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1110.1075
The Augmented Complex Kernel LMS
cs.LG
Recently, a unified framework for adaptive kernel based signal processing of complex data was presented by the authors, which, besides offering techniques to map the input data to complex Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces, developed a suitable Wirtinger-like Calculus for general Hilbert Spaces. In this short paper, the extended Wirtinger's calculus is adopted to derive complex kernel-based widely-linear estimation filters. Furthermore, we illuminate several important characteristics of the widely linear filters. We show that, although in many cases the gains from adopting widely linear estimation filters, as alternatives to ordinary linear ones, are rudimentary, for the case of kernel based widely linear filters significant performance improvements can be obtained.
1110.1078
Fixed point theory and semidefinite programming for computable performance analysis of block-sparsity recovery
cs.IT math.IT math.NA
In this paper, we employ fixed point theory and semidefinite programming to compute the performance bounds on convex block-sparsity recovery algorithms. As a prerequisite for optimal sensing matrix design, a computable performance bound would open doors for wide applications in sensor arrays, radar, DNA microarrays, and many other areas where block-sparsity arises naturally. We define a family of goodness measures for arbitrary sensing matrices as the optimal values of certain optimization problems. The reconstruction errors of convex recovery algorithms are bounded in terms of these goodness measures. We demonstrate that as long as the number of measurements is relatively large, these goodness measures are bounded away from zero for a large class of random sensing matrices, a result parallel to the probabilistic analysis of the block restricted isometry property. As the primary contribution of this work, we associate the goodness measures with the fixed points of functions defined by a series of semidefinite programs. This relation with fixed point theory yields efficient algorithms with global convergence guarantees to compute the goodness measures.
1110.1091
A simulation of the Neolithic transition in the Indus valley
q-bio.PE cs.MA
The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was one of the first great civilizations in prehistory. This bronze age civilization flourished from the end of the fourth millennium BC. It disintegrated during the second millennium BC; despite much research effort, this decline is not well understood. Less research has been devoted to the emergence of the IVC, which shows continuous cultural precursors since at least the seventh millennium BC. To understand the decline, we believe it is necessary to investigate the rise of the IVC, i.e., the establishment of agriculture and livestock, dense populations and technological developments 7000--3000 BC. Although much archaeological information is available, our capability to investigate the system is hindered by poorly resolved chronology, and by a lack of field work in the intermediate areas between the Indus valley and Mesopotamia. We thus employ a complementary numerical simulation to develop a consistent picture of technology, agropastoralism and population developments in the IVC domain. Results from this Global Land Use and technological Evolution Simulator show that there is (1) fair agreement between the simulated timing of the agricultural transition and radiocarbon dates from early agricultural sites, but the transition is simulated first in India then Pakistan; (2) an independent agropastoralism developing on the Indian subcontinent; and (3) a positive relationship between archeological artifact richness and simulated population density which remains to be quantified.
1110.1112
Modeling Perceived Relevance for Tail Queries without Click-Through Data
cs.IR
Click-through data has been used in various ways in Web search such as estimating relevance between documents and queries. Since only search snippets are perceived by users before issuing any clicks, the relevance induced by clicks are usually called \emph{perceived relevance} which has proven to be quite useful for Web search. While there is plenty of click data for popular queries, very little information is available for unpopular tail ones. These tail queries take a large portion of the search volume but search accuracy for these queries is usually unsatisfactory due to data sparseness such as limited click information. In this paper, we study the problem of modeling perceived relevance for queries without click-through data. Instead of relying on users' click data, we carefully design a set of snippet features and use them to approximately capture the perceived relevance. We study the effectiveness of this set of snippet features in two settings: (1) predicting perceived relevance and (2) enhancing search engine ranking. Experimental results show that our proposed model is effective to predict the relative perceived relevance of Web search results. Furthermore, our proposed snippet features are effective to improve search accuracy for longer tail queries without click-through data.
1110.1151
Mathematical aspects of decentralized control of formations in the plane
math.OC cs.SY
In formation control, an ensemble of autonomous agents is required to stabilize at a given configuration in the plane, doing so while agents are allowed to observe only a subset of the ensemble. As such, formation control provides a rich class of problems for decentralized control methods and techniques. Additionally, it can be used to model a wide variety of scenarios where decentralization is a main characteristic. We introduce here some mathematical background necessary to address questions of stability in decentralized control in general and formation control in particular. This background includes an extension of the notion of global stability to systems evolving on manifolds and a notion of robustness of feedback control for nonlinear systems. We then formally introduce the class of formation control problems, and summarize known results.
1110.1152
Known unknowns, unknown unknowns and information flow: new concepts in decentralized control
math.OC cs.SY
We introduce and analyze a model for decentral- ized control. The model is broad enough to include problems such as formation control, decentralization of the power grid and flocking. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, we show how the issue of decentralization goes beyond having agents know only part of the state of the system. In fact, we argue that a complete theory of decentralization should take into account the fact that agents can be made aware of only part of the global objective of the ensemble. A second contribution of this paper is the introduction of a rigorous definition of information flow for a decentralized system: we show how to attach to a general nonlinear decentralized system a unique information flow graph that is an invariant of the system. In order to address some finer issues in decentralized system, such as the existence of so-called "information loops", we further refine the information flow graph to a simplicial complex-more precisely, a Whitney complex. We illustrate the main results on a variety of examples.
1110.1193
A new class of codes for Boolean masking of cryptographic computations
cs.IT math.IT
We introduce a new class of rate one-half binary codes: {\bf complementary information set codes.} A binary linear code of length $2n$ and dimension $n$ is called a complementary information set code (CIS code for short) if it has two disjoint information sets. This class of codes contains self-dual codes as a subclass. It is connected to graph correlation immune Boolean functions of use in the security of hardware implementations of cryptographic primitives. Such codes permit to improve the cost of masking cryptographic algorithms against side channel attacks. In this paper we investigate this new class of codes: we give optimal or best known CIS codes of length $<132.$ We derive general constructions based on cyclic codes and on double circulant codes. We derive a Varshamov-Gilbert bound for long CIS codes, and show that they can all be classified in small lengths $\le 12$ by the building up construction. Some nonlinear permutations are constructed by using $\Z_4$-codes, based on the notion of dual distance of an unrestricted code.
1110.1198
On Joint Diagonalisation for Dynamic Network Analysis
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Joint diagonalisation (JD) is a technique used to estimate an average eigenspace of a set of matrices. Whilst it has been used successfully in many areas to track the evolution of systems via their eigenvectors; its application in network analysis is novel. The key focus in this paper is the use of JD on matrices of spanning trees of a network. This is especially useful in the case of real-world contact networks in which a single underlying static graph does not exist. The average eigenspace may be used to construct a graph which represents the `average spanning tree' of the network or a representation of the most common propagation paths. We then examine the distribution of deviations from the average and find that this distribution in real-world contact networks is multi-modal; thus indicating several \emph{modes} in the underlying network. These modes are identified and are found to correspond to particular times. Thus JD may be used to decompose the behaviour, in time, of contact networks and produce average static graphs for each time. This may be viewed as a mixture between a dynamic and static graph approach to contact network analysis.
1110.1208
Rotation, Scaling and Translation Analysis of Biometric Signature Templates
cs.CV cs.CR cs.IT cs.MM eess.IV math.IT
Biometric authentication systems that make use of signature verification methods often render optimum performance only under limited and restricted conditions. Such methods utilize several training samples so as to achieve high accuracy. Moreover, several constraints are imposed on the end-user so that the system may work optimally, and as expected. For example, the user is made to sign within a small box, in order to limit their signature to a predefined set of dimensions, thus eliminating scaling. Moreover, the angular rotation with respect to the referenced signature that will be inadvertently introduced as human error, hampers performance of biometric signature verification systems. To eliminate this, traditionally, a user is asked to sign exactly on top of a reference line. In this paper, we propose a robust system that optimizes the signature obtained from the user for a large range of variation in Rotation-Scaling-Translation (RST) and resolves these error parameters in the user signature according to the reference signature stored in the database.
1110.1209
Audio Watermarking with Error Correction
cs.CR cs.IT cs.MM eess.AS math.IT
In recent times, communication through the internet has tremendously facilitated the distribution of multimedia data. Although this is indubitably a boon, one of its repercussions is that it has also given impetus to the notorious issue of online music piracy. Unethical attempts can also be made to deliberately alter such copyrighted data and thus, misuse it. Copyright violation by means of unauthorized distribution, as well as unauthorized tampering of copyrighted audio data is an important technological and research issue. Audio watermarking has been proposed as a solution to tackle this issue. The main purpose of audio watermarking is to protect against possible threats to the audio data and in case of copyright violation or unauthorized tampering, authenticity of such data can be disputed by virtue of audio watermarking.
1110.1220
Standard Quantum Teleportation of an Arbitrary N-Qubit State, Non-Existence of Magic Basis and Existence of Magic Partial Bases for 2N Entangled Qubit States with N>1
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
We present a simple and precise protocol for standard quantum teleportation of N-qubit state, considering the most general resource q-channel and Bell states. We find condition on these states for perfect teleportation and give explicitly the unitary transformation required to be done by Bob for achieving perfect teleportation. We discuss connection of our simple theory with the complicated related work on this subject and with character matrix, transformation, judgment and kernel operators defined in this context. We also prove that the magic basis discussed by Hill and Wootters [Phys. Rev. Lett. 78 (1997) 5022] does not exist for entangled 2N-qubit states with N > 1 but magic partial bases, similar to those discussed recently by Prakash and Maurya [Optics Commun. 284 (2011) 5024] do exist. We give explicitly all magic partial bases for N = 2.
