用随机时钟建模重尾数据,提升生成效果与尾部统计精度。
Heavy-Tailed Flow Matching via Random Clocks

- 将重尾源分布视为时钟条件下的高斯混合,实现灵活建模。
- 在2D混合、CIFAR10-LT和天气数据上显著提升模式覆盖与尾部恢复能力。
- 支持通过调整时钟分布直接控制生成样本的尾部重量,适用性强。
重尾数据在图像不平衡、金融回报和极端天气等场景中普遍存在,稀有事件具有重要影响。标准扩散与流匹配模型通常以高斯噪声或高斯源分布为起点,虽训练简便,但对重尾数据的归纳先验不足。本文提出基于随机时钟的重尾流匹配(HTFM)框架,将重尾源分布表示为时钟条件下的高斯混合:给定时钟路径时,源分布与流为高斯;对时钟边缘化后,可覆盖高斯、α-稳定与学生氏分布族。为使时钟条件向量场实用,采用截断对数签名特征编码路径值时钟,使速度场能适应实际条件空间,开销极低。实验表明,在2D不均衡α-稳定混合、CIFAR10-LT和HRRR天气场数据上,HTFM在模式覆盖、样本质量及尾部统计恢复方面优于高斯流匹配和现有重尾基线,同时保持流匹配低NFE采样优势。此外,随机时钟形式还提供实用的尾部调控接口:仅改变时钟分布或尾部参数,即可在不同分布族间调节生成尾部的“厚重程度”。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Heavy-tailed data arise in many domains where rare events carry disproportionate importance, such as imbalanced image datasets, financial returns, and weather extremes. Standard diffusion and flow-matching models typically begin from Gaussian noise or Gaussian source distributions, which yield tractable training targets but provide a poor inductive match for heavy-tailed data. We propose Heavy-Tailed Flow Matching via Random Clocks (HTFM), a framework that portrays heavy-tailed sources as mixtures of clock-conditioned Gaussian sources. Conditioning on a given clock path, the source distribution and flow are Gaussian; marginalizing over the clock gives a Gaussian scale mixture covering Gaussian, $α$-stable, and Student-t families. To make the clock-conditioned vector field practical, we encode the path-valued clock using truncated logsignature features, allowing the velocity field to adapt to the realized conditional space with negligible overhead. Empirically, on 2D imbalanced $α$-stable mixtures, CIFAR10-LT, and HRRR weather fields, HTFM improves mode coverage, sample quality, and tail-statistic recovery over Gaussian flow matching and competitive heavy-tailed baselines, while retaining the low-NFE sampling advantage of flow matching. Moreover, the random-clock formulation further provides a practical tail-control interface: by varying only the clock law or tail parameter, the same architecture can calibrate the ``heaviness'' of generated tails across different distribution families.
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