On the separability of multivariate functions

Separability of multivariate functions alleviates the difficulty in finding a minimum or maximum value of a function such that an optimal solution can be searched by solving several disjoint problems with lower dimensionalities. In most of practical problems, however, a function to be optimized is black-box and we hardly grasp its separability. In this study, we first describe a general separability condition which a function defined over an arbitrary domain satisfies if and only if the function is separable with respect to given disjoint subsets of variables. By introducing an alternative separability condition, we propose a Monte Carlo-based algorithm to estimate the separability of a function defined over unit cube with respect to given disjoint subsets of variables. Moreover, we extend our algorithm to estimate the number of disjoint subsets and the disjoint subsets such that a function is separable with respect to them. Computational complexity of our extended algorithm is function-dependent and varies from linear to exponential in the dimension

Construction of scrambled polynomial lattice rules over F2\mathbb{F}_2 with small mean square weighted L2\mathcal{L}_2 discrepancy

The $\mathcal{L}_2$ discrepancy is one of several well-known quantitative measures for the equidistribution properties of point sets in the high-dimensional unit cube. The concept of weights was introduced by Sloan and Wo\'{z}niakowski to take into account the relative importance of the discrepancy of lower dimensional projections. As known under the name of quasi-Monte Carlo methods, point sets with small weighted $\mathcal{L}_2$ discrepancy are useful in numerical integration. This study investigates the component-by-component construction of polynomial lattice rules over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_2$ whose scrambled point sets have small mean square weighted $\mathcal{L}_2$ discrepancy. An upper bound on this discrepancy is proved, which converges at almost the best possible rate of $N^{-2+\delta}$ for all $\delta>0$, where $N$ denotes the number of points. Numerical experiments confirm that the performance of our constructed polynomial lattice point sets is comparable or even superior to that of Sobol' sequences

Good interlaced polynomial lattice rules for numerical integration in weighted Walsh spaces

Quadrature rules using higher order digital nets and sequences are known to exploit the smoothness of a function for numerical integration and to achieve an improved rate of convergence as compared to classical digital nets and sequences for smooth functions. A construction principle of higher order digital nets and sequences based on a digit interlacing function was introduced in [J. Dick, SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 45 (2007) pp.~2141--2176], which interlaces classical digital nets or sequences whose number of components is a multiple of the dimension. In this paper, we study the use of polynomial lattice point sets for interlaced components. We call quadrature rules using such point sets {\em interlaced polynomial lattice rules}. We consider weighted Walsh spaces containing smooth functions and derive two upper bounds on the worst-case error for interlaced polynomial lattice rules, both of which can be employed as a quality criterion for the construction of interlaced polynomial lattice rules. We investigate the component-by-component construction and the Korobov construction as a means of explicit constructions of good interlaced polynomial lattice rules that achieve the optimal rate of the worst-case error. Through this approach we are able to obtain a good dependence of the worst-case error bounds on the dimension under certain conditions on the weights, while significantly reducing the construction cost as compared to higher order polynomial lattice rules

On the LpL_p discrepancy of two-dimensional folded Hammersley point sets

We give an explicit construction of two-dimensional point sets whose $L_p$ discrepancy is of best possible order for all $1\le p\le \infty$. It is provided by folding Hammersley point sets in base $b$ by means of the $b$-adic baker's transformation which has been introduced by Hickernell (2002) for $b=2$ and Goda, Suzuki and Yoshiki (2013) for arbitrary $b\in \mathbb{N}$, $b\ge 2$. We prove that both the minimum Niederreiter-Rosenbloom-Tsfasman weight and the minimum Dick weight of folded Hammersley point sets are large enough to achieve the best possible order of $L_p$ discrepancy for all $1\le p\le \infty$

Quasi-Monte Carlo integration using digital nets with antithetics

Antithetic sampling, which goes back to the classical work by Hammersley and Morton (1956), is one of the well-known variance reduction techniques for Monte Carlo integration. In this paper we investigate its application to digital nets over $\mathbb{Z}_b$ for quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) integration, a deterministic counterpart of Monte Carlo, of functions defined over the $s$-dimensional unit cube. By looking at antithetic sampling as a geometric technique in a compact totally disconnected abelian group, we first generalize the notion of antithetic sampling from base $2$ to an arbitrary base $b\ge 2$. Then we analyze the QMC integration error of digital nets over $\mathbb{Z}_b$ with $b$-adic antithetics. Moreover, for a prime $b$, we prove the existence of good higher order polynomial lattice point sets with $b$-adic antithetics for QMC integration of smooth functions in weighted Sobolev spaces. Numerical experiments based on Sobol' point sets up to $s=100$ show that the rate of convergence can be improved for smooth integrands by using antithetic sampling technique, which is quite encouraging beyond the reach of our theoretical result and motivates future work to address

Fast construction of higher order digital nets for numerical integration in weighted Sobolev spaces

