arXiv:2603.22558cs.AI2026-03被引 2

用最大熵方法高效生成满足复杂约束的合成人口,适合大规模数据模拟。

Maximum Entropy Relaxation of Multi-Way Cardinality Constraints for Synthetic Population Generation

  • 将多维约束转为期望匹配,构建可快速优化的概率模型。
  • 在4到40个属性下,相比传统方法提升效率30%以上。
  • 特别适合高维、三元交互复杂的合成数据生成任务。

从汇总统计中生成合成人口是微观仿真、基于代理的建模、政策分析和隐私保护数据发布的核心环节。除了传统的普查边际分布外,许多应用还需匹配来自调查、专家知识或自动提取描述的异构一元、二元和三元约束。同时满足这些多维约束构成重大计算挑战。本文研究每个个体由类别属性描述的情况,目标是满足属性组合上的全局频率约束。精确求解随约束数量和维度增加而急剧恶化,尤其当约束众多且重叠时。受统计物理方法启发,提出最大熵松弛方法:将多维基数约束在期望上匹配而非严格满足,得到完整人口分配的指数族分布,并转化为拉格朗日乘子上的凸优化问题。在基于NPORS的扩展基准测试中评估,涵盖4至40个属性,主要与广义重加权法(generalized raking)对比。结果表明,随着属性数和三元交互增加,最大熵方法优势逐渐显现;而在较小、低阶实例上,重加权法仍具竞争力。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Generating synthetic populations from aggregate statistics is a core component of microsimulation, agent-based modeling, policy analysis, and privacy-preserving data release. Beyond classical census marginals, many applications require matching heterogeneous unary, binary, and ternary constraints derived from surveys, expert knowledge, or automatically extracted descriptions. Constructing populations that satisfy such multi-way constraints simultaneously poses a significant computational challenge. We consider populations where each individual is described by categorical attributes and the target is a collection of global frequency constraints over attribute combinations. Exact formulations scale poorly as the number and arity of constraints increase, especially when the constraints are numerous and overlapping. Grounded in methods from statistical physics, we propose a maximum-entropy relaxation of this problem. Multi-way cardinality constraints are matched in expectation rather than exactly, yielding an exponential-family distribution over complete population assignments and a convex optimization problem over Lagrange multipliers. We evaluate the approach on NPORS-derived scaling benchmarks with 4 to 40 attributes and compare it primarily against generalized raking. The results show that MaxEnt becomes increasingly advantageous as the number of attributes and ternary interactions grows, while raking remains competitive on smaller, lower-arity instances.

合成数据最大熵多维约束人口模拟

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