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Main Authors: Dixon, Thomas, Gorodetsky, Alex, Jakeman, John, Narayan, Akil, Xu, Yiming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09828
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author Dixon, Thomas
Gorodetsky, Alex
Jakeman, John
Narayan, Akil
Xu, Yiming
author_facet Dixon, Thomas
Gorodetsky, Alex
Jakeman, John
Narayan, Akil
Xu, Yiming
contents Multi-fidelity methods that use an ensemble of models to compute a Monte Carlo estimator of the expectation of a high-fidelity model can significantly reduce computational costs compared to single-model approaches. These methods use oracle statistics, specifically the covariance between models, to optimally allocate samples to each model in the ensemble. However, in practice, the oracle statistics are estimated using additional model evaluations, whose computational cost and induced error are typically ignored. To address this issue, this paper proposes an adaptive algorithm to optimally balance the resources between oracle statistics estimation and final multi-fidelity estimator construction, leveraging ideas from multilevel best linear unbiased estimators in Schaden and Ullmann (2020) and a bandit-learning procedure in Xu et al. (2022). Under mild assumptions, we demonstrate that the multi-fidelity estimator produced by the proposed algorithm exhibits mean-squared error commensurate with that of the best linear unbiased estimator under the optimal allocation computed with oracle statistics. Our theoretical findings are supported by detailed numerical experiments, including a parametric elliptic PDE and an ice-sheet mass-change modeling problem.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_09828
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimally balancing exploration and exploitation to automate multi-fidelity statistical estimation
Dixon, Thomas
Gorodetsky, Alex
Jakeman, John
Narayan, Akil
Xu, Yiming
Computation
Multi-fidelity methods that use an ensemble of models to compute a Monte Carlo estimator of the expectation of a high-fidelity model can significantly reduce computational costs compared to single-model approaches. These methods use oracle statistics, specifically the covariance between models, to optimally allocate samples to each model in the ensemble. However, in practice, the oracle statistics are estimated using additional model evaluations, whose computational cost and induced error are typically ignored. To address this issue, this paper proposes an adaptive algorithm to optimally balance the resources between oracle statistics estimation and final multi-fidelity estimator construction, leveraging ideas from multilevel best linear unbiased estimators in Schaden and Ullmann (2020) and a bandit-learning procedure in Xu et al. (2022). Under mild assumptions, we demonstrate that the multi-fidelity estimator produced by the proposed algorithm exhibits mean-squared error commensurate with that of the best linear unbiased estimator under the optimal allocation computed with oracle statistics. Our theoretical findings are supported by detailed numerical experiments, including a parametric elliptic PDE and an ice-sheet mass-change modeling problem.
title Optimally balancing exploration and exploitation to automate multi-fidelity statistical estimation
topic Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09828