1110.1228
Order-distance and other metric-like functions on jointly distributed random variables
math.PR cs.AI math.ST q-bio.QM stat.TH
We construct a class of real-valued nonnegative binary functions on a set of jointly distributed random variables, which satisfy the triangle inequality and vanish at identical arguments (pseudo-quasi-metrics). These functions are useful in dealing with the problem of selective probabilistic causality encountered in behavioral sciences and in quantum physics. The problem reduces to that of ascertaining the existence of a joint distribution for a set of variables with known distributions of certain subsets of this set. Any violation of the triangle inequality or its consequences by one of our functions when applied to such a set rules out the existence of this joint distribution. We focus on an especially versatile and widely applicable pseudo-quasi-metric called an order-distance and its special case called a classification distance.
1110.1237
Free Deterministic Equivalents, Rectangular Random Matrix Models, and Operator-Valued Free Probability Theory
cs.IT math.IT math.OA
Motivated by the asymptotic collective behavior of random and deterministic matrices, we propose an approximation (called "free deterministic equivalent") to quite general random matrix models, by replacing the matrices with operators satisfying certain freeness relations. We comment on the relation between our free deterministic equivalent and deterministic equivalents considered in the engineering literature. We do not only consider the case of square matrices, but also show how rectangular matrices can be treated. Furthermore, we emphasize how operator-valued free probability techniques can be used to solve our free deterministic equivalents. As an illustration of our methods we consider a random matrix model studied first by R. Couillet, J. Hoydis, and M. Debbah. We show how its free deterministic equivalent can be treated and we thus recover in a conceptual way their result. On a technical level, we generalize a result from scalar valued free probability, by showing that randomly rotated deterministic matrices of different sizes are asymptotically free from deterministic rectangular matrices, with amalgamation over a certain algebra of projections. In the Appendix, we show how estimates for differences between Cauchy transforms can be extended from a neighborhood of infinity to a region close to the real axis. This is of some relevance if one wants to compare the original random matrix problem with its free deterministic equivalent.
1110.1259
Characterizing and Improving Generalized Belief Propagation Algorithms on the 2D Edwards-Anderson Model
cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.stat-mech cs.AI cs.IT math.IT
We study the performance of different message passing algorithms in the two dimensional Edwards Anderson model. We show that the standard Belief Propagation (BP) algorithm converges only at high temperature to a paramagnetic solution. Then, we test a Generalized Belief Propagation (GBP) algorithm, derived from a Cluster Variational Method (CVM) at the plaquette level. We compare its performance with BP and with other algorithms derived under the same approximation: Double Loop (DL) and a two-ways message passing algorithm (HAK). The plaquette-CVM approximation improves BP in at least three ways: the quality of the paramagnetic solution at high temperatures, a better estimate (lower) for the critical temperature, and the fact that the GBP message passing algorithm converges also to non paramagnetic solutions. The lack of convergence of the standard GBP message passing algorithm at low temperatures seems to be related to the implementation details and not to the appearance of long range order. In fact, we prove that a gauge invariance of the constrained CVM free energy can be exploited to derive a new message passing algorithm which converges at even lower temperatures. In all its region of convergence this new algorithm is faster than HAK and DL by some orders of magnitude.
1110.1301
Predicting User Actions in Software Processes
cs.SE cs.AI
This paper describes an approach for user (e.g. SW architect) assisting in software processes. The approach observes the user's action and tries to predict his next step. For this we use approaches in the area of machine learning (sequence learning) and adopt these for the use in software processes. Keywords: Software engineering, Software process description languages, Software processes, Machine learning, Sequence prediction
1110.1303
Discovering patterns of correlation and similarities in software project data with the Circos visualization tool
cs.SE cs.AI
Software cost estimation based on multivariate data from completed projects requires the building of efficient models. These models essentially describe relations in the data, either on the basis of correlations between variables or of similarities between the projects. The continuous growth of the amount of data gathered and the need to perform preliminary analysis in order to discover patterns able to drive the building of reasonable models, leads the researchers towards intelligent and time-saving tools which can effectively describe data and their relationships. The goal of this paper is to suggest an innovative visualization tool, widely used in bioinformatics, which represents relations in data in an aesthetic and intelligent way. In order to illustrate the capabilities of the tool, we use a well known dataset from software engineering projects.
1110.1328
Bayesian Locality Sensitive Hashing for Fast Similarity Search
cs.DB cs.AI cs.DS cs.IR
Given a collection of objects and an associated similarity measure, the all-pairs similarity search problem asks us to find all pairs of objects with similarity greater than a certain user-specified threshold. Locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) based methods have become a very popular approach for this problem. However, most such methods only use LSH for the first phase of similarity search - i.e. efficient indexing for candidate generation. In this paper, we present BayesLSH, a principled Bayesian algorithm for the subsequent phase of similarity search - performing candidate pruning and similarity estimation using LSH. A simpler variant, BayesLSH-Lite, which calculates similarities exactly, is also presented. BayesLSH is able to quickly prune away a large majority of the false positive candidate pairs, leading to significant speedups over baseline approaches. For BayesLSH, we also provide probabilistic guarantees on the quality of the output, both in terms of accuracy and recall. Finally, the quality of BayesLSH's output can be easily tuned and does not require any manual setting of the number of hashes to use for similarity estimation, unlike standard approaches. For two state-of-the-art candidate generation algorithms, AllPairs and LSH, BayesLSH enables significant speedups, typically in the range 2x-20x for a wide variety of datasets.
1110.1347
A Dual-based Method for Resource Allocation in OFDMA-SDMA Systems with Minimum Rate Constraints
cs.IT math.IT
We consider multi-antenna base stations using orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) and space division multiple access (SDMA) techniques to serve single antenna users, where some of those users have minimum rate requirements and must be served in the current time slot (real time users), while others do not have strict timing constraints (non real time users) and are served on a best effort basis. The resource allocation problem is to find the user assignment to subcarriers and the transmit beamforming vectors that maximize a linear utility function of the user rates subject to power and minimum rate constraints. The exact optimal solution to this problem can not be reasonably obtained for practical parameters values of the communication system. We thus derive a dual problem formulation whose optimal solution provides an upper bound to all feasible solutions and can be used to benchmark the performance of any heuristic method used to solve this problem. We also derive from this dual optimal solution a primal-feasible dual-based method to solve the problem and we compare its performance and computation time against a standard weight adjustment method. We find that our method follows the dual optimal bound more closely than the weight adjustment method. This off-line algorithm can serve as the basis to develop more efficient heuristic methods.
1110.1349
Supporting the Curation of Twitter User Lists
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph
Twitter introduced lists in late 2009 as a means of curating tweets into meaningful themes. Lists were quickly adopted by media companies as a means of organising content around news stories. Thus the curation of these lists is important, they should contain the key information gatekeepers and present a balanced perspective on the story. Identifying members to add to a list on an emerging topic is a delicate process. From a network analysis perspective there are a number of views on the Twitter network that can be explored, e.g. followers, retweets mentions etc. We present a process for integrating these views in order to recommend authoritative commentators to include on a list. This process is evaluated on manually curated lists about unrest in Bahrain and the Iowa caucuses for the 2012 US election.
1110.1358
Runtime Guarantees for Regression Problems
cs.DS cs.CV
We study theoretical runtime guarantees for a class of optimization problems that occur in a wide variety of inference problems. these problems are motivated by the lasso framework and have applications in machine learning and computer vision. Our work shows a close connection between these problems and core questions in algorithmic graph theory. While this connection demonstrates the difficulties of obtaining runtime guarantees, it also suggests an approach of using techniques originally developed for graph algorithms. We then show that most of these problems can be formulated as a grouped least squares problem, and give efficient algorithms for this formulation. Our algorithms rely on routines for solving quadratic minimization problems, which in turn are equivalent to solving linear systems. Finally we present some experimental results on applying our approximation algorithm to image processing problems.
1110.1388
Effects on quantum physics of the local availability of mathematics and space time dependent scaling factors for number systems
quant-ph cs.IT gr-qc math-ph math.IT math.MP
The work is based on two premises: local availability of mathematics to an observer at any space time location, and the observation that number systems, as structures satisfying axioms for the number type being considered, can be scaled by arbitrary, positive real numbers. Local availability leads to the assignment of mathematical universes, $V_{x},$ to each point, $x,$ of space time. $V_{x}$ contains all the mathematics that an observer, $O_{x},$ at $x,$ can know. Each $V_{x}$ contains many types of mathematical systems. These include the different types of numbers (natural numbers, integers, rationals, and real and complex numbers), Hilbert spaces, algebras, and many other types of systems. Space time dependent scaling of number systems is used to define representations, in $V_{x}$, of real and complex number systems in $V_{y}$. The representations are scaled by a factor $r_{y,x}$ relative to the systems in $V_{x}.$ For $y$ a neighbor point of $x,$ $r_{y,x}$ is the exponential of the scalar product of a gauge field, $\vec{A}(x),$ and the vector from $x$ to $y.$ For $y$ distant from $x,$ $r_{y,x}$ is a path integral from $x$ to $y.$ Some consequences of the two premises will be examined. Number scaling has no effect on general comparisons of numbers obtained as computations or as experimental outputs. The effect is limited to mathematical expressions that include space or space time integrals or derivatives. The effect of $\vec{A}$ on wave packets and canonical momenta in quantum theory, and some properties of $\vec{A}$ in gauge theories, is described.
