5,144 research outputs found
Three Puzzles on Mathematics, Computation, and Games
In this lecture I will talk about three mathematical puzzles involving
mathematics and computation that have preoccupied me over the years. The first
puzzle is to understand the amazing success of the simplex algorithm for linear
programming. The second puzzle is about errors made when votes are counted
during elections. The third puzzle is: are quantum computers possible?Comment: ICM 2018 plenary lecture, Rio de Janeiro, 36 pages, 7 Figure
Partial Identification of Discrete Counterfactual Distributions with Sequential Update of Information
The credibility of standard instrumental variables assumptions is often under dispute. This paper imposes weak monotonicity in order to gain information on counterfactual outcomes, but avoids independence or exclusion restrictions. The outcome process is assumed to be sequentially ordered, building up and depending on the information level of agents. The potential outcome distribution is assumed to weakly increase (or decrease) with the instrument, conditional on the continuation up to a certain stage. As a general result, the counterfactual distributions can only be bounded, but the derived bounds are informative compared to the no-assumptions bounds thus justifying the instrumental variables terminology. The construction of bounds is illustrated in two data examples.nonparametric bounds, treatment effects, endogeneity, binary choice, monotone instrumental variables, policy evaluation
Optimal estimation of entanglement
Entanglement does not correspond to any observable and its evaluation always
corresponds to an estimation procedure where the amount of entanglement is
inferred from the measurements of one or more proper observables. Here we
address optimal estimation of entanglement in the framework of local quantum
estimation theory and derive the optimal observable in terms of the symmetric
logarithmic derivative. We evaluate the quantum Fisher information and, in
turn, the ultimate bound to precision for several families of bipartite states,
either for qubits or continuous variable systems, and for different measures of
entanglement. We found that for discrete variables, entanglement may be
efficiently estimated when it is large, whereas the estimation of weakly
entangled states is an inherently inefficient procedure. For continuous
variable Gaussian systems the effectiveness of entanglement estimation strongly
depends on the chosen entanglement measure. Our analysis makes an important
point of principle and may be relevant in the design of quantum information
protocols based on the entanglement content of quantum states.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, v2: minor correction
Independence ratio and random eigenvectors in transitive graphs
A theorem of Hoffman gives an upper bound on the independence ratio of
regular graphs in terms of the minimum of the spectrum of the
adjacency matrix. To complement this result we use random eigenvectors to gain
lower bounds in the vertex-transitive case. For example, we prove that the
independence ratio of a -regular transitive graph is at least
The same bound holds for infinite transitive graphs: we
construct factor of i.i.d. independent sets for which the probability that any
given vertex is in the set is at least . We also show that the set of
the distributions of factor of i.i.d. processes is not closed w.r.t. the weak
topology provided that the spectrum of the graph is uncountable.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-AOP952 in the Annals of
Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Inequality and Growth : Why Differential Fertility Matters
We argue the inequality and growth are linked through differential fertility and the accumulation of human capital. We build an overlapping-generations model in which dynasties differ in their initial endowment with human capital. Growth, the income distribution, and fertility are endogenous. Due to a quantity-quality tradeoff, families with less human capital decide to have more children and invest less in education. When initial inequality is high, large fertility differentials lower the growth rate of average human capital, since poor families who invest little in education make up a large fraction of the population in the next generation. A calibrated model shows that this fertility-differential effect is quantitatively important. We also provide empirical evidence to confirm the links between inequality, differential fertility and growth suggested by the model.
Covariance and Fisher information in quantum mechanics
Variance and Fisher information are ingredients of the Cramer-Rao inequality.
We regard Fisher information as a Riemannian metric on a quantum statistical
manifold and choose monotonicity under coarse graining as the fundamental
property of variance and Fisher information. In this approach we show that
there is a kind of dual one-to-one correspondence between the candidates of the
two concepts. We emphasis that Fisher informations are obtained from relative
entropies as contrast functions on the state space and argue that the scalar
curvature might be interpreted as an uncertainty density on a statistical
manifold.Comment: LATE
Algorithms to Approximate Column-Sparse Packing Problems
Column-sparse packing problems arise in several contexts in both
deterministic and stochastic discrete optimization. We present two unifying
ideas, (non-uniform) attenuation and multiple-chance algorithms, to obtain
improved approximation algorithms for some well-known families of such
problems. As three main examples, we attain the integrality gap, up to
lower-order terms, for known LP relaxations for k-column sparse packing integer
programs (Bansal et al., Theory of Computing, 2012) and stochastic k-set
packing (Bansal et al., Algorithmica, 2012), and go "half the remaining
distance" to optimal for a major integrality-gap conjecture of Furedi, Kahn and
Seymour on hypergraph matching (Combinatorica, 1993).Comment: Extended abstract appeared in SODA 2018. Full version in ACM
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