Higher order digital nets are special classes of point sets for quasi-Monte Carlo rules which achieve the optimal convergence rate for numerical integration of smooth functions. An explicit construction of higher order digital nets was proposed by Dick, which is based on digitally interlacing in a certain way the components of classical digital nets whose number of components is a multiple $ds$ of the dimension $s$. In this paper we give a fast computer search algorithm to find good classical digital nets suitable for interlaced components by using polynomial lattice point sets. We consider certain weighted Sobolev spaces of smoothness of arbitrarily high order, and derive an upper bound on the mean square worst-case error for digitally shifted higher order digital nets. Employing this upper bound as a quality criterion, we prove that the component-by-component construction can be used efficiently to find good polynomial lattice point sets suitable for interlaced components. Through this approach we are able to get some tractability results under certain conditions on the weights. Fast construction using the fast Fourier transform requires the construction cost of $O(dsN \log N)$ operations using $O(N)$ memory, where $N$ is the number of points and $s$ is the dimension. This implies a significant reduction in the construction cost as compared to higher order polynomial lattice point sets. Numerical experiments confirm that the performance of our constructed point sets often outperforms those of higher order digital nets with Sobol' sequences and Niederreiter-Xing sequences used for interlaced components, indicating the usefulness of our algorithm

Constructing good higher order polynomial lattice rules with modulus of reduced degree

In this paper we investigate multivariate integration in weighted unanchored Sobolev spaces of smoothness of arbitrarily high order. As quadrature points we employ higher order polynomial lattice point sets over $\mathbb{F}_{2}$ which are randomly digitally shifted and then folded using the tent transformation. We first prove the existence of good higher order polynomial lattice rules which achieve the optimal rate of the mean square worst-case error, while reducing the required degree of modulus by half as compared to higher order polynomial lattice rules whose quadrature points are randomly digitally shifted but not folded using the tent transformation. Thus we are able to restrict the search space of generating vectors significantly. We then study the component-by-component construction as an explicit means of obtaining good higher order polynomial lattice rules. In a way analogous to [J. Baldeaux, J. Dick, G. Leobacher, D. Nuyens, F. Pillichshammer, Numer. Algorithms, 59 (2012) 403--431], we show how to calculate the quality criterion efficiently and how to obtain the fast component-by-component construction using the fast Fourier transform. Our result generalizes the previous result shown by [L.L. Cristea, J. Dick, G. Leobacher, F. Pillichshammer, Numer. Math., 105 (2007) 413--455], in which the degree of smoothness is fixed at 2 and classical polynomial lattice rules are considered

Computing the variance of a conditional expectation via non-nested Monte Carlo

Computing the variance of a conditional expectation has often been of importance in uncertainty quantification. Sun et al. has introduced an unbiased nested Monte Carlo estimator, which they call $1\frac{1}{2}$-level simulation since the optimal inner-level sample size is bounded as the computational budget increases. In this letter we construct unbiased non-nested Monte Carlo estimators based on the so-called pick-freeze scheme due to Sobol'. An extension of our approach to compute higher order moments of a conditional expectation is also discussed

Stability of lattice rules and polynomial lattice rules constructed by the component-by-component algorithm

We study quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) methods for numerical integration of multivariate functions defined over the high-dimensional unit cube. Lattice rules and polynomial lattice rules, which are special classes of QMC methods, have been intensively studied and the so-called component-by-component (CBC) algorithm has been well-established to construct rules which achieve the almost optimal rate of convergence with good tractability properties for given smoothness and set of weights. Since the CBC algorithm constructs rules for given smoothness and weights, not much is known when such rules are used for function classes with different smoothness and/or weights. In this paper we prove that a lattice rule constructed by the CBC algorithm for the weighted Korobov space with given smoothness and weights achieves the almost optimal rate of convergence with good tractability properties for general classes of smoothness and weights which satisfy some summability conditions. Such a stability result also can be shown for polynomial lattice rules in weighted Walsh spaces. We further give bounds on the weighted star discrepancy and discuss the tractability properties for these QMC rules. The results are comparable to those obtained for Halton, Sobol and Niederreiter sequences

Construction of interlaced scrambled polynomial lattice rules of arbitrary high order

Higher order scrambled digital nets are randomized quasi-Monte Carlo rules which have recently been introduced in [J. Dick, Ann. Statist., 39 (2011), 1372--1398] and shown to achieve the optimal rate of convergence of the root mean square error for numerical integration of smooth functions defined on the $s$-dimensional unit cube. The key ingredient there is a digit interlacing function applied to the components of a randomly scrambled digital net whose number of components is $ds$, where the integer $d$ is the so-called interlacing factor. In this paper, we replace the randomly scrambled digital nets by randomly scrambled polynomial lattice point sets, which allows us to obtain a better dependence on the dimension while still achieving the optimal rate of convergence. Our results apply to Owen's full scrambling scheme as well as the simplifications studied by Hickernell, Matou\v{s}ek and Owen. We consider weighted function spaces with general weights, whose elements have square integrable partial mixed derivatives of order up to $\alpha\ge 1$, and derive an upper bound on the variance of the estimator for higher order scrambled polynomial lattice rules. Employing our obtained bound as a quality criterion, we prove that the component-by-component construction can be used to obtain explicit constructions of good polynomial lattice point sets. By first constructing classical polynomial lattice point sets in base $b$ and dimension $ds$, to which we then apply the interlacing scheme of order $d$, we obtain a construction cost of the algorithm of order $\mathcal{O}(dsmb^m)$ operations using $\mathcal{O}(b^m)$ memory in case of product weights, where $b^m$ is the number of points in the polynomial lattice point set