1110.1391
A Comparison of Different Machine Transliteration Models
cs.CL cs.AI
Machine transliteration is a method for automatically converting words in one language into phonetically equivalent ones in another language. Machine transliteration plays an important role in natural language applications such as information retrieval and machine translation, especially for handling proper nouns and technical terms. Four machine transliteration models -- grapheme-based transliteration model, phoneme-based transliteration model, hybrid transliteration model, and correspondence-based transliteration model -- have been proposed by several researchers. To date, however, there has been little research on a framework in which multiple transliteration models can operate simultaneously. Furthermore, there has been no comparison of the four models within the same framework and using the same data. We addressed these problems by 1) modeling the four models within the same framework, 2) comparing them under the same conditions, and 3) developing a way to improve machine transliteration through this comparison. Our comparison showed that the hybrid and correspondence-based models were the most effective and that the four models can be used in a complementary manner to improve machine transliteration performance.
1110.1394
Learning Sentence-internal Temporal Relations
cs.CL cs.AI
In this paper we propose a data intensive approach for inferring sentence-internal temporal relations. Temporal inference is relevant for practical NLP applications which either extract or synthesize temporal information (e.g., summarisation, question answering). Our method bypasses the need for manual coding by exploiting the presence of markers like after", which overtly signal a temporal relation. We first show that models trained on main and subordinate clauses connected with a temporal marker achieve good performance on a pseudo-disambiguation task simulating temporal inference (during testing the temporal marker is treated as unseen and the models must select the right marker from a set of possible candidates). Secondly, we assess whether the proposed approach holds promise for the semi-automatic creation of temporal annotations. Specifically, we use a model trained on noisy and approximate data (i.e., main and subordinate clauses) to predict intra-sentential relations present in TimeBank, a corpus annotated rich temporal information. Our experiments compare and contrast several probabilistic models differing in their feature space, linguistic assumptions and data requirements. We evaluate performance against gold standard corpora and also against human subjects.
1110.1409
Good Fences: The Importance of Setting Boundaries for Peaceful Coexistence
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We consider the conditions of peace and violence among ethnic groups, testing a theory designed to predict the locations of violence and interventions that can promote peace. Characterizing the model's success in predicting peace requires examples where peace prevails despite diversity. Switzerland is recognized as a country of peace, stability and prosperity. This is surprising because of its linguistic and religious diversity that in other parts of the world lead to conflict and violence. Here we analyze how peaceful stability is maintained. Our analysis shows that peace does not depend on integrated coexistence, but rather on well defined topographical and political boundaries separating groups. Mountains and lakes are an important part of the boundaries between sharply defined linguistic areas. Political canton and circle (sub-canton) boundaries often separate religious groups. Where such boundaries do not appear to be sufficient, we find that specific aspects of the population distribution either guarantee sufficient separation or sufficient mixing to inhibit intergroup violence according to the quantitative theory of conflict. In exactly one region, a porous mountain range does not adequately separate linguistic groups and violent conflict has led to the recent creation of the canton of Jura. Our analysis supports the hypothesis that violence between groups can be inhibited by physical and political boundaries. A similar analysis of the area of the former Yugoslavia shows that during widespread ethnic violence existing political boundaries did not coincide with the boundaries of distinct groups, but peace prevailed in specific areas where they did coincide. The success of peace in Switzerland may serve as a model to resolve conflict in other ethnically diverse countries and regions of the world.
1110.1416
The matrices of argumentation frameworks
cs.IT cs.AI math.IT
We introduce matrix and its block to the Dung's theory of argumentation frameworks. It is showed that each argumentation framework has a matrix representation, and the common extension-based semantics of argumentation framework can be characterized by blocks of matrix and their relations. In contrast with traditional method of directed graph, the matrix way has the advantage of computability. Therefore, it has an extensive perspective to bring the theory of matrix into the research of argumentation frameworks and related areas.
1110.1428
Product Review Summarization based on Facet Identification and Sentence Clustering
cs.CL cs.DL
Product review nowadays has become an important source of information, not only for customers to find opinions about products easily and share their reviews with peers, but also for product manufacturers to get feedback on their products. As the number of product reviews grows, it becomes difficult for users to search and utilize these resources in an efficient way. In this work, we build a product review summarization system that can automatically process a large collection of reviews and aggregate them to generate a concise summary. More importantly, the drawback of existing product summarization systems is that they cannot provide the underlying reasons to justify users' opinions. In our method, we solve this problem by applying clustering, prior to selecting representative candidates for summarization.
1110.1468
Mathematical aspects of degressive proportionality
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We analyze properties of apportionment functions in context of the problem of allocating seats in the European Parliament. Necessary and sufficient conditions for apportionment functions are investigated. Some exemplary families of apportionment functions are specified and the corresponding partitions of the seats in the European Parliament among the Member States of the European Union are presented. Although the choice of the allocation functions is theoretically unlimited, we show that the constraints are so strong that the acceptable functions lead to rather similar solutions.
1110.1470
A Constraint-Satisfaction Parser for Context-Free Grammars
cs.CL
Traditional language processing tools constrain language designers to specific kinds of grammars. In contrast, model-based language specification decouples language design from language processing. As a consequence, model-based language specification tools need general parsers able to parse unrestricted context-free grammars. As languages specified following this approach may be ambiguous, parsers must deal with ambiguities. Model-based language specification also allows the definition of associativity, precedence, and custom constraints. Therefore parsers generated by model-driven language specification tools need to enforce constraints. In this paper, we propose Fence, an efficient bottom-up chart parser with lexical and syntactic ambiguity support that allows the specification of constraints and, therefore, enables the use of model-based language specification in practice.
1110.1485
A Face Recognition Scheme using Wavelet Based Dominant Features
cs.CV
In this paper, a multi-resolution feature extraction algorithm for face recognition is proposed based on two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform (2D-DWT), which efficiently exploits the local spatial variations in a face image. For the purpose of feature extraction, instead of considering the entire face image, an entropy-based local band selection criterion is developed, which selects high-informative horizontal segments from the face image. In order to capture the local spatial variations within these highinformative horizontal bands precisely, the horizontal band is segmented into several small spatial modules. Dominant wavelet coefficients corresponding to each local region residing inside those horizontal bands are selected as features. In the selection of the dominant coefficients, a threshold criterion is proposed, which not only drastically reduces the feature dimension but also provides high within-class compactness and high between-class separability. A principal component analysis is performed to further reduce the dimensionality of the feature space. Extensive experimentation is carried out upon standard face databases and a very high degree of recognition accuracy is achieved by the proposed method in comparison to those obtained by some of the existing methods.
1110.1490
A Novel Approach for Pass Word Authentication using Brain -State -In -A Box (BSB) Model
cs.CR cs.NE
Authentication is the act of confirming the truth of an attribute of a datum or entity. This might involve confirming the identity of a person, tracing the origins of an artefact, ensuring that a product is what it's packaging and labelling claims to be, or assuring that a computer program is a trusted one. The authentication of information can pose special problems (especially man-in-the-middle attacks), and is often wrapped up with authenticating identity. Password authentication using Brain-State -In-A Box is presented in this paper. Here in this paper we discuss Brain-State -In-A Box Scheme for Textual and graphical passwords which will be converted in to probabilistic values Password. We observe how to get password authentication Probabilistic values for Text and Graphical image. This study proposes the use of a Brain-State -In-A Box technique for password authentication. In comparison to existing layered neural network techniques, the proposed method provides better accuracy and quicker response time to registration and password changes.
1110.1494
Counterflow in Evacuations
physics.soc-ph cs.MA
It is shown in this work that the average individual egress time and other performance indicators for egress of people from a building can be improved under certain circumstances if counterflow occurs. The circumstances include widely varying walking speeds and two differently far located exits with different capacity. The result is achieved both with a paper and pencil calculation as well as with a micro simulation of an example scenario. As the difficulty of exit signage with counterflow remains one cannot conclude from the result that an emergency evacuation procedure with counterflow would really be the better variant.
1110.1495
A Probabilistic Approach for Authenticating Text or Graphical Passwords Using Back Propagation
cs.CR cs.NE
Password authentication is a common approach to the system security and it is also a very important procedure to gain access to user resources. In the conventional password authentication methods a server has to authenticate the legitimate user. In our proposed method users can freely choose their passwords from a defined character set or they can use a graphical image as password and that input will be normalized. Neural networks have been used recently for password authentication in order to overcome pitfall of traditional password authentication methods. In this paper we proposed a method for password authentication using alphanumeric password and graphical password. We used Back Propagation algorithm for both alphanumeric (Text) and graphical password by which the level of security can be enhanced. This paper along with test results show that converting user password in to Probabilistic values enhances the security of the system
1110.1509
A Comparative Experiment of Several Shape Methods in Recognizing Plants
cs.CV
Shape is an important aspects in recognizing plants. Several approaches have been introduced to identify objects, including plants. Combination of geometric features such as aspect ratio, compactness, and dispersion, or moments such as moment invariants were usually used toidentify plants. In this research, a comparative experiment of 4 methods to identify plants using shape features was accomplished. Two approaches have never been used in plants identification yet, Zernike moments and Polar Fourier Transform (PFT), were incorporated. The experimental comparison was done on 52 kinds of plants with various shapes. The result, PFT gave best performance with 64% in accuracy and outperformed the other methods.
1110.1513
Foliage Plant Retrieval using Polar Fourier Transform, Color Moments and Vein Features
cs.CV
This paper proposed a method that combines Polar Fourier Transform, color moments, and vein features to retrieve leaf images based on a leaf image. The method is very useful to help people in recognizing foliage plants. Foliage plants are plants that have various colors and unique patterns in the leaf. Therefore, the colors and its patterns are information that should be counted on in the processing of plant identification. To compare the performance of retrieving system to other result, the experiments used Flavia dataset, which is very popular in recognizing plants. The result shows that the method gave better performance than PNN, SVM, and Fourier Transform. The method was also tested using foliage plants with various colors. The accuracy was 90.80% for 50 kinds of plants.
