NNPDF

Last updated
NNPDF
Developer(s) The NNPDF Collaboration
Stable release
4.0
Type Particle physics
Website nnpdf.mi.infn.it

NNPDF is the acronym used to identify the parton distribution functions from the NNPDF Collaboration. NNPDF parton densities are extracted from global fits to data based on a combination of a Monte Carlo method for uncertainty estimation and the use of neural networks as basic interpolating functions.

Contents

Methodology

The NNPDF Collaboration strategy is summarized in this diagram. General-strategy-evol.jpg
The NNPDF Collaboration strategy is summarized in this diagram.

The NNPDF approach can be divided into four main steps:

The set of PDF sets (trained neural networks) provides a representation of the underlying PDF probability density, from which any statistical estimator can be computed.

Example

The image below shows the gluon at small-x from the NNPDF1.0 analysis, available through the LHAPDF interface

Releases

The NNPDF releases are summarised in the following table:

PDF setDIS dataDrell-Yan dataJet dataLHC dataIndependent param. of and Heavy Quark massesNNLO
NNPDF4.0 YesYesYesYesYesYesYes
NNPDF3.1 YesYesYesYesYesYesYes
NNPDF3.0 YesYesYesYesYesYesYes
NNPDF2.3 YesYesYesYesYesYesYes
NNPDF2.2 YesYesYesYesYesYesYes
NNPDF2.1 YesYesYesNoYesYesYes
NNPDF2.0 YesYesYesNoYesNoNo
NNPDF1.2 YesNoNoNoYesNoNo
NNPDF1.0 YesNoNoNoNoNoNo

All PDF sets are available through the LHAPDF interface and in the NNPDF webpage.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Median</span> Middle quantile of a data set or probability distribution

In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic feature of the median in describing data compared to the mean is that it is not skewed by a small proportion of extremely large or small values, and therefore provides a better representation of the center. Median income, for example, may be a better way to describe center of the income distribution because increases in the largest incomes alone have no effect on median. For this reason, the median is of central importance in robust statistics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Supervised learning</span> A paradigm in machine learning

Supervised learning (SL) is a paradigm in machine learning where input objects and a desired output value train a model. The training data is processed, building a function that maps new data on expected output values. An optimal scenario will allow for the algorithm to correctly determine output values for unseen instances. This requires the learning algorithm to generalize from the training data to unseen situations in a "reasonable" way. This statistical quality of an algorithm is measured through the so-called generalization error.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Least squares</span> Approximation method in statistics

The method of least squares is a parameter estimation method in regression analysis based on minimizing the sum of the squares of the residuals made in the results of each individual equation.

In statistics, point estimation involves the use of sample data to calculate a single value which is to serve as a "best guess" or "best estimate" of an unknown population parameter. More formally, it is the application of a point estimator to the data to obtain a point estimate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outlier</span> Observation far apart from others in statistics and data science

In statistics, an outlier is a data point that differs significantly from other observations. An outlier may be due to a variability in the measurement, an indication of novel data, or it may be the result of experimental error; the latter are sometimes excluded from the data set. An outlier can be an indication of exciting possibility, but can also cause serious problems in statistical analyses.

In statistics, the mean squared error (MSE) or mean squared deviation (MSD) of an estimator measures the average of the squares of the errors—that is, the average squared difference between the estimated values and the actual value. MSE is a risk function, corresponding to the expected value of the squared error loss. The fact that MSE is almost always strictly positive is because of randomness or because the estimator does not account for information that could produce a more accurate estimate. In machine learning, specifically empirical risk minimization, MSE may refer to the empirical risk, as an estimate of the true MSE.

Global optimization is a branch of applied mathematics and numerical analysis that attempts to find the global minima or maxima of a function or a set of functions on a given set. It is usually described as a minimization problem because the maximization of the real-valued function is equivalent to the minimization of the function .

In mathematical statistics, the Fisher information is a way of measuring the amount of information that an observable random variable X carries about an unknown parameter θ of a distribution that models X. Formally, it is the variance of the score, or the expected value of the observed information.

