arXiv subjects

Toni Karvonen

Publications and source records attributed to Toni Karvonen.

46 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Sampling based approximation of linear functionals in Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces

In this paper we analyze a greedy procedure to approximate a linear functional defined in a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space by nodal values. This procedure computes a quadrature rule which can be applied to general functionals, including integration functionals. For a large class of functionals, we prove convergence results for the approximation by means of uniform and greedy points which generalize in various ways several known results. A perturbation analysis of the weights and node computation is also discussed. Beyond the theoretical investigations, we demonstrate numerically that our algorithm is effective in treating various integration densities, and that it is even very competitive when compared to existing methods for Uncertainty Quantification.

math.NA↗

arXiv2020

Improved Calibration of Numerical Integration Error in Sigma-Point Filters

The sigma-point filters, such as the UKF, which exploit numerical quadrature to obtain an additional order of accuracy in the moment transformation step, are popular alternatives to the ubiquitous EKF. The classical quadrature rules used in the sigma-point filters are motivated via polynomial approximation of the integrand, however in the applied context these assumptions cannot always be justified. As a result, quadrature error can introduce bias into estimated moments, for which there is no compensatory mechanism in the classical sigma-point filters. This can lead in turn to estimates and predictions that are poorly calibrated. In this article, we investigate the Bayes-Sard quadrature method in the context of sigma-point filters, which enables uncertainty due to quadrature error to be formalised within a probabilistic model. Our first contribution is to derive the well-known classical quadratures as special cases of the Bayes-Sard quadrature method. Then a general-purpose moment transform is developed and utilised in the design of novel sigma-point filters, so that uncertainty due to quadrature error is explicitly quantified. Numerical experiments on a challenging tracking example with misspecified initial conditions show that the additional uncertainty quantification built into our method leads to better-calibrated state estimates with improved RMSE.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2020

Worst-case optimal approximation with increasingly flat Gaussian kernels

We study worst-case optimal approximation of positive linear functionals in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces induced by increasingly flat Gaussian kernels. This provides a new perspective and some generalisations to the problem of interpolation with increasingly flat radial basis functions. When the evaluation points are fixed and unisolvent, we show that the worst-case optimal method converges to a polynomial method. In an additional one-dimensional extension, we allow also the points to be selected optimally and show that in this case convergence is to the unique Gaussian quadrature type method that achieves the maximal polynomial degree of exactness. The proofs are based on an explicit characterisation of the reproducing kernel Hilbert space of the Gaussian kernel in terms of exponentially damped polynomials.

math.NA↗

arXiv2020

Taylor Moment Expansion for Continuous-Discrete Gaussian Filtering and Smoothing

The paper is concerned with non-linear Gaussian filtering and smoothing in continuous-discrete state-space models, where the dynamic model is formulated as an Itô stochastic differential equation (SDE), and the measurements are obtained at discrete time instants. We propose novel Taylor moment expansion (TME) Gaussian filter and smoother which approximate the moments of the SDE with a temporal Taylor expansion. Differently from classical linearisation or Itô--Taylor approaches, the Taylor expansion is formed for the moment functions directly and in time variable, not by using a Taylor expansion on the non-linear functions in the model. We analyse the theoretical properties, including the positive definiteness of the covariance estimate and stability of the TME Gaussian filter and smoother. By numerical experiments, we demonstrate that the proposed TME Gaussian filter and smoother significantly outperform the state-of-the-art methods in terms of estimation accuracy and numerical stability.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2019

On the positivity and magnitudes of Bayesian quadrature weights

This article reviews and studies the properties of Bayesian quadrature weights, which strongly affect stability and robustness of the quadrature rule. Specifically, we investigate conditions that are needed to guarantee that the weights are positive or to bound their magnitudes. First, it is shown that the weights are positive in the univariate case if the design points locally minimise the posterior integral variance and the covariance kernel is totally positive (e.g., Gaussian and Hardy kernels). This suggests that gradient-based optimisation of design points may be effective in constructing stable and robust Bayesian quadrature rules. Secondly, we show that magnitudes of the weights admit an upper bound in terms of the fill distance and separation radius if the RKHS of the kernel is a Sobolev space (e.g., Matérn kernels), suggesting that quasi-uniform points should be used. A number of numerical examples demonstrate that significant generalisations and improvements appear to be possible, manifesting the need for further research.