1110.1514
Blackwell Approachability and Minimax Theory
cs.GT cs.LG
This manuscript investigates the relationship between Blackwell Approachability, a stochastic vector-valued repeated game, and minimax theory, a single-play scalar-valued scenario. First, it is established in a general setting --- one not permitting invocation of minimax theory --- that Blackwell's Approachability Theorem and its generalization due to Hou are still valid. Second, minimax structure grants a result in the spirit of Blackwell's weak-approachability conjecture, later resolved by Vieille, that any set is either approachable by one player, or avoidable by the opponent. This analysis also reveals a strategy for the opponent.
1110.1519
Comparison of Radio Propagation Models for Long Term Evolution (LTE) Network
cs.IT math.IT
This paper concerns about the radio propagation models used for the upcoming 4th Generation (4G) of cellular networks known as Long Term Evolution (LTE). The radio wave propagation model or path loss model plays a very significant role in planning of any wireless communication systems. In this paper, a comparison is made between different proposed radio propagation models that would be used for LTE, like Stanford University Interim (SUI) model, Okumura model, Hata COST 231 model, COST Walfisch-Ikegami & Ericsson 9999 model. The comparison is made using different terrains e.g. urban, suburban and rural area.SUI model shows the lowest path lost in all the terrains while COST 231 Hata model illustrates highest path loss in urban area and COST Walfisch-Ikegami model has highest path loss for suburban and rural environments.
1110.1522
Detecting Collusive Cliques in Futures Markets Based on Trading Behaviors from Real Data
q-fin.TR cs.NE
In financial markets, abnormal trading behaviors pose a serious challenge to market surveillance and risk management. What is worse, there is an increasing emergence of abnormal trading events that some experienced traders constitute a collusive clique and collaborate to manipulate some instruments, thus mislead other investors by applying similar trading behaviors for maximizing their personal benefits. In this paper, a method is proposed to detect the hidden collusive cliques involved in an instrument of future markets by first calculating the correlation coefficient between any two eligible unified aggregated time series of signed order volume, and then combining the connected components from multiple sparsified weighted graphs constructed by using the correlation matrices where each correlation coefficient is over a user-specified threshold. Experiments conducted on real order data from the Shanghai Futures Exchange show that the proposed method can effectively detect suspect collusive cliques. A tool based on the proposed method has been deployed in the exchange as a pilot application for futures market surveillance and risk management.
1110.1538
Characteristics of Invariant Weights Related to Code Equivalence over Rings
math.RA cs.IT math.IT
The Equivalence Theorem states that, for a given weight on the alphabet, every linear isometry between linear codes extends to a monomial transformation of the entire space. This theorem has been proved for several weights and alphabets, including the original MacWilliams' Equivalence Theorem for the Hamming weight on codes over finite fields. The question remains: What conditions must a weight satisfy so that the Extension Theorem will hold? In this paper we provide an algebraic framework for determining such conditions, generalising the approach taken in [Greferath, Honold '06].
1110.1591
Co-evolutionnary network approach to cultural dynamics controlled by intolerance
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Starting from Axelrod's model of cultural dissemination, we introduce a rewiring probability, enabling agents to cut the links with their unfriendly neighbors if their cultural similarity is below a tolerance parameter. For low values of tolerance, rewiring promotes the convergence to a frozen monocultural state. However, intermediate tolerance values prevent rewiring once the network is fragmented, resulting in a multicultural society even for values of initial cultural diversity in which the original Axelrod model reaches globalization.
1110.1628
Optimisation of hybrid high-modulus/high-strength carbon fiber reinforced plastic composite drive
cs.CE cs.SE physics.comp-ph
This study deals with the optimisation of hybrid composite drive shafts operating at subcritical or supercritical speeds, using a genetic algorithm. A formulation for the flexural vibrations of a composite drive shaft mounted on viscoelastic supports including shear effects is developed. In particular, an analytic stability criterion is developed to ensure the integrity of the system in the supercritical regime. Then it is shown that the torsional strength can be computed with the maximum stress criterion. A shell method is developed for computing drive shaft torsional buckling. The optimisation of a helicopter tail rotor driveline is then performed. In particular, original hybrid shafts consisting of high-modulus and high-strength carbon fibre reinforced epoxy plies were studied. The solutions obtained using the method presented here made it possible to greatly decrease the number of shafts and the weight of the driveline under subcritical conditions, and even more under supercritical conditions. This study yielded some general rules for designing an optimum composite shaft without any need for optimisation algorithms.
1110.1700
Adaptive Data Stream Management System Using Learning Automata
cs.DB
In many modern applications, data are received as infinite, rapid, unpredictable and time- variant data elements that are known as data streams. Systems which are able to process data streams with such properties are called Data Stream Management Systems (DSMS). Due to the unpredictable and time- variant properties of data streams as well as system, adaptivity of the DSMS is a major requirement for each DSMS. Accordingly, determining parameters which are effective on the most important performance metric of a DSMS (i.e., response time) and analysing them will affect on designing an adaptive DSMS. In this paper, effective parameters on response time of DSMS are studied and analysed and a solution is proposed for DSMSs' adaptivity. The proposed adaptive DSMS architecture includes a learning unit that frequently evaluates system to adjust the optimal value for each of tuneable effective. Learning Automata is used as the learning mechanism of the learning unit to adjust the value of tuneable effective parameters. So, when system faces some changes, the learning unit increases performance by tuning each of tuneable effective parameters to its optimum value. Evaluation results illustrate that after a while, parameters reach their optimum value and then DSMS's adaptivity will be improved considerably.
1110.1708
Advancing Nuclear Physics Through TOPS Solvers and Tools
cs.CE physics.comp-ph
At the heart of many scientific applications is the solution of algebraic systems, such as linear systems of equations, eigenvalue problems, and optimization problems, to name a few. TOPS, which stands for Towards Optimal Petascale Simulations, is a SciDAC applied math center focused on the development of solvers for tackling these algebraic systems, as well as the deployment of such technologies in large-scale scientific applications of interest to the U.S. Department of Energy. In this paper, we highlight some of the solver technologies we have developed in optimization and matrix computations. We also describe some accomplishments achieved using these technologies in UNEDF, a SciDAC application project on nuclear physics.
1110.1729
Array Requirements for Scientific Applications and an Implementation for Microsoft SQL Server
cs.DB
This paper outlines certain scenarios from the fields of astrophysics and fluid dynamics simulations which require high performance data warehouses that support array data type. A common feature of all these use cases is that subsetting and preprocessing the data on the server side (as far as possible inside the database server process) is necessary to avoid the client-server overhead and to minimize IO utilization. Analyzing and summarizing the requirements of the various fields help software engineers to come up with a comprehensive design of an array extension to relational database systems that covers a wide range of scientific applications. We also present a working implementation of an array data type for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to support large-scale scientific applications. We introduce the design of the array type, results from a performance evaluation, and discuss the lessons learned from this implementation. The library can be downloaded from our website at http://voservices.net/sqlarray/
1110.1758
Data formats for phonological corpora
cs.CL
The goal of the present chapter is to explore the possibility of providing the research (but also the industrial) community that commonly uses spoken corpora with a stable portfolio of well-documented standardised formats that allow a high re-use rate of annotated spoken resources and, as a consequence, better interoperability across tools used to produce or exploit such resources.
1110.1769
On the trade-off between complexity and correlation decay in structural learning algorithms
stat.ML cs.LG physics.data-an
We consider the problem of learning the structure of Ising models (pairwise binary Markov random fields) from i.i.d. samples. While several methods have been proposed to accomplish this task, their relative merits and limitations remain somewhat obscure. By analyzing a number of concrete examples, we show that low-complexity algorithms often fail when the Markov random field develops long-range correlations. More precisely, this phenomenon appears to be related to the Ising model phase transition (although it does not coincide with it).
1110.1781
A Study of Unsupervised Adaptive Crowdsourcing
cs.LG cs.SY
We consider unsupervised crowdsourcing performance based on the model wherein the responses of end-users are essentially rated according to how their responses correlate with the majority of other responses to the same subtasks/questions. In one setting, we consider an independent sequence of identically distributed crowdsourcing assignments (meta-tasks), while in the other we consider a single assignment with a large number of component subtasks. Both problems yield intuitive results in which the overall reliability of the crowd is a factor.
1110.1796
A Behavior-based Approach for Multi-agent Q-learning for Autonomous Exploration
cs.RO cs.LG
The use of mobile robots is being popular over the world mainly for autonomous explorations in hazardous/ toxic or unknown environments. This exploration will be more effective and efficient if the explorations in unknown environment can be aided with the learning from past experiences. Currently reinforcement learning is getting more acceptances for implementing learning in robots from the system-environment interactions. This learning can be implemented using the concept of both single-agent and multiagent. This paper describes such a multiagent approach for implementing a type of reinforcement learning using a priority based behaviour-based architecture. This proposed methodology has been successfully tested in both indoor and outdoor environments.
1110.1804
The proximal point method for a hybrid model in image restoration
cs.CV cs.IT math.IT math.OC
Models including two $L^1$ -norm terms have been widely used in image restoration. In this paper we first propose the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to solve this class of models. Based on ADMM, we then propose the proximal point method (PPM), which is more efficient than ADMM. Following the operator theory, we also give the convergence analysis of the proposed methods. Furthermore, we use the proposed methods to solve a class of hybrid models combining the ROF model with the LLT model. Some numerical results demonstrate the viability and efficiency of the proposed methods.
