow extraction is a standard method for extracting stored particle beams from synchrotrons by transverse excitation. Classically, the beam is excited with an RF field comprising a frequency band around one of the betatron sidebands. This article demonstrates that the third-integer resonance commonly used for the slow extraction induces nonlinear motion, resulting in the appearance of additional sidebands of higher order at multiples of the betatron tune. Measured and simulated beam spectra are presented, revealing these sidebands and the beam's response to being excited at first and second order sidebands. The feasibility of using a second order sideband for the purpose of slow extraction is demonstrated. This results in a significant improvement in the temporal structure (spill quality) of the extracted beam, but at the cost of higher excitation power requirements. This is observed both experimentally and in tracking simulations. The mechanism behind the observed improvement is explained using beam dynamics simulations.

physics.acc-ph↗

Kernel Ridge Riesz Representers: Generalization, Mis-specification, and the Counterfactual Effective Dimension

Kernel balancing weights provide confidence intervals for average treatment effects, based on the idea of balancing covariates for the treated group and untreated group in feature space, often with ridge regularization. Previous works on the classical kernel ridge balancing weights have certain limitations: (i) not articulating generalization error for the balancing weights, (ii) typically requiring correct specification of features, and (iii) justifying Gaussian approximation for only average effects. I interpret kernel balancing weights as kernel ridge Riesz representers (KRRR) and address these limitations via a new characterization of the counterfactual effective dimension. KRRR is an exact generalization of kernel ridge regression and kernel ridge balancing weights. I prove strong properties similar to kernel ridge regression: population $L_2$ rates controlling generalization error, and a standalone closed form solution that can interpolate. The framework relaxes the stringent assumption that the underlying regression model is correctly specified by the features. It extends Gaussian approximation beyond average effects to heterogeneous effects, justifying confidence sets for causal functions. I use KRRR to quantify uncertainty for heterogeneous treatment effects, by age, of 401(k) eligibility on assets.

stat.ML↗

Adversarial Estimation of Riesz Representers

Many causal parameters are linear functionals of an underlying regression. The Riesz representer is a key component in the asymptotic variance of a semiparametrically estimated linear functional. We propose an adversarial framework to estimate the Riesz representer using general function spaces. We prove a nonasymptotic mean square rate in terms of an abstract quantity called the critical radius, then specialize it for neural networks, random forests, and reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces as leading cases. Our estimators are highly compatible with targeted and debiased machine learning with sample splitting; our guarantees directly verify general conditions for inference that allow mis-specification. We also use our guarantees to prove inference without sample splitting, based on stability or complexity. Our estimators achieve nominal coverage in highly nonlinear simulations where some previous methods break down. They shed new light on the heterogeneous effects of matching grants.

econ.EM↗

Automating Patch Set Generation from Code Review Comments Using Large Language Models

The advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) has revolutionized various domains of artificial intelligence, including the realm of software engineering. In this research, we evaluate the efficacy of pre-trained LLMs in replicating the tasks traditionally performed by developers in response to code review comments. We provide code contexts to five popular LLMs and obtain the suggested code-changes (patch sets) derived from real-world code-review comments. The performance of each model is meticulously assessed by comparing their generated patch sets against the historical data of human-generated patch-sets from the same repositories. This comparative analysis aims to determine the accuracy, relevance, and depth of the LLMs' feedback, thereby evaluating their readiness to support developers in responding to code-review comments. Novelty: This particular research area is still immature requiring a substantial amount of studies yet to be done. No prior research has compared the performance of existing Large Language Models (LLMs) in code-review comments. This in-progress study assesses current LLMs in code review and paves the way for future advancements in automated code quality assurance, reducing context-switching overhead due to interruptions from code change requests.

