Persistent obstruction theory for a model category of measures with applications to data merging
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- by Abraham D. Smith, Paul Bendich and John Harer HTML | PDF
- Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. Ser. B 8 (2021), 1-38
Abstract:
Collections of measures on compact metric spaces form a model category (“data complexes”), whose morphisms are marginalization integrals. The fibrant objects in this category represent collections of measures in which there is a measure on a product space that marginalizes to any measures on pairs of its factors. The homotopy and homology for this category allow measurement of obstructions to finding measures on larger and larger product spaces. The obstruction theory is compatible with a fibrant filtration built from the Wasserstein distance on measures.
Despite the abstract tools, this is motivated by a widespread problem in data science. Data complexes provide a mathematical foundation for semi-automated data-alignment tools that are common in commercial database software. Practically speaking, the theory shows that database JOIN operations are subject to genuine topological obstructions. Those obstructions can be detected by an obstruction cocycle and can be resolved by moving through a filtration. Thus, any collection of databases has a persistence level, which measures the difficulty of JOINing those databases. Because of its general formulation, this persistent obstruction theory also encompasses multi-modal data fusion problems, some forms of Bayesian inference, and probability couplings.
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Additional Information
- Abraham D. Smith
- Affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, Wisconsin 54751; and Geometric Data Analytics, Inc., Durham, North Carolina 27707
- MR Author ID: 924528
- ORCID: 0000-0002-6875-3290
- Email: smithabr@uwstout.edu
- Paul Bendich
- Affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708; and Geometric Data Analytics, Inc., Durham, North Carolina 27707
- MR Author ID: 936459
- Email: bendich@math.duke.edu
- John Harer
- Affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27707; and Geometric Data Analytics, Inc., Durham, North Carolina 27707
- MR Author ID: 81320
- Email: harer@math.duke.edu
- Received by editor(s): December 4, 2019
- Received by editor(s) in revised form: August 7, 2020
- Published electronically: February 2, 2021
- Additional Notes: Work by all three authors was partially supported by the DARPA Simplex Program, under contract # HR001118C0070. The last two authors were also partially supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant AFOSR FA9550-18-1-0266.
- © Copyright 2021 by the authors under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License (CC BY NC 3.0)
- Journal: Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. Ser. B 8 (2021), 1-38
- MSC (2020): Primary 55U10; Secondary 55S35
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1090/btran/56
- MathSciNet review: 4207891