1110.1884
Branching Dynamics of Viral Information Spreading
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Despite its importance for rumors or innovations propagation, peer-to-peer collaboration, social networking or Marketing, the dynamics of information spreading is not well understood. Since the diffusion depends on the heterogeneous patterns of human behavior and is driven by the participants' decisions, its propagation dynamics shows surprising properties not explained by traditional epidemic or contagion models. Here we present a detailed analysis of our study of real Viral Marketing campaigns where tracking the propagation of a controlled message allowed us to analyze the structure and dynamics of a diffusion graph involving over 31,000 individuals. We found that information spreading displays a non-Markovian branching dynamics that can be modeled by a two-step Bellman-Harris Branching Process that generalizes the static models known in the literature and incorporates the high variability of human behavior. It explains accurately all the features of information propagation under the "tipping-point" and can be used for prediction and management of viral information spreading processes.
1110.1891
Channel Coding in Random Access Communication over Compound Channels
cs.IT math.IT
Due to the short and bursty incoming messages, channel access activities in a wireless random access system are often fractional. The lack of frequent data support consequently makes it difficult for the receiver to estimate and track the time varying channel states with high precision. This paper investigates random multiple access communication over a compound wireless channel where channel realization is known neither at the transmitters nor at the receiver. An achievable rate and error probability tradeoff bound is derived under the non-asymptotic assumption of a finite codeword length. The results are then extended to the random multiple access system where the receiver is only interested in decoding messages from a user subset.
1110.1892
Confidence-based Reasoning in Stochastic Constraint Programming
math.OC cs.AI math.CO math.PR stat.OT
In this work we introduce a novel approach, based on sampling, for finding assignments that are likely to be solutions to stochastic constraint satisfaction problems and constraint optimisation problems. Our approach reduces the size of the original problem being analysed; by solving this reduced problem, with a given confidence probability, we obtain assignments that satisfy the chance constraints in the original model within prescribed error tolerance thresholds. To achieve this, we blend concepts from stochastic constraint programming and statistics. We discuss both exact and approximate variants of our method. The framework we introduce can be immediately employed in concert with existing approaches for solving stochastic constraint programs. A thorough computational study on a number of stochastic combinatorial optimisation problems demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach.
1110.1894
On the Efficiency of Influence-and-Exploit Strategies for Revenue Maximization under Positive Externalities
cs.DS cs.CC cs.SI
We study the problem of revenue maximization in the marketing model for social networks introduced by (Hartline, Mirrokni, Sundararajan, WWW '08). We restrict our attention to the Uniform Additive Model and mostly focus on Influence-and-Exploit (IE) marketing strategies. We obtain a comprehensive collection of results on the efficiency and the approximability of IE strategies, which also imply a significant improvement on the best known approximation ratios for revenue maximization. Specifically, we show that in the Uniform Additive Model, both computing the optimal marketing strategy and computing the best IE strategy are $\NP$-hard for undirected social networks. We observe that allowing IE strategies to offer prices smaller than the myopic price in the exploit step leads to a measurable improvement on their performance. Thus, we show that the best IE strategy approximates the maximum revenue within a factor of 0.911 for undirected and of roughly 0.553 for directed networks. Moreover, we present a natural generalization of IE strategies, with more than two pricing classes, and show that they approximate the maximum revenue within a factor of roughly 0.7 for undirected and of roughly 0.35 for directed networks. Utilizing a connection between good IE strategies and large cuts in the underlying social network, we obtain polynomial-time algorithms that approximate the revenue of the best IE strategy within a factor of roughly 0.9. Hence, we significantly improve on the best known approximation ratio for revenue maximization to 0.8229 for undirected and to 0.5011 for directed networks (from 2/3 and 1/3, respectively, by Hartline et al.).
1110.1914
An evolving network model with modular growth
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
In this paper, we propose an evolving network model growing fast in units of module, based on the analysis of the evolution characteristics in real complex networks. Each module is a small-world network containing several interconnected nodes, and the nodes between the modules are linked by preferential attachment on degree of nodes. We study the modularity measure of the proposed model, which can be adjusted by changing ratio of the number of inner-module edges and the number of inter-module edges. Based on the mean field theory, we develop an analytical function of the degree distribution, which is verified by a numerical example and indicates that the degree distribution shows characteristics of the small-world network and the scale-free network distinctly at different segments. The clustering coefficient and the average path length of the network are simulated numerically, indicating that the network shows the small-world property and is affected little by the randomness of the new module.
1110.1930
Statistical Mechanical Analysis of Low-Density Parity-Check Codes on General Markov Channel
cs.IT math.IT
Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes on symmetric memoryless channels have been analyzed using statistical physics by several authors. In this paper, statistical mechanical analysis of LDPC codes is performed for asymmetric memoryless channels and general Markov channels. It is shown that the saddle point equations of the replica symmetric solution for a Markov channel is equivalent to the density evolution of the belief propagation on the factor graph representing LDPC codes on the Markov channel. The derivation uses the method of types for Markov chain.
1110.1976
Exploring the structural regularities in networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
In this paper, we consider the problem of exploring structural regularities of networks by dividing the nodes of a network into groups such that the members of each group have similar patterns of connections to other groups. Specifically, we propose a general statistical model to describe network structure. In this model, group is viewed as hidden or unobserved quantity and it is learned by fitting the observed network data using the expectation-maximization algorithm. Compared with existing models, the most prominent strength of our model is the high flexibility. This strength enables it to possess the advantages of existing models and overcomes their shortcomings in a unified way. As a result, not only broad types of structure can be detected without prior knowledge of what type of intrinsic regularities exist in the network, but also the type of identified structure can be directly learned from data. Moreover, by differentiating outgoing edges from incoming edges, our model can detect several types of structural regularities beyond competing models. Tests on a number of real world and artificial networks demonstrate that our model outperforms the state-of-the-art model at shedding light on the structural features of networks, including the overlapping community structure, multipartite structure and several other types of structure which are beyond the capability of existing models.
1110.1990
Framework for Link-Level Energy Efficiency Optimization with Informed Transmitter
cs.IT math.IT
The dramatic increase of network infrastructure comes at the cost of rapidly increasing energy consumption, which makes optimization of energy efficiency (EE) an important topic. Since EE is often modeled as the ratio of rate to power, we present a mathematical framework called fractional programming that provides insight into this class of optimization problems, as well as algorithms for computing the solution. The main idea is that the objective function is transformed to a weighted sum of rate and power. A generic problem formulation for systems dissipating transmit-independent circuit power in addition to transmit-dependent power is presented. We show that a broad class of EE maximization problems can be solved efficiently, provided the rate is a concave function of the transmit power. We elaborate examples of various system models including time-varying parallel channels. Rate functions with an arbitrary discrete modulation scheme are also treated. The examples considered lead to water-filling solutions, but these are different from the dual problems of power minimization under rate constraints and rate maximization under power constraints, respectively, because the constraints need not be active. We also demonstrate that if the solution to a rate maximization problem is known, it can be utilized to reduce the EE problem into a one-dimensional convex problem.
1110.1992
Open Source Software: How Can Design Metrics Facilitate Architecture Recovery?
cs.SE cs.AI
Modern software development methodologies include reuse of open source code. Reuse can be facilitated by architectural knowledge of the software, not necessarily provided in the documentation of open source software. The effort required to comprehend the system's source code and discover its architecture can be considered a major drawback in reuse. In a recent study we examined the correlations between design metrics and classes' architecture layer. In this paper, we apply our methodology in more open source projects to verify the applicability of our method. Keywords: system understanding; program comprehension; object-oriented; reuse; architecture layer; design metrics;
1110.2049
Acceleration of Uncertainty Updating in the Description of Transport Processes in Heterogeneous Materials
cs.CE
The prediction of thermo-mechanical behaviour of heterogeneous materials such as heat and moisture transport is strongly influenced by the uncertainty in parameters. Such materials occur e.g. in historic buildings, and the durability assessment of these therefore needs a reliable and probabilistic simulation of transport processes, which is related to the suitable identification of material parameters. In order to include expert knowledge as well as experimental results, one can employ an updating procedure such as Bayesian inference. The classical probabilistic setting of the identification process in Bayes's form requires the solution of a stochastic forward problem via computationally expensive sampling techniques, which makes the method almost impractical. In this paper novel stochastic computational techniques such as the stochastic Galerkin method are applied in order to accelerate the updating procedure. The idea is to replace the computationally expensive forward simulation via the conventional finite element (FE) method by the evaluation of a polynomial chaos expansion (PCE). Such an approximation of the FE model for the forward simulation perfectly suits the Bayesian updating. The presented uncertainty updating techniques are applied to the numerical model of coupled heat and moisture transport in heterogeneous materials with spatially varying coefficients defined by random fields.
1110.2053
Steps Towards a Theory of Visual Information: Active Perception, Signal-to-Symbol Conversion and the Interplay Between Sensing and Control
cs.CV
This manuscript describes the elements of a theory of information tailored to control and decision tasks and specifically to visual data. The concept of Actionable Information is described, that relates to a notion of information championed by J. Gibson, and a notion of "complete information" that relates to the minimal sufficient statistics of a complete representation. It is shown that the "actionable information gap" between the two can be reduced by exercising control on the sensing process. Thus, senging, control and information are inextricably tied. This has consequences in the so-called "signal-to-symbol barrier" problem, as well as in the analysis and design of active sensing systems. It has ramifications in vision-based control, navigation, 3-D reconstruction and rendering, as well as detection, localization, recognition and categorization of objects and scenes in live video. This manuscript has been developed from a set of lecture notes for a summer course at the First International Computer Vision Summer School (ICVSS) in Scicli, Italy, in July of 2008. They were later expanded and amended for subsequent lectures in the same School in July 2009. Starting on November 1, 2009, they were further expanded for a special topics course, CS269, taught at UCLA in the Spring term of 2010.
