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Sebastian Tschiatschek

Sebastian Tschiatschek contributes to research discovery and scholarly infrastructure.

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Published work

8 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

FRInGe: Distribution-Space Integrated Gradients with Fisher--Rao Geometry

Gradient-based attribution methods are model-faithful and scalable, but Integrated Gradients (IG) can be brittle because explanations depend on heuristic baselines, straight-line paths, discretization, and saturation. We propose Fisher--Rao Integrated Gradients (FRInGe), which defines both the reference and interpolation schedule in predictive distribution space. FRInGe replaces input baselines with a maximum-entropy predictive reference and follows a Fisher-Rao geodesic on the probability simplex. The corresponding input-space trajectory is realized through the pullback Fisher metric and stabilized by KL and Euclidean trust regions; attributions are obtained by integrating input gradients along this trajectory. Across six ImageNet architectures, FRInGe most clearly improves calibration-oriented attribution metrics, especially MAS scores, while remaining competitive on perturbation AUC and infidelity.

preprint2022arXiv

Equity and Fairness of Bayesian Knowledge Tracing

We consider the equity and fairness of curricula derived from Knowledge Tracing models. We begin by defining a unifying notion of an equitable tutoring system as a system that achieves maximum possible knowledge in minimal time for each student interacting with it. Realizing perfect equity requires tutoring systems that can provide individualized curricula per student. In particular, we investigate the design of equitable tutoring systems that derive their curricula from Knowledge Tracing models. We first show that many existing models, including classical Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT) and Deep Knowledge Tracing (DKT), and their derived curricula can fall short of achieving equitable tutoring. To overcome this issue, we then propose a novel model, Bayesian-Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BBKT), that naturally enables online individualization and, thereby, more equitable tutoring. We demonstrate that curricula derived from our model are more effective and equitable than those derived from classical BKT models. Furthermore, we highlight that improving models with a focus on the fairness of next-step predictions might be insufficient to develop equitable tutoring systems.

preprint2022arXiv

Information Directed Reward Learning for Reinforcement Learning

For many reinforcement learning (RL) applications, specifying a reward is difficult. This paper considers an RL setting where the agent obtains information about the reward only by querying an expert that can, for example, evaluate individual states or provide binary preferences over trajectories. From such expensive feedback, we aim to learn a model of the reward that allows standard RL algorithms to achieve high expected returns with as few expert queries as possible. To this end, we propose Information Directed Reward Learning (IDRL), which uses a Bayesian model of the reward and selects queries that maximize the information gain about the difference in return between plausibly optimal policies. In contrast to prior active reward learning methods designed for specific types of queries, IDRL naturally accommodates different query types. Moreover, it achieves similar or better performance with significantly fewer queries by shifting the focus from reducing the reward approximation error to improving the policy induced by the reward model. We support our findings with extensive evaluations in multiple environments and with different query types.

preprint2022arXiv

Interactively Learning Preference Constraints in Linear Bandits

We study sequential decision-making with known rewards and unknown constraints, motivated by situations where the constraints represent expensive-to-evaluate human preferences, such as safe and comfortable driving behavior. We formalize the challenge of interactively learning about these constraints as a novel linear bandit problem which we call constrained linear best-arm identification. To solve this problem, we propose the Adaptive Constraint Learning (ACOL) algorithm. We provide an instance-dependent lower bound for constrained linear best-arm identification and show that ACOL's sample complexity matches the lower bound in the worst-case. In the average case, ACOL's sample complexity bound is still significantly tighter than bounds of simpler approaches. In synthetic experiments, ACOL performs on par with an oracle solution and outperforms a range of baselines. As an application, we consider learning constraints to represent human preferences in a driving simulation. ACOL is significantly more sample efficient than alternatives for this application. Further, we find that learning preferences as constraints is more robust to changes in the driving scenario than encoding the preferences directly in the reward function.

preprint2022arXiv

Option Transfer and SMDP Abstraction with Successor Features

Abstraction plays an important role in the generalisation of knowledge and skills and is key to sample efficient learning. In this work, we study joint temporal and state abstraction in reinforcement learning, where temporally-extended actions in the form of options induce temporal abstractions, while aggregation of similar states with respect to abstract options induces state abstractions. Many existing abstraction schemes ignore the interplay of state and temporal abstraction. Consequently, the considered option policies often cannot be directly transferred to new environments due to changes in the state space and transition dynamics. To address this issue, we propose a novel abstraction scheme building on successor features. This includes an algorithm for transferring abstract options across different environments and a state abstraction mechanism that allows us to perform efficient planning with the transferred options.

preprint2021arXiv

Educational Question Mining At Scale: Prediction, Analysis and Personalization

Online education platforms enable teachers to share a large number of educational resources such as questions to form exercises and quizzes for students. With large volumes of available questions, it is important to have an automated way to quantify their properties and intelligently select them for students, enabling effective and personalized learning experiences. In this work, we propose a framework for mining insights from educational questions at scale. We utilize the state-of-the-art Bayesian deep learning method, in particular partial variational auto-encoders (p-VAE), to analyze real students' answers to a large collection of questions. Based on p-VAE, we propose two novel metrics that quantify question quality and difficulty, respectively, and a personalized strategy to adaptively select questions for students. We apply our proposed framework to a real-world dataset with tens of thousands of questions and tens of millions of answers from an online education platform. Our framework not only demonstrates promising results in terms of statistical metrics but also obtains highly consistent results with domain experts' evaluation.

preprint2020arXiv

Towards Deployment of Robust AI Agents for Human-Machine Partnerships

We study the problem of designing AI agents that can robustly cooperate with people in human-machine partnerships. Our work is inspired by real-life scenarios in which an AI agent, e.g., a virtual assistant, has to cooperate with new users after its deployment. We model this problem via a parametric MDP framework where the parameters correspond to a user's type and characterize her behavior. In the test phase, the AI agent has to interact with a user of unknown type. Our approach to designing a robust AI agent relies on observing the user's actions to make inferences about the user's type and adapting its policy to facilitate efficient cooperation. We show that without being adaptive, an AI agent can end up performing arbitrarily bad in the test phase. We develop two algorithms for computing policies that automatically adapt to the user in the test phase. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in solving a two-agent collaborative task.

preprint2020arXiv

VAEM: a Deep Generative Model for Heterogeneous Mixed Type Data

Deep generative models often perform poorly in real-world applications due to the heterogeneity of natural data sets. Heterogeneity arises from data containing different types of features (categorical, ordinal, continuous, etc.) and features of the same type having different marginal distributions. We propose an extension of variational autoencoders (VAEs) called VAEM to handle such heterogeneous data. VAEM is a deep generative model that is trained in a two stage manner such that the first stage provides a more uniform representation of the data to the second stage, thereby sidestepping the problems caused by heterogeneous data. We provide extensions of VAEM to handle partially observed data, and demonstrate its performance in data generation, missing data prediction and sequential feature selection tasks. Our results show that VAEM broadens the range of real-world applications where deep generative models can be successfully deployed.