From Statistical Physics To Statistical Inference And Back
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From Statistical Physics to Statistical Inference and Back
Author: P. Grassberger
language: en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date: 2012-12-06
Physicists, when modelling physical systems with a large number of degrees of freedom, and statisticians, when performing data analysis, have developed their own concepts and methods for making the `best' inference. But are these methods equivalent, or not? What is the state of the art in making inferences? The physicists want answers. More: neural computation demands a clearer understanding of how neural systems make inferences; the theory of chaotic nonlinear systems as applied to time series analysis could profit from the experience already booked by the statisticians; and finally, there is a long-standing conjecture that some of the puzzles of quantum mechanics are due to our incomplete understanding of how we make inferences. Matter enough to stimulate the writing of such a book as the present one. But other considerations also arise, such as the maximum entropy method and Bayesian inference, information theory and the minimum description length. Finally, it is pointed out that an understanding of human inference may require input from psychologists. This lively debate, which is of acute current interest, is well summarized in the present work.
Geometric Structures of Statistical Physics, Information Geometry, and Learning
Author: Frédéric Barbaresco
language: en
Publisher: Springer Nature
Release Date: 2021-06-27
Machine learning and artificial intelligence increasingly use methodological tools rooted in statistical physics. Conversely, limitations and pitfalls encountered in AI question the very foundations of statistical physics. This interplay between AI and statistical physics has been attested since the birth of AI, and principles underpinning statistical physics can shed new light on the conceptual basis of AI. During the last fifty years, statistical physics has been investigated through new geometric structures allowing covariant formalization of the thermodynamics. Inference methods in machine learning have begun to adapt these new geometric structures to process data in more abstract representation spaces. This volume collects selected contributions on the interplay of statistical physics and artificial intelligence. The aim is to provide a constructive dialogue around a common foundation to allow the establishment of new principles and laws governing these two disciplines in a unified manner. The contributions were presented at the workshop on the Joint Structures and Common Foundation of Statistical Physics, Information Geometry and Inference for Learning which was held in Les Houches in July 2020. The various theoretical approaches are discussed in the context of potential applications in cognitive systems, machine learning, signal processing.
E.T. Jaynes
Author: Edwin T. Jaynes
language: en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date: 1989-04-30
The first six chapters of this volume present the author's 'predictive' or information theoretic' approach to statistical mechanics, in which the basic probability distributions over microstates are obtained as distributions of maximum entropy (Le. , as distributions that are most non-committal with regard to missing information among all those satisfying the macroscopically given constraints). There is then no need to make additional assumptions of ergodicity or metric transitivity; the theory proceeds entirely by inference from macroscopic measurements and the underlying dynamical assumptions. Moreover, the method of maximizing the entropy is completely general and applies, in particular, to irreversible processes as well as to reversible ones. The next three chapters provide a broader framework - at once Bayesian and objective - for maximum entropy inference. The basic principles of inference, including the usual axioms of probability, are seen to rest on nothing more than requirements of consistency, above all, the requirement that in two problems where we have the same information we must assign the same probabilities. Thus, statistical mechanics is viewed as a branch of a general theory of inference, and the latter as an extension of the ordinary logic of consistency. Those who are familiar with the literature of statistics and statistical mechanics will recognize in both of these steps a genuine 'scientific revolution' - a complete reversal of earlier conceptions - and one of no small significance.