1110.2055
Computational homogenization of non-stationary transport processes in masonry structures
cs.CE physics.comp-ph
A fully coupled transient heat and moisture transport in a masonry structure is examined in this paper. Supported by several successful applications in civil engineering the nonlinear diffusion model proposed by K\"{u}nzel is adopted in the present study. A strong material heterogeneity together with a significant dependence of the model parameters on initial conditions as well as the gradients of heat and moisture fields vindicates the use of a hierarchical modeling strategy to solve the problem of this kind. Attention is limited to the classical first order homogenization in a spatial domain developed here in the framework of a two step (meso-macro) multi-scale computational scheme (FE^2 problem). Several illustrative examples are presented to investigate the influence of transient flow at the level of constituents (meso-scale) on the macroscopic response including the effect of macro-scale boundary conditions. A two-dimensional section of Charles Bridge subjected to actual climatic conditions is analyzed next to confirm the suitability of algorithmic format of FE^2 scheme for the parallel computing.
1110.2074
Memristors can implement fuzzy logic
cs.ET cond-mat.mtrl-sci cs.NE cs.SY
In our work we propose implementing fuzzy logic using memristors. Min and max operations are done by antipodally configured memristor circuits that may be assembled into computational circuits. We discuss computational power of such circuits with respect to m-efficiency and experimentally observed behavior of memristive devices. Circuits implemented with real devices are likely to manifest learning behavior. The circuits presented in the work may be applicable for instance in fuzzy classifiers.
1110.2096
Beating Irrationality: Does Delegating to IT Alleviate the Sunk Cost Effect?
cs.HC cs.CY cs.SI
In this research, we investigate the impact of delegating decision making to information technology (IT) on an important human decision bias - the sunk cost effect. To address our research question, we use a unique and very rich dataset containing actual market transaction data for approximately 7,000 pay-per-bid auctions. Thus, unlike previous studies that are primarily laboratory experiments, we investigate the effects of using IT on the proneness to a decision bias in real market transactions. We identify and analyze irrational decision scenarios of auction participants. We find that participants with a higher monetary investment have an increased likelihood of violating the assumption of rationality, due to the sunk cost effect. Interestingly, after controlling for monetary investments, participants who delegate their decision making to IT and, consequently, have comparably lower behavioral investments (e.g., emotional attachment, effort, time) are less prone to the sunk cost effect. In particular, delegation to IT reduces the impact of overall investments on the sunk cost effect by approximately 50%.
1110.2098
Dynamic Matrix Factorization: A State Space Approach
cs.LG
Matrix factorization from a small number of observed entries has recently garnered much attention as the key ingredient of successful recommendation systems. One unresolved problem in this area is how to adapt current methods to handle changing user preferences over time. Recent proposals to address this issue are heuristic in nature and do not fully exploit the time-dependent structure of the problem. As a principled and general temporal formulation, we propose a dynamical state space model of matrix factorization. Our proposal builds upon probabilistic matrix factorization, a Bayesian model with Gaussian priors. We utilize results in state tracking, such as the Kalman filter, to provide accurate recommendations in the presence of both process and measurement noise. We show how system parameters can be learned via expectation-maximization and provide comparisons to current published techniques.
1110.2136
Active Learning Using Smooth Relative Regret Approximations with Applications
cs.LG
The disagreement coefficient of Hanneke has become a central data independent invariant in proving active learning rates. It has been shown in various ways that a concept class with low complexity together with a bound on the disagreement coefficient at an optimal solution allows active learning rates that are superior to passive learning ones. We present a different tool for pool based active learning which follows from the existence of a certain uniform version of low disagreement coefficient, but is not equivalent to it. In fact, we present two fundamental active learning problems of significant interest for which our approach allows nontrivial active learning bounds. However, any general purpose method relying on the disagreement coefficient bounds only fails to guarantee any useful bounds for these problems. The tool we use is based on the learner's ability to compute an estimator of the difference between the loss of any hypotheses and some fixed "pivotal" hypothesis to within an absolute error of at most $\eps$ times the
1110.2153
Characterizing and modeling citation dynamics
physics.soc-ph cs.DL cs.SI physics.data-an
Citation distributions are crucial for the analysis and modeling of the activity of scientists. We investigated bibliometric data of papers published in journals of the American Physical Society, searching for the type of function which best describes the observed citation distributions. We used the goodness of fit with Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistics for three classes of functions: log-normal, simple power law and shifted power law. The shifted power law turns out to be the most reliable hypothesis for all citation networks we derived, which correspond to different time spans. We find that citation dynamics is characterized by bursts, usually occurring within a few years since publication of a paper, and the burst size spans several orders of magnitude. We also investigated the microscopic mechanisms for the evolution of citation networks, by proposing a linear preferential attachment with time dependent initial attractiveness. The model successfully reproduces the empirical citation distributions and accounts for the presence of citation bursts as well.
1110.2162
Large-Margin Learning of Submodular Summarization Methods
cs.AI cs.CL cs.LG
In this paper, we present a supervised learning approach to training submodular scoring functions for extractive multi-document summarization. By taking a structured predicition approach, we provide a large-margin method that directly optimizes a convex relaxation of the desired performance measure. The learning method applies to all submodular summarization methods, and we demonstrate its effectiveness for both pairwise as well as coverage-based scoring functions on multiple datasets. Compared to state-of-the-art functions that were tuned manually, our method significantly improves performance and enables high-fidelity models with numbers of parameters well beyond what could reasonbly be tuned by hand.
1110.2186
Consensus in networks of mobile communicating agents
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.MA cs.SI q-bio.PE
Populations of mobile and communicating agents describe a vast array of technological and natural systems, ranging from sensor networks to animal groups. Here, we investigate how a group-level agreement may emerge in the continuously evolving network defined by the local interactions of the moving individuals. We adopt a general scheme of motion in two dimensions and we let the individuals interact through the minimal naming game, a prototypical scheme to investigate social consensus. We distinguish different regimes of convergence determined by the emission range of the agents and by their mobility, and we identify the corresponding scaling behaviors of the consensus time. In the same way, we rationalize also the behavior of the maximum memory used during the convergence process, which determines the minimum cognitive/storage capacity needed by the individuals. Overall, we believe that the simple and general model presented in this paper can represent a helpful reference for a better understanding of the behavior of populations of mobile agents.
1110.2196
The evaluation of geometric queries: constraint databases and quantifier elimination
cs.DB cs.CC cs.LO
We model the algorithmic task of geometric elimination (e.g., quantifier elimination in the elementary field theories of real and complex numbers) by means of certain constraint database queries, called geometric queries. As a particular case of such a geometric elimination task, we consider sample point queries. We show exponential lower complexity bounds for evaluating geometric queries in the general and in the particular case of sample point queries. Although this paper is of theoretical nature, its aim is to explore the possibilities and (complexity-)limits of computer implemented query evaluation algorithms for Constraint Databases, based on the principles of the most advanced geometric elimination procedures and their implementations, like, e.g., the software package "Kronecker".
1110.2200
Modelling Mixed Discrete-Continuous Domains for Planning
cs.AI
In this paper we present pddl+, a planning domain description language for modelling mixed discrete-continuous planning domains. We describe the syntax and modelling style of pddl+, showing that the language makes convenient the modelling of complex time-dependent effects. We provide a formal semantics for pddl+ by mapping planning instances into constructs of hybrid automata. Using the syntax of HAs as our semantic model we construct a semantic mapping to labelled transition systems to complete the formal interpretation of pddl+ planning instances. An advantage of building a mapping from pddl+ to HA theory is that it forms a bridge between the Planning and Real Time Systems research communities. One consequence is that we can expect to make use of some of the theoretical properties of HAs. For example, for a restricted class of HAs the Reachability problem (which is equivalent to Plan Existence) is decidable. pddl+ provides an alternative to the continuous durative action model of pddl2.1, adding a more flexible and robust model of time-dependent behaviour.
1110.2203
Set Intersection and Consistency in Constraint Networks
cs.AI
In this paper, we show that there is a close relation between consistency in a constraint network and set intersection. A proof schema is provided as a generic way to obtain consistency properties from properties on set intersection. This approach not only simplifies the understanding of and unifies many existing consistency results, but also directs the study of consistency to that of set intersection properties in many situations, as demonstrated by the results on the convexity and tightness of constraints in this paper. Specifically, we identify a new class of tree convex constraints where local consistency ensures global consistency. This generalizes row convex constraints. Various consistency results are also obtained on constraint networks where only some, in contrast to all in the existing work,constraints are tight.
1110.2204
Consistency and Random Constraint Satisfaction Models
cs.AI
In this paper, we study the possibility of designing non-trivial random CSP models by exploiting the intrinsic connection between structures and typical-case hardness. We show that constraint consistency, a notion that has been developed to improve the efficiency of CSP algorithms, is in fact the key to the design of random CSP models that have interesting phase transition behavior and guaranteed exponential resolution complexity without putting much restriction on the parameter of constraint tightness or the domain size of the problem. We propose a very flexible framework for constructing problem instances withinteresting behavior and develop a variety of concrete methods to construct specific random CSP models that enforce different levels of constraint consistency. A series of experimental studies with interesting observations are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of introducing structural elements in random instances, to verify the robustness of our proposal, and to investigate features of some specific models based on our framework that are highly related to the behavior of backtracking search algorithms.
