Scalable Inversion of Contests with Correlated Performances, Including Softmax and Multinomial Probit

📅 2026-09-01
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🤖 AI Summary
本文解决了大规模相关竞赛中的逆问题,通过使用包括因子、块和层次协方差结构在内的方法,提高了计算效率和准确性。
📝 Abstract
Multinomial probit choice probabilities over n alternatives are Gaussian orthant integrals, computed by simulation for thirty years, one expensive integral per alternative. Inversion, which is to say determining item attractiveness consistent with a prescribed choice probability vector, is even more difficult and has been considered impractical for correlated contests when n is large. Yet here, for families lying within a grammar including factor, block and hierarchical covariance structures, we exhibit a calibration tested at n = 1,000,000 reproducing probabilities to very high accuracy, even in the extreme tail. We must return to much smaller problems for any performance comparison to be possible due to limitations of the prior art. The Geweke-Hajivassiliou-Keane simulator is the standard (and still appropriate for high rank) but is two hundred times slower already at n = 200, and its measured cost grows roughly as n^2.8 while ours is linear. Furthermore our approach applies to any continuous performance distributions within reason: the Thurstone-Mosteller model families thereby become a practical alternative to logit at modern scale.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

Inversion
Contests
Correlated Performances
Multinomial Probit
Scalability
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

Scalable Inversion
Correlated Performances
High Accuracy
Linear Cost Growth
Continuous Performance Distributions
P
Peter Cotton