163,462 research outputs found
Efficient Algorithms for the Consensus Decision Problem
We address the problem of determining if a discrete time switched consensus
system converges for any switching sequence and that of determining if it
converges for at least one switching sequence. For these two problems, we
provide necessary and sufficient conditions that can be checked in singly
exponential time. As a side result, we prove the existence of a polynomial time
algorithm for the first problem when the system switches between only two
subsystems whose corresponding graphs are undirected, a problem that had been
suggested to be NP-hard by Blondel and Olshevsky.Comment: Small modifications after comments from reviewer
Tight Bounds for Consensus Systems Convergence
We analyze the asymptotic convergence of all infinite products of matrices
taken in a given finite set, by looking only at finite or periodic products. It
is known that when the matrices of the set have a common nonincreasing
polyhedral norm, all infinite products converge to zero if and only if all
infinite periodic products with period smaller than a certain value converge to
zero, and bounds exist on that value.
We provide a stronger bound holding for both polyhedral norms and polyhedral
seminorms. In the latter case, the matrix products do not necessarily converge
to 0, but all trajectories of the associated system converge to a common
invariant space. We prove our bound to be tight, in the sense that for any
polyhedral seminorm, there is a set of matrices such that not all infinite
products converge, but every periodic product with period smaller than our
bound does converge.
Our technique is based on an analysis of the combinatorial structure of the
face lattice of the unit ball of the nonincreasing seminorm. The bound we
obtain is equal to half the size of the largest antichain in this lattice.
Explicitly evaluating this quantity may be challenging in some cases. We
therefore link our problem with the Sperner property: the property that, for
some graded posets, -- in this case the face lattice of the unit ball -- the
size of the largest antichain is equal to the size of the largest rank level.
We show that some sets of matrices with invariant polyhedral seminorms lead
to posets that do not have that Sperner property. However, this property holds
for the polyhedron obtained when treating sets of stochastic matrices, and our
bound can then be easily evaluated in that case. In particular, we show that
for the dimension of the space , our bound is smaller than the
previously known bound by a multiplicative factor of
Tight Bounds for Connectivity and Set Agreement in Byzantine Synchronous Systems
In this paper, we show that the protocol complex of a Byzantine synchronous
system can remain -connected for up to rounds,
where is the maximum number of Byzantine processes, and .
This topological property implies that rounds are
necessary to solve -set agreement in Byzantine synchronous systems, compared
to rounds in synchronous crash-failure systems. We
also show that our connectivity bound is tight as we indicate solutions to
Byzantine -set agreement in exactly synchronous
rounds, at least when is suitably large compared to . In conclusion, we
see how Byzantine failures can potentially require one extra round to solve
-set agreement, and, for suitably large compared to , at most that
Approximate Decentralized Bayesian Inference
This paper presents an approximate method for performing Bayesian inference
in models with conditional independence over a decentralized network of
learning agents. The method first employs variational inference on each
individual learning agent to generate a local approximate posterior, the agents
transmit their local posteriors to other agents in the network, and finally
each agent combines its set of received local posteriors. The key insight in
this work is that, for many Bayesian models, approximate inference schemes
destroy symmetry and dependencies in the model that are crucial to the correct
application of Bayes' rule when combining the local posteriors. The proposed
method addresses this issue by including an additional optimization step in the
combination procedure that accounts for these broken dependencies. Experiments
on synthetic and real data demonstrate that the decentralized method provides
advantages in computational performance and predictive test likelihood over
previous batch and distributed methods.Comment: This paper was presented at UAI 2014. Please use the following BibTeX
citation: @inproceedings{Campbell14_UAI, Author = {Trevor Campbell and
Jonathan P. How}, Title = {Approximate Decentralized Bayesian Inference},
Booktitle = {Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI)}, Year = {2014}
The Non-Modularity of Moral Knowledge: Implications for the Universality of Human Rights
Many contemporary human rights theorists argue that we can establish the normative universality of human rights despite extensive cultural and moral diversity by appealing to the notion of overlapping consensus. In this paper I argue that proposals to ground the universality of human rights in overlapping consensus on the list of rights are unsuccessful. I consider an example from Islamic comprehensive doctrine in order to demonstrate that apparent consensus on the list of rights may not in fact constitute meaningful agreement and may not be sufficient to ground the universality of human rights. I conclude with some general suggestions for establishing the universality of human rights. Instead of presuming the universality of human rights based on apparent overlapping consensus we need to construct universality through actual dialogue both within and between communities
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