1110.2205
Answer Sets for Logic Programs with Arbitrary Abstract Constraint Atoms
cs.AI
In this paper, we present two alternative approaches to defining answer sets for logic programs with arbitrary types of abstract constraint atoms (c-atoms). These approaches generalize the fixpoint-based and the level mapping based answer set semantics of normal logic programs to the case of logic programs with arbitrary types of c-atoms. The results are four different answer set definitions which are equivalent when applied to normal logic programs. The standard fixpoint-based semantics of logic programs is generalized in two directions, called answer set by reduct and answer set by complement. These definitions, which differ from each other in the treatment of negation-as-failure (naf) atoms, make use of an immediate consequence operator to perform answer set checking, whose definition relies on the notion of conditional satisfaction of c-atoms w.r.t. a pair of interpretations. The other two definitions, called strongly and weakly well-supported models, are generalizations of the notion of well-supported models of normal logic programs to the case of programs with c-atoms. As for the case of fixpoint-based semantics, the difference between these two definitions is rooted in the treatment of naf atoms. We prove that answer sets by reduct (resp. by complement) are equivalent to weakly (resp. strongly) well-supported models of a program, thus generalizing the theorem on the correspondence between stable models and well-supported models of a normal logic program to the class of programs with c-atoms. We show that the newly defined semantics coincide with previously introduced semantics for logic programs with monotone c-atoms, and they extend the original answer set semantics of normal logic programs. We also study some properties of answer sets of programs with c-atoms, and relate our definitions to several semantics for logic programs with aggregates presented in the literature.
1110.2209
Bin Completion Algorithms for Multicontainer Packing, Knapsack, and Covering Problems
cs.AI
Many combinatorial optimization problems such as the bin packing and multiple knapsack problems involve assigning a set of discrete objects to multiple containers. These problems can be used to model task and resource allocation problems in multi-agent systems and distributed systms, and can also be found as subproblems of scheduling problems. We propose bin completion, a branch-and-bound strategy for one-dimensional, multicontainer packing problems. Bin completion combines a bin-oriented search space with a powerful dominance criterion that enables us to prune much of the space. The performance of the basic bin completion framework can be enhanced by using a number of extensions, including nogood-based pruning techniques that allow further exploitation of the dominance criterion. Bin completion is applied to four problems: multiple knapsack, bin covering, min-cost covering, and bin packing. We show that our bin completion algorithms yield new, state-of-the-art results for the multiple knapsack, bin covering, and min-cost covering problems, outperforming previous algorithms by several orders of magnitude with respect to runtime on some classes of hard, random problem instances. For the bin packing problem, we demonstrate significant improvements compared to most previous results, but show that bin completion is not competitive with current state-of-the-art cutting-stock based approaches.
1110.2210
Closed-Loop Learning of Visual Control Policies
cs.CV
In this paper we present a general, flexible framework for learning mappings from images to actions by interacting with the environment. The basic idea is to introduce a feature-based image classifier in front of a reinforcement learning algorithm. The classifier partitions the visual space according to the presence or absence of few highly informative local descriptors that are incrementally selected in a sequence of attempts to remove perceptual aliasing. We also address the problem of fighting overfitting in such a greedy algorithm. Finally, we show how high-level visual features can be generated when the power of local descriptors is insufficient for completely disambiguating the aliased states. This is done by building a hierarchy of composite features that consist of recursive spatial combinations of visual features. We demonstrate the efficacy of our algorithms by solving three visual navigation tasks and a visual version of the classical Car on the Hill control problem.
1110.2211
Learning Symbolic Models of Stochastic Domains
cs.LG cs.AI
In this article, we work towards the goal of developing agents that can learn to act in complex worlds. We develop a probabilistic, relational planning rule representation that compactly models noisy, nondeterministic action effects, and show how such rules can be effectively learned. Through experiments in simple planning domains and a 3D simulated blocks world with realistic physics, we demonstrate that this learning algorithm allows agents to effectively model world dynamics.
1110.2212
Uncertainty in Soft Temporal Constraint Problems:A General Framework and Controllability Algorithms for the Fuzzy Case
cs.AI
In real-life temporal scenarios, uncertainty and preferences are often essential and coexisting aspects. We present a formalism where quantitative temporal constraints with both preferences and uncertainty can be defined. We show how three classical notions of controllability (that is, strong, weak, and dynamic), which have been developed for uncertain temporal problems, can be generalized to handle preferences as well. After defining this general framework, we focus on problems where preferences follow the fuzzy approach, and with properties that assure tractability. For such problems, we propose algorithms to check the presence of the controllability properties. In particular, we show that in such a setting dealing simultaneously with preferences and uncertainty does not increase the complexity of controllability testing. We also develop a dynamic execution algorithm, of polynomial complexity, that produces temporal plans under uncertainty that are optimal with respect to fuzzy preferences.
1110.2213
Supporting Temporal Reasoning by Mapping Calendar Expressions to Minimal Periodic Sets
cs.AI
In the recent years several research efforts have focused on the concept of time granularity and its applications. A first stream of research investigated the mathematical models behind the notion of granularity and the algorithms to manage temporal data based on those models. A second stream of research investigated symbolic formalisms providing a set of algebraic operators to define granularities in a compact and compositional way. However, only very limited manipulation algorithms have been proposed to operate directly on the algebraic representation making it unsuitable to use the symbolic formalisms in applications that need manipulation of granularities. This paper aims at filling the gap between the results from these two streams of research, by providing an efficient conversion from the algebraic representation to the equivalent low-level representation based on the mathematical models. In addition, the conversion returns a minimal representation in terms of period length. Our results have a major practical impact: users can more easily define arbitrary granularities in terms of algebraic operators, and then access granularity reasoning and other services operating efficiently on the equivalent, minimal low-level representation. As an example, we illustrate the application to temporal constraint reasoning with multiple granularities. From a technical point of view, we propose an hybrid algorithm that interleaves the conversion of calendar subexpressions into periodical sets with the minimization of the period length. The algorithm returns set-based granularity representations having minimal period length, which is the most relevant parameter for the performance of the considered reasoning services. Extensive experimental work supports the techniques used in the algorithm, and shows the efficiency and effectiveness of the algorithm.
1110.2215
NP Animacy Identification for Anaphora Resolution
cs.CL
In anaphora resolution for English, animacy identification can play an integral role in the application of agreement restrictions between pronouns and candidates, and as a result, can improve the accuracy of anaphora resolution systems. In this paper, two methods for animacy identification are proposed and evaluated using intrinsic and extrinsic measures. The first method is a rule-based one which uses information about the unique beginners in WordNet to classify NPs on the basis of their animacy. The second method relies on a machine learning algorithm which exploits a WordNet enriched with animacy information for each sense. The effect of word sense disambiguation on the two methods is also assessed. The intrinsic evaluation reveals that the machine learning method reaches human levels of performance. The extrinsic evaluation demonstrates that animacy identification can be beneficial in anaphora resolution, especially in the cases where animate entities are identified with high precision.
1110.2216
The Generalized A* Architecture
cs.AI
We consider the problem of computing a lightest derivation of a global structure using a set of weighted rules. A large variety of inference problems in AI can be formulated in this framework. We generalize A* search and heuristics derived from abstractions to a broad class of lightest derivation problems. We also describe a new algorithm that searches for lightest derivations using a hierarchy of abstractions. Our generalization of A* gives a new algorithm for searching AND/OR graphs in a bottom-up fashion. We discuss how the algorithms described here provide a general architecture for addressing the pipeline problem --- the problem of passing information back and forth between various stages of processing in a perceptual system. We consider examples in computer vision and natural language processing. We apply the hierarchical search algorithm to the problem of estimating the boundaries of convex objects in grayscale images and compare it to other search methods. A second set of experiments demonstrate the use of a new compositional model for finding salient curves in images.
1110.2227
Average Interpolating Wavelets on Point Clouds and Graphs
math.FA cs.IT math.IT stat.ML
We introduce a new wavelet transform suitable for analyzing functions on point clouds and graphs. Our construction is based on a generalization of the average interpolating refinement scheme of Donoho. The most important ingredient of the original scheme that needs to be altered is the choice of the interpolant. Here, we define the interpolant as the minimizer of a smoothness functional, namely a generalization of the Laplacian energy, subject to the averaging constraints. In the continuous setting, we derive a formula for the optimal solution in terms of the poly-harmonic Green's function. The form of this solution is used to motivate our construction in the setting of graphs and point clouds. We highlight the empirical convergence of our refinement scheme and the potential applications of the resulting wavelet transform through experiments on a number of data stets.
1110.2288
Optimal Power Allocation for Renewable Energy Source
cs.SY cs.IT math.IT math.OC math.PR
Battery powered transmitters face energy constraint, replenishing their energy by a renewable energy source (like solar or wind power) can lead to longer lifetime. We consider here the problem of finding the optimal power allocation under random channel conditions for a wireless transmitter, such that rate of information transfer is maximized. Here a rechargeable battery, which is periodically charged by renewable source, is used to power the transmitter. All of above is formulated as a Markov Decision Process. Structural properties like the monotonicity of the optimal value and policy derived in this paper will be of vital importance in understanding the kind of algorithms and approximations needed in real-life scenarios. The effect of curse of dimensionality which is prevalent in Dynamic programming problems can thus be reduced. We show our results under the most general of assumptions.
