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Communications of the American Mathematical Society

Launched by the American Mathematical Society in 2021, Communications of the American Mathematical Society (CAMS), is a Diamond Open Access online journal dedicated to publishing the very best research and review articles across all areas of mathematics. The journal presents a holistic view of mathematics and its applications to a wide range of disciplines.

ISSN 2692-3688

The 2020 MCQ for Communications of the American Mathematical Society is 1.00.

What is MCQ? The Mathematical Citation Quotient (MCQ) measures journal impact by looking at citations over a five-year period. Subscribers to MathSciNet may click through for more detailed information.

 

A framework for machine learning of model error in dynamical systems
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by Matthew E. Levine and Andrew M. Stuart
Comm. Amer. Math. Soc. 2 (2022), 283-344
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1090/cams/10
Published electronically: October 14, 2022

Abstract:

The development of data-informed predictive models for dynamical systems is of widespread interest in many disciplines. We present a unifying framework for blending mechanistic and machine-learning approaches to identify dynamical systems from noisily and partially observed data. We compare pure data-driven learning with hybrid models which incorporate imperfect domain knowledge, referring to the discrepancy between an assumed truth model and the imperfect mechanistic model as model error. Our formulation is agnostic to the chosen machine learning model, is presented in both continuous- and discrete-time settings, and is compatible both with model errors that exhibit substantial memory and errors that are memoryless.

First, we study memoryless linear (w.r.t. parametric-dependence) model error from a learning theory perspective, defining excess risk and generalization error. For ergodic continuous-time systems, we prove that both excess risk and generalization error are bounded above by terms that diminish with the square-root of $T$, the time-interval over which training data is specified.

Secondly, we study scenarios that benefit from modeling with memory, proving universal approximation theorems for two classes of continuous-time recurrent neural networks (RNNs): both can learn memory-dependent model error, assuming that it is governed by a finite-dimensional hidden variable and that, together, the observed and hidden variables form a continuous-time Markovian system. In addition, we connect one class of RNNs to reservoir computing, thereby relating learning of memory-dependent error to recent work on supervised learning between Banach spaces using random features.

Numerical results are presented (Lorenz ’63, Lorenz ’96 Multiscale systems) to compare purely data-driven and hybrid approaches, finding hybrid methods less datahungry and more parametrically efficient. We also find that, while a continuous-time framing allows for robustness to irregular sampling and desirable domain- interpretability, a discrete-time framing can provide similar or better predictive performance, especially when data are undersampled and the vector field defining the true dynamics cannot be identified. Finally, we demonstrate numerically how data assimilation can be leveraged to learn hidden dynamics from noisy, partially-observed data, and illustrate challenges in representing memory by this approach, and in the training of such models.

References
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Bibliographic Information
  • Matthew E. Levine
  • Affiliation: Department. of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125
  • MR Author ID: 1338408
  • ORCID: 0000-0002-5627-3169
  • Email: mlevine@caltech.edu
  • Andrew M. Stuart
  • Affiliation: Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125
  • MR Author ID: 168395
  • ORCID: 0000-0001-9091-7266
  • Email: astuart@caltech.edu
  • Received by editor(s): July 13, 2021
  • Received by editor(s) in revised form: May 11, 2022, August 17, 2022, and August 21, 2022
  • Published electronically: October 14, 2022
  • Additional Notes: The work of the first and second authors was supported by NIH RO1 LM012734 “Mechanistic Machine Learning”. The first author was also supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1745301. The second author was also supported by NSF (award AGS-1835860), NSF (award DMS-1818977), the Office of Naval Research (award N00014-17-1-2079), and the AFOSR under MURI award number FA9550-20-1-0358 (Machine Learning and Physics-Based Modeling and Simulation). The computations presented here were conducted in the Resnick High Performance Center, a facility supported by Resnick Sustainability Institute at the California Institute of Technology.
  • © Copyright 2022 by the authors under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (CC BY NC 3.0)
  • Journal: Comm. Amer. Math. Soc. 2 (2022), 283-344
  • MSC (2020): Primary 68T30, 37A30, 37M10; Secondary 37M25, 41A30
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1090/cams/10
  • MathSciNet review: 4496956