Importance sampling is a Monte Carlo method for evaluating properties of a particular distribution, while only having samples generated from a different distribution than the distribution of interest. Its introduction in statistics is generally attributed to a paper by Teun Kloek and Herman K. van Dijk in 1978, but its precursors can be found in statistical physics as early as 1949. Importance sampling is also related to umbrella sampling in computational physics. Depending on the application, the term may refer to the process of sampling from this alternative distribution, the process of inference, or both.

Stochastic gradient descent is an iterative method for optimizing an objective function with suitable smoothness properties. It can be regarded as a stochastic approximation of gradient descent optimization, since it replaces the actual gradient by an estimate thereof. Especially in high-dimensional optimization problems this reduces the very high computational burden, achieving faster iterations in exchange for a lower convergence rate.

Estimation theory is a branch of statistics that deals with estimating the values of parameters based on measured empirical data that has a random component. The parameters describe an underlying physical setting in such a way that their value affects the distribution of the measured data. An estimator attempts to approximate the unknown parameters using the measurements. In estimation theory, two approaches are generally considered:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jet (particle physics)</span>

A jet is a narrow cone of hadrons and other particles produced by the hadronization of quarks and gluons in a particle physics or heavy ion experiment. Particles carrying a color charge, i.e. quarks and gluons, cannot exist in free form because of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) confinement which only allows for colorless states. When protons collide at high energies, their color charged components each carry away some of the color charge. In order to obey confinement, these fragments create other colored objects around them to form colorless hadrons. The ensemble of these objects is called a jet, since the fragments all tend to travel in the same direction, forming a narrow "jet" of particles. Jets are measured in particle detectors and studied in order to determine the properties of the original quarks.

In particle physics, the parton model is a model of hadrons, such as protons and neutrons, proposed by Richard Feynman. It is useful for interpreting the cascades of radiation produced from quantum chromodynamics (QCD) processes and interactions in high-energy particle collisions.

In statistics, M-estimators are a broad class of extremum estimators for which the objective function is a sample average. Both non-linear least squares and maximum likelihood estimation are special cases of M-estimators. The definition of M-estimators was motivated by robust statistics, which contributed new types of M-estimators. However, M-estimators are not inherently robust, as is clear from the fact that they include maximum likelihood estimators, which are in general not robust. The statistical procedure of evaluating an M-estimator on a data set is called M-estimation.

In statistics, robust measures of scale are methods that quantify the statistical dispersion in a sample of numerical data while resisting outliers. The most common such robust statistics are the interquartile range (IQR) and the median absolute deviation (MAD). These are contrasted with conventional or non-robust measures of scale, such as sample standard deviation, which are greatly influenced by outliers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bias–variance tradeoff</span> Property of a model

In statistics and machine learning, the bias–variance tradeoff describes the relationship between a model's complexity, the accuracy of its predictions, and how well it can make predictions on previously unseen data that were not used to train the model. In general, as we increase the number of tunable parameters in a model, it becomes more flexible, and can better fit a training data set. It is said to have lower error, or bias. However, for more flexible models, there will tend to be greater variance to the model fit each time we take a set of samples to create a new training data set. It is said that there is greater variance in the model's estimated parameters.

In computational statistics, the pseudo-marginal Metropolis–Hastings algorithm is a Monte Carlo method to sample from a probability distribution. It is an instance of the popular Metropolis–Hastings algorithm that extends its use to cases where the target density is not available analytically. It relies on the fact that the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm can still sample from the correct target distribution if the target density in the acceptance ratio is replaced by an estimate. It is especially popular in Bayesian statistics, where it is applied if the likelihood function is not tractable.

In machine learning, a variational autoencoder (VAE) is an artificial neural network architecture introduced by Diederik P. Kingma and Max Welling. It is part of the families of probabilistic graphical models and variational Bayesian methods.

In the study of artificial neural networks (ANNs), the neural tangent kernel (NTK) is a kernel that describes the evolution of deep artificial neural networks during their training by gradient descent. It allows ANNs to be studied using theoretical tools from kernel methods.

An energy-based model (EBM) (Canonical Ensemble Learning(CEL) or Learning via Canonical Ensemble (LCE)) is an application of canonical ensemble formulation of statistical physics for learning from data problems. Approach prominently appears in generative models.