cs.SE↗

FastFlip: Compositional Error Injection Analysis

Instruction-level error injection analyses aim to find instructions where errors often lead to unacceptable outcomes like Silent Data Corruptions (SDCs). These analyses require significant time, which is especially problematic if developers wish to regularly analyze software that evolves over time. We present FastFlip, a combination of empirical error injection and symbolic SDC propagation analyses that enables fast, compositional error injection analysis of evolving programs. FastFlip calculates how SDCs propagate across program sections and correctly accounts for unexpected side effects that can occur due to errors. Using FastFlip, we analyze five benchmarks, plus two modified versions of each benchmark. FastFlip speeds up the analysis of incrementally modified programs by $3.2\times$ (geomean). FastFlip selects a set of instructions to protect against SDCs that minimizes the runtime cost of protection while protecting against a developer-specified target fraction of all SDC-causing errors.

cs.SE↗

Optimal Scheduling of Uplink-Downlink Networked Control Systems with Energy Harvesting Sensor

In this work, we consider a wireless networked control system (WNCS) consisting of a plant, a battery-operated sensor, a controller, and an actuator. The battery in the sensor harvests energy from the environment. The sensor then uses this energy for packet transmissions. There are two types of wireless communication channels, (i) sensor--controller channel (also called uplink channel), and (ii) controller--actuator channel (also called downlink channel). The controller is \emph{half-duplex}, and this prevents it from simultaneously receiving an update from the sensor, and also transmitting a control packet to the actuator. Though frequent transmissions via uplink channel improve controller's estimate of the plant state, but this also reduces the timely control of the plant. Hence, in order to strike a balance between these two, we consider the problem of designing an optimal scheduling policy that minimizes the expected cumulative infinite horizon discounted cost, where the instantaneous cost is equal to the square of the plant state. At each time $t$, the scheduler at the sensor has to decide whether it should activate the uplink channel, or downlink. We pose this dynamic optimization problem as a Markov decision process (MDP), in which the state at time $t$ is composed of (i) the plant state $x(t)$, (ii) the age of the data packet available at the controller, denoted by $τ(t)$, (iii) a binary variable $y(t)$ which indicates the availability of a control packet at the controller, and (iv) the energy level of the battery at the sensor $b(t)$. We show that there exists an optimal scheduling policy that exhibits a threshold structure, meaning that for each time $t$, if there is a control packet available with the controller, then the sensor activates the downlink channel in case $|x(t)|$ exceeds a threshold $x\ust(τ(t),b(t))$.

math.OC↗

Optimal Risk-Sensitive Scheduling Policies for Remote Estimation of Autoregressive Markov Processes

We design scheduling policies that minimize a risk-sensitive cost criterion for a remote estimation setup. Since risk-sensitive cost objective takes into account not just the mean value of the cost, but also higher order moments of its probability distribution, the resulting policy is robust to changes in the underlying system's parameters. The setup consists of a sensor that observes a discrete-time autoregressive Markov process, and at each time $t$ decides whether or not to transmit its observations to a remote estimator using an unreliable wireless communication channel after encoding these observations into data packets. We model the communication channel as a Gilbert-Elliott channel \cite{10384144}. Sensor probes the channel \cite{laourine2010betting} and hence knows the channel state at each time $t$ before making scheduling decision. The scheduler has to minimize the expected value of the exponential of the finite horizon cumulative cost that is sum of the following two quantities (i) the cumulative transmission power consumed, (ii) the cumulative squared estimator error. We pose this dynamic optimization problem as a Markov decision process (MDP), in which the system state at time $t$ is composed of (i) the instantaneous error $Δ(t):= x(t)-a\hat{x}(t-1)$, where $x(t),\hat{x}(t-1)$ are the system state and the estimate at time $t,t-1$ respectively, and (ii) the channel state $c(t)$. We show that there exists an optimal policy that has a threshold structure, i.e., at each time $t$, for each possible channel state $c$, there is a threshold $\D\ust(c)$ such that if the current channel state is $c$, then it transmits only when the error $\D(t)$ exceeds $\D\ust(c)$.

math.OC↗