507 research outputs found
A cyclic time-dependent Markov process to model daily patterns in wind turbine power production
Wind energy is becoming a top contributor to the renewable energy mix, which
raises potential reliability issues for the grid due to the fluctuating nature
of its source. To achieve adequate reserve commitment and to promote market
participation, it is necessary to provide models that can capture daily
patterns in wind power production. This paper presents a cyclic inhomogeneous
Markov process, which is based on a three-dimensional state-space (wind power,
speed and direction). Each time-dependent transition probability is expressed
as a Bernstein polynomial. The model parameters are estimated by solving a
constrained optimization problem: The objective function combines two maximum
likelihood estimators, one to ensure that the Markov process long-term behavior
reproduces the data accurately and another to capture daily fluctuations. A
convex formulation for the overall optimization problem is presented and its
applicability demonstrated through the analysis of a case-study. The proposed
model is capable of reproducing the diurnal patterns of a three-year dataset
collected from a wind turbine located in a mountainous region in Portugal. In
addition, it is shown how to compute persistence statistics directly from the
Markov process transition matrices. Based on the case-study, the power
production persistence through the daily cycle is analysed and discussed
Weighted Polynomial Approximations: Limits for Learning and Pseudorandomness
Polynomial approximations to boolean functions have led to many positive
results in computer science. In particular, polynomial approximations to the
sign function underly algorithms for agnostically learning halfspaces, as well
as pseudorandom generators for halfspaces. In this work, we investigate the
limits of these techniques by proving inapproximability results for the sign
function.
Firstly, the polynomial regression algorithm of Kalai et al. (SIAM J. Comput.
2008) shows that halfspaces can be learned with respect to log-concave
distributions on in the challenging agnostic learning model. The
power of this algorithm relies on the fact that under log-concave
distributions, halfspaces can be approximated arbitrarily well by low-degree
polynomials. We ask whether this technique can be extended beyond log-concave
distributions, and establish a negative result. We show that polynomials of any
degree cannot approximate the sign function to within arbitrarily low error for
a large class of non-log-concave distributions on the real line, including
those with densities proportional to .
Secondly, we investigate the derandomization of Chernoff-type concentration
inequalities. Chernoff-type tail bounds on sums of independent random variables
have pervasive applications in theoretical computer science. Schmidt et al.
(SIAM J. Discrete Math. 1995) showed that these inequalities can be established
for sums of random variables with only -wise independence,
for a tail probability of . We show that their results are tight up to
constant factors.
These results rely on techniques from weighted approximation theory, which
studies how well functions on the real line can be approximated by polynomials
under various distributions. We believe that these techniques will have further
applications in other areas of computer science.Comment: 22 page
Optimal Quantum Sample Complexity of Learning Algorithms
In learning theory, the VC dimension of a
concept class is the most common way to measure its "richness." In the PAC
model \Theta\Big(\frac{d}{\eps} + \frac{\log(1/\delta)}{\eps}\Big)
examples are necessary and sufficient for a learner to output, with probability
, a hypothesis that is \eps-close to the target concept . In
the related agnostic model, where the samples need not come from a , we
know that \Theta\Big(\frac{d}{\eps^2} + \frac{\log(1/\delta)}{\eps^2}\Big)
examples are necessary and sufficient to output an hypothesis whose
error is at most \eps worse than the best concept in .
Here we analyze quantum sample complexity, where each example is a coherent
quantum state. This model was introduced by Bshouty and Jackson, who showed
that quantum examples are more powerful than classical examples in some
fixed-distribution settings. However, Atici and Servedio, improved by Zhang,
showed that in the PAC setting, quantum examples cannot be much more powerful:
the required number of quantum examples is
\Omega\Big(\frac{d^{1-\eta}}{\eps} + d + \frac{\log(1/\delta)}{\eps}\Big)\mbox{
for all }\eta> 0. Our main result is that quantum and classical sample
complexity are in fact equal up to constant factors in both the PAC and
agnostic models. We give two approaches. The first is a fairly simple
information-theoretic argument that yields the above two classical bounds and
yields the same bounds for quantum sample complexity up to a \log(d/\eps)
factor. We then give a second approach that avoids the log-factor loss, based
on analyzing the behavior of the "Pretty Good Measurement" on the quantum state
identification problems that correspond to learning. This shows classical and
quantum sample complexity are equal up to constant factors.Comment: 31 pages LaTeX. Arxiv abstract shortened to fit in their
1920-character limit. Version 3: many small changes, no change in result
Learning Arbitrary Statistical Mixtures of Discrete Distributions
We study the problem of learning from unlabeled samples very general
statistical mixture models on large finite sets. Specifically, the model to be
learned, , is a probability distribution over probability
distributions , where each such is a probability distribution over . When we sample from , we do not observe
directly, but only indirectly and in very noisy fashion, by sampling from
repeatedly, independently times from the distribution . The problem is
to infer to high accuracy in transportation (earthmover) distance.
We give the first efficient algorithms for learning this mixture model
without making any restricting assumptions on the structure of the distribution
. We bound the quality of the solution as a function of the size of
the samples and the number of samples used. Our model and results have
applications to a variety of unsupervised learning scenarios, including
learning topic models and collaborative filtering.Comment: 23 pages. Preliminary version in the Proceeding of the 47th ACM
Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC15
A Linearization Technique for Multivariate Polynomials Using Convex Polyhedra Based on Handelman-Krivine's Theorem
National audienceWe present a new linearization method to over-approximate non-linear multivariate polynomials with convex polyhedra.It is based on Handelman-Krivine's theorem and consists in using products of constraints of a polyhedron to over-approximate a polynomial on this polyhedron. We implemented it together with two other linearization methods that we will not detail in this paper, but that we shall use as comparison. Our implementation in Ocaml generates certificates that can be verified by a trusted checker, certified in Coq, that guarantees the correctness of our linear approximation
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