Posterior Contraction of Lévy Adaptive B-spline Regression in Besov Spaces

Jeunghun Oh; Sewon Park; Jaeyong Lee

stat.MLMay 19, 2026

Posterior Contraction of Lévy Adaptive B-spline Regression in Besov Spaces

Authors: Jeunghun Oh, Sewon Park, Jaeyong Lee

Organizations: Department of Statistics, Seoul National University. · Department of Statistics, Sookmyung Women’s University.

Abstract

We investigate the asymptotic properties of the Lévy Adaptive B-spline (LABS) regression model, a Bayesian nonparametric method that incorporates B-spline kernels into the Lévy Adaptive Regression Kernel (LARK) model. LABS applies splines of varying degrees with independently defined knots, yielding a flexible model class capable of adapting to irregular and locally structured features of the true function. Within the nonparametric regression framework with univariate random design and Gaussian errors, we establish that the LABS posterior contracts around the true function in Besov classes at nearly minimax-optimal rates, up to a logarithmic factor, while adapting automatically to unknown smoothness. This study contributes to filling a gap in the literature, where theoretical results on posterior contraction of the LARK model in Besov spaces remain scarce. Simulation experiments on standard test functions in Besov spaces, including Blocks, Bumps, HeaviSine, and Doppler, complement the theoretical results and demonstrate the practical utility of LABS.

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Posterior Contraction Rates for Sparse Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks in Anisotropic Besov Spaces

Jeunghun Oh, Kyeongwon Lee, Jaeyong Lee, Lizhen Lin

Department of Statistics, Seoul National University · Department of Statistics, Inha University · Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland

We study posterior contraction rates for sparse Bayesian Kolmogorov-Arnold networks (KANs) over anisotropic Besov spaces, providing a statistical foundation of KANs from a Bayesian point of view. We show that sparse Bayesian KANs equipped with spike-and-slab-type sparsity priors attain the near-minimax posterior contraction. In particular, the contraction rate depends on the intrinsic anisotropic smoothness of the underlying function. Moreover, by placing a hyperprior on a single model-size parameter, the resulting posterior adapts to unknown anisotropic smoothness and still achieves the corresponding near-minimax rate. A distinctive feature of our results, compared with those for standard sparse MLP-based models, is that the KAN depth can be kept fixed: owing to the flexibility of learnable spline edge functions, the required approximation complexity is controlled through the network width, spline-grid range and size, and parameter sparsity. Our analysis develops theoretical tools tailored to sparse spline-edge architectures, including approximation and complexity bounds for Bayesian KANs. We then extend to compositional Besov spaces and show that the contraction rates depend on layerwise smoothness and effective dimension of the underlying compositional structure, thereby effectively avoiding the curse of dimensionality. Together, the developed tools and findings advance the theoretical understanding of Bayesian neural networks and provide rigorous statistical foundations for KANs.

Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks Bayesian Neural Networks Logarithmic Sobolev Inequalities Contraction Sparsity B-Spline

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Abstract

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