20,575 research outputs found
Decidability of the Monadic Shallow Linear First-Order Fragment with Straight Dismatching Constraints
The monadic shallow linear Horn fragment is well-known to be decidable and
has many application, e.g., in security protocol analysis, tree automata, or
abstraction refinement. It was a long standing open problem how to extend the
fragment to the non-Horn case, preserving decidability, that would, e.g.,
enable to express non-determinism in protocols. We prove decidability of the
non-Horn monadic shallow linear fragment via ordered resolution further
extended with dismatching constraints and discuss some applications of the new
decidable fragment.Comment: 29 pages, long version of CADE-26 pape
Causal inference via algebraic geometry: feasibility tests for functional causal structures with two binary observed variables
We provide a scheme for inferring causal relations from uncontrolled
statistical data based on tools from computational algebraic geometry, in
particular, the computation of Groebner bases. We focus on causal structures
containing just two observed variables, each of which is binary. We consider
the consequences of imposing different restrictions on the number and
cardinality of latent variables and of assuming different functional
dependences of the observed variables on the latent ones (in particular, the
noise need not be additive). We provide an inductive scheme for classifying
functional causal structures into distinct observational equivalence classes.
For each observational equivalence class, we provide a procedure for deriving
constraints on the joint distribution that are necessary and sufficient
conditions for it to arise from a model in that class. We also demonstrate how
this sort of approach provides a means of determining which causal parameters
are identifiable and how to solve for these. Prospects for expanding the scope
of our scheme, in particular to the problem of quantum causal inference, are
also discussed.Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of Causal Inference. Revised and
updated in response to referee feedback. 16+5 pages, 26+2 figures. Comments
welcom
Implicit solutions with consistent additive and multiplicative components
Use of multiple-point-constraint
Maximum Persistency in Energy Minimization
We consider discrete pairwise energy minimization problem (weighted
constraint satisfaction, max-sum labeling) and methods that identify a globally
optimal partial assignment of variables. When finding a complete optimal
assignment is intractable, determining optimal values for a part of variables
is an interesting possibility. Existing methods are based on different
sufficient conditions. We propose a new sufficient condition for partial
optimality which is: (1) verifiable in polynomial time (2) invariant to
reparametrization of the problem and permutation of labels and (3) includes
many existing sufficient conditions as special cases. We pose the problem of
finding the maximum optimal partial assignment identifiable by the new
sufficient condition. A polynomial method is proposed which is guaranteed to
assign same or larger part of variables than several existing approaches. The
core of the method is a specially constructed linear program that identifies
persistent assignments in an arbitrary multi-label setting.Comment: Extended technical report for the CVPR 2014 paper. Update: correction
to the proof of characterization theore
A Practical Guide to Robust Optimization
Robust optimization is a young and active research field that has been mainly
developed in the last 15 years. Robust optimization is very useful for
practice, since it is tailored to the information at hand, and it leads to
computationally tractable formulations. It is therefore remarkable that
real-life applications of robust optimization are still lagging behind; there
is much more potential for real-life applications than has been exploited
hitherto. The aim of this paper is to help practitioners to understand robust
optimization and to successfully apply it in practice. We provide a brief
introduction to robust optimization, and also describe important do's and
don'ts for using it in practice. We use many small examples to illustrate our
discussions
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