math.ST↗

arXiv2019

Gaussian kernel quadrature at scaled Gauss-Hermite nodes

This article derives an accurate, explicit, and numerically stable approximation to the kernel quadrature weights in one dimension and on tensor product grids when the kernel and integration measure are Gaussian. The approximation is based on use of scaled Gauss-Hermite nodes and truncation of the Mercer eigendecomposition of the Gaussian kernel. Numerical evidence indicates that both the kernel quadrature and the approximate weights at these nodes are positive. An exponential rate of convergence for functions in the reproducing kernel Hilbert space induced by the Gaussian kernel is proved under an assumption on growth of the sum of absolute values of the approximate weights.

math.NA↗

arXiv2019

Symmetry Exploits for Bayesian Cubature Methods

Bayesian cubature provides a flexible framework for numerical integration, in which a priori knowledge on the integrand can be encoded and exploited. This additional flexibility, compared to many classical cubature methods, comes at a computational cost which is cubic in the number of evaluations of the integrand. It has been recently observed that fully symmetric point sets can be exploited in order to reduce - in some cases substantially - the computational cost of the standard Bayesian cubature method. This work identifies several additional symmetry exploits within the Bayesian cubature framework. In particular, we go beyond earlier work in considering non-symmetric measures and, in addition to the standard Bayesian cubature method, present exploits for the Bayes-Sard cubature method and the multi-output Bayesian cubature method.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2018

A Bayes-Sard Cubature Method

This paper focusses on the formulation of numerical integration as an inferential task. To date, research effort has largely focussed on the development of Bayesian cubature, whose distributional output provides uncertainty quantification for the integral. However, the point estimators associated to Bayesian cubature can be inaccurate and acutely sensitive to the prior when the domain is high-dimensional. To address these drawbacks we introduce Bayes-Sard cubature, a probabilistic framework that combines the flexibility of Bayesian cubature with the robustness of classical cubatures which are well-established. This is achieved by considering a Gaussian process model for the integrand whose mean is a parametric regression model, with an improper flat prior on each regression coefficient. The features in the regression model consist of test functions which are guaranteed to be exactly integrated, with remaining degrees of freedom afforded to the non-parametric part. The asymptotic convergence of the Bayes-Sard cubature method is established and the theoretical results are numerically verified. In particular, we report two orders of magnitude reduction in error compared to Bayesian cubature in the context of a high-dimensional financial integral.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2018

Fully symmetric kernel quadrature

Kernel quadratures and other kernel-based approximation methods typically suffer from prohibitive cubic time and quadratic space complexity in the number of function evaluations. The problem arises because a system of linear equations needs to be solved. In this article we show that the weights of a kernel quadrature rule can be computed efficiently and exactly for up to tens of millions of nodes if the kernel, integration domain, and measure are fully symmetric and the node set is a union of fully symmetric sets. This is based on the observations that in such a setting there are only as many distinct weights as there are fully symmetric sets and that these weights can be solved from a linear system of equations constructed out of row sums of certain submatrices of the full kernel matrix. We present several numerical examples that show feasibility, both for a large number of nodes and in high dimensions, of the developed fully symmetric kernel quadrature rules. Most prominent of the fully symmetric kernel quadrature rules we propose are those that use sparse grids.

math.NA↗

arXiv2017

Student-t Process Quadratures for Filtering of Non-Linear Systems with Heavy-Tailed Noise

The aim of this article is to design a moment transformation for Student- t distributed random variables, which is able to account for the error in the numerically computed mean. We employ Student-t process quadrature, an instance of Bayesian quadrature, which allows us to treat the integral itself as a random variable whose variance provides information about the incurred integration error. Advantage of the Student- t process quadrature over the traditional Gaussian process quadrature, is that the integral variance depends also on the function values, allowing for a more robust modelling of the integration error. The moment transform is applied in nonlinear sigma-point filtering and evaluated on two numerical examples, where it is shown to outperform the state-of-the-art moment transforms.

stat.ME↗