150,567 research outputs found
On Approximating Four Covering and Packing Problems
In this paper, we consider approximability issues of the following four
problems: triangle packing, full sibling reconstruction, maximum profit
coverage and 2-coverage. All of them are generalized or specialized versions of
set-cover and have applications in biology ranging from full-sibling
reconstructions in wild populations to biomolecular clusterings; however, as
this paper shows, their approximability properties differ considerably. Our
inapproximability constant for the triangle packing problem improves upon the
previous results; this is done by directly transforming the inapproximability
gap of Haastad for the problem of maximizing the number of satisfied equations
for a set of equations over GF(2) and is interesting in its own right. Our
approximability results on the full siblings reconstruction problems answers
questions originally posed by Berger-Wolf et al. and our results on the maximum
profit coverage problem provides almost matching upper and lower bounds on the
approximation ratio, answering a question posed by Hassin and Or.Comment: 25 page
Determinacy, indeterminacy and dynamic misspecification in linear rational expectations models
This paper proposes a testing strategy for the null hypothesis that a multivariate linear rational expectations (LRE) model has a unique stable solution (determinacy) against the alternative of multiple stable solutions (indeterminacy). Under a proper set of identification restrictions, determinacy is investigated by a misspecification-type approach in which the result of the overidentifying restrictions test obtained from the estimation of the LRE model through a version of generalized method of moments is combined with the result of a likelihood-based test for the cross-equation restrictions that the LRE places on its finite order reduced form under determinacy. This approach (i) circumvents the nonstandard inferential problem that a purely likelihood-based approach implies because of the presence of nuisance parameters that appear under the alternative but not under the null, (ii) does not involve inequality parametric restrictions and nonstandard asymptotic distributions, and (iii) gives rise to a joint test which is consistent against indeterminacy almost everywhere in the space of nuisance parameters, i.e. except for a point of zero measure which gives rise to minimum state variable solutions, and is also consistent against the dynamic misspecification of the LRE model. Monte Carlo simulations show that the testing strategy delivers reasonable size coverage and power in finite samples. An empirical illustration focuses on the determinacy/indeterminacy of a New Keynesian monetary business cycle model for the US.Determinatezza, Indeterminatezza, Massima verosimiglianza, Metodo generalizzato dei momenti, Modello lineare con aspettative, Identificazione, Variabili Strumentali, VAR,VARMA Determinacy, Generalized method of moments, Indeterminacy, LRE model, Identification, Instrumental Variables, Maximum Likelihood, VAR, VARMA
Near-Optimal Straggler Mitigation for Distributed Gradient Methods
Modern learning algorithms use gradient descent updates to train inferential
models that best explain data. Scaling these approaches to massive data sizes
requires proper distributed gradient descent schemes where distributed worker
nodes compute partial gradients based on their partial and local data sets, and
send the results to a master node where all the computations are aggregated
into a full gradient and the learning model is updated. However, a major
performance bottleneck that arises is that some of the worker nodes may run
slow. These nodes a.k.a. stragglers can significantly slow down computation as
the slowest node may dictate the overall computational time. We propose a
distributed computing scheme, called Batched Coupon's Collector (BCC) to
alleviate the effect of stragglers in gradient methods. We prove that our BCC
scheme is robust to a near optimal number of random stragglers. We also
empirically demonstrate that our proposed BCC scheme reduces the run-time by up
to 85.4% over Amazon EC2 clusters when compared with other straggler mitigation
strategies. We also generalize the proposed BCC scheme to minimize the
completion time when implementing gradient descent-based algorithms over
heterogeneous worker nodes
A simple recipe for making accurate parametric inference in finite sample
Constructing tests or confidence regions that control over the error rates in
the long-run is probably one of the most important problem in statistics. Yet,
the theoretical justification for most methods in statistics is asymptotic. The
bootstrap for example, despite its simplicity and its widespread usage, is an
asymptotic method. There are in general no claim about the exactness of
inferential procedures in finite sample. In this paper, we propose an
alternative to the parametric bootstrap. We setup general conditions to
demonstrate theoretically that accurate inference can be claimed in finite
sample
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