1110.2294
Query Driven Visualization of Astronomical Catalogs
astro-ph.IM cs.DB
Interactive visualization of astronomical catalogs requires novel techniques due to the huge volumes and complex structure of the data produced by existing and upcoming astronomical surveys. The creation as well as the disclosure of the catalogs can be handled by data pulling mechanisms. These prevent unnecessary processing and facilitate data sharing by having users request the desired end products. In this work we present query driven visualization as a logical continuation of data pulling. Scientists can request catalogs in a declarative way and set process parameters directly from within the visualization. This results in profound interoperation between software with a high level of abstraction. New messages for the Simple Application Messaging Protocol are proposed to achieve this abstraction. Support for these messages are implemented in the Astro-WISE information system and in a set of demonstrational applications.
1110.2306
Ground Metric Learning
stat.ML cs.CV cs.LG
Transportation distances have been used for more than a decade now in machine learning to compare histograms of features. They have one parameter: the ground metric, which can be any metric between the features themselves. As is the case for all parameterized distances, transportation distances can only prove useful in practice when this parameter is carefully chosen. To date, the only option available to practitioners to set the ground metric parameter was to rely on a priori knowledge of the features, which limited considerably the scope of application of transportation distances. We propose to lift this limitation and consider instead algorithms that can learn the ground metric using only a training set of labeled histograms. We call this approach ground metric learning. We formulate the problem of learning the ground metric as the minimization of the difference of two polyhedral convex functions over a convex set of distance matrices. We follow the presentation of our algorithms with promising experimental results on binary classification tasks using GIST descriptors of images taken in the Caltech-256 set.
1110.2341
Multiple ant-bee colony optimization for load balancing in packet-switched networks
cs.NI cs.AI
One of the important issues in computer networks is "Load Balancing" which leads to efficient use of the network resources. To achieve a balanced network it is necessary to find different routes between the source and destination. In the current paper we propose a new approach to find different routes using swarm intelligence techniques and multi colony algorithms. In the proposed algorithm that is an improved version of MACO algorithm, we use different colonies of ants and bees and appoint these colony members as intelligent agents to monitor the network and update the routing information. The survey includes comparison and critiques of MACO. The simulation results show a tangible improvement in the aforementioned approach.
1110.2343
Annotated Raptor Codes
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, an extension of raptor codes is introduced which keeps all the desirable properties of raptor codes, including the linear complexity of encoding and decoding per information bit, unchanged. The new design, however, improves the performance in terms of the reception rate. Our simulations show a 10% reduction in the needed overhead at the benchmark block length of 64,520 bits and with the same complexity per information bit.
1110.2392
A Variant of Azuma's Inequality for Martingales with Subgaussian Tails
cs.LG math.PR
We provide a variant of Azuma's concentration inequality for martingales, in which the standard boundedness requirement is replaced by the milder requirement of a subgaussian tail.
1110.2407
Bi-modal G\"odel logic over [0,1]-valued Kripke frames
math.LO cs.AI
We consider the G\"odel bi-modal logic determined by fuzzy Kripke models where both the propositions and the accessibility relation are infinitely valued over the standard G\"odel algebra [0,1] and prove strong completeness of Fischer Servi intuitionistic modal logic IK plus the prelinearity axiom with respect to this semantics. We axiomatize also the bi-modal analogues of $T,$ $S4,$ and $S5$ obtained by restricting to models over frames satisfying the [0,1]-valued versions of the structural properties which characterize these logics. As application of the completeness theorems we obtain a representation theorem for bi-modal G\"odel algebras.
1110.2416
Supervised learning of short and high-dimensional temporal sequences for life science measurements
cs.LG
The analysis of physiological processes over time are often given by spectrometric or gene expression profiles over time with only few time points but a large number of measured variables. The analysis of such temporal sequences is challenging and only few methods have been proposed. The information can be encoded time independent, by means of classical expression differences for a single time point or in expression profiles over time. Available methods are limited to unsupervised and semi-supervised settings. The predictive variables can be identified only by means of wrapper or post-processing techniques. This is complicated due to the small number of samples for such studies. Here, we present a supervised learning approach, termed Supervised Topographic Mapping Through Time (SGTM-TT). It learns a supervised mapping of the temporal sequences onto a low dimensional grid. We utilize a hidden markov model (HMM) to account for the time domain and relevance learning to identify the relevant feature dimensions most predictive over time. The learned mapping can be used to visualize the temporal sequences and to predict the class of a new sequence. The relevance learning permits the identification of discriminating masses or gen expressions and prunes dimensions which are unnecessary for the classification task or encode mainly noise. In this way we obtain a very efficient learning system for temporal sequences. The results indicate that using simultaneous supervised learning and metric adaptation significantly improves the prediction accuracy for synthetically and real life data in comparison to the standard techniques. The discriminating features, identified by relevance learning, compare favorably with the results of alternative methods. Our method permits the visualization of the data on a low dimensional grid, highlighting the observed temporal structure.
1110.2417
New Improvements on the Echelon-Ferrers Construction
cs.IT math.IT
We show how to improve the echelon-Ferrers construction of random network codes introduced by Etzion and Silberstein to attain codes of larger size for a given minimum distance.
1110.2436
An MDL framework for sparse coding and dictionary learning
cs.IT math.IT stat.ML
The power of sparse signal modeling with learned over-complete dictionaries has been demonstrated in a variety of applications and fields, from signal processing to statistical inference and machine learning. However, the statistical properties of these models, such as under-fitting or over-fitting given sets of data, are still not well characterized in the literature. As a result, the success of sparse modeling depends on hand-tuning critical parameters for each data and application. This work aims at addressing this by providing a practical and objective characterization of sparse models by means of the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle -- a well established information-theoretic approach to model selection in statistical inference. The resulting framework derives a family of efficient sparse coding and dictionary learning algorithms which, by virtue of the MDL principle, are completely parameter free. Furthermore, such framework allows to incorporate additional prior information to existing models, such as Markovian dependencies, or to define completely new problem formulations, including in the matrix analysis area, in a natural way. These virtues will be demonstrated with parameter-free algorithms for the classic image denoising and classification problems, and for low-rank matrix recovery in video applications.
1110.2478
Countering Gattaca: Efficient and Secure Testing of Fully-Sequenced Human Genomes (Full Version)
cs.CR cs.CE
Recent advances in DNA sequencing technologies have put ubiquitous availability of fully sequenced human genomes within reach. It is no longer hard to imagine the day when everyone will have the means to obtain and store one's own DNA sequence. Widespread and affordable availability of fully sequenced genomes immediately opens up important opportunities in a number of health-related fields. In particular, common genomic applications and tests performed in vitro today will soon be conducted computationally, using digitized genomes. New applications will be developed as genome-enabled medicine becomes increasingly preventive and personalized. However, this progress also prompts significant privacy challenges associated with potential loss, theft, or misuse of genomic data. In this paper, we begin to address genomic privacy by focusing on three important applications: Paternity Tests, Personalized Medicine, and Genetic Compatibility Tests. After carefully analyzing these applications and their privacy requirements, we propose a set of efficient techniques based on private set operations. This allows us to implement in in silico some operations that are currently performed via in vitro methods, in a secure fashion. Experimental results demonstrate that proposed techniques are both feasible and practical today.
1110.2480
Beyond Traditional DTN Routing: Social Networks for Opportunistic Communication
cs.NI cs.SI
This article examines the evolution of routing protocols for intermittently connected ad hoc networks and discusses the trend toward social-based routing protocols. A survey of current routing solutions is presented, where routing protocols for opportunistic networks are classified based on the network graph employed. The need to capture performance tradeoffs from a multi-objective perspective is highlighted.
1110.2515
Normalized Mutual Information to evaluate overlapping community finding algorithms
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
Given the increasing popularity of algorithms for overlapping clustering, in particular in social network analysis, quantitative measures are needed to measure the accuracy of a method. Given a set of true clusters, and the set of clusters found by an algorithm, these sets of clusters must be compared to see how similar or different the sets are. A normalized measure is desirable in many contexts, for example assigning a value of 0 where the two sets are totally dissimilar, and 1 where they are identical. A measure based on normalized mutual information, [1], has recently become popular. We demonstrate unintuitive behaviour of this measure, and show how this can be corrected by using a more conventional normalization. We compare the results to that of other measures, such as the Omega index [2].
1110.2529
The Generalization Ability of Online Algorithms for Dependent Data
stat.ML cs.LG math.OC
We study the generalization performance of online learning algorithms trained on samples coming from a dependent source of data. We show that the generalization error of any stable online algorithm concentrates around its regret--an easily computable statistic of the online performance of the algorithm--when the underlying ergodic process is $\beta$- or $\phi$-mixing. We show high probability error bounds assuming the loss function is convex, and we also establish sharp convergence rates and deviation bounds for strongly convex losses and several linear prediction problems such as linear and logistic regression, least-squares SVM, and boosting on dependent data. In addition, our results have straightforward applications to stochastic optimization with dependent data, and our analysis requires only martingale convergence arguments; we need not rely on more powerful statistical tools such as empirical process theory.
1110.2557
Constructions of Rank Modulation Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Rank modulation is a way of encoding information to correct errors in flash memory devices as well as impulse noise in transmission lines. Modeling rank modulation involves construction of packings of the space of permutations equipped with the Kendall tau distance. We present several general constructions of codes in permutations that cover a broad range of code parameters. In particular, we show a number of ways in which conventional error-correcting codes can be modified to correct errors in the Kendall space. Codes that we construct afford simple encoding and decoding algorithms of essentially the same complexity as required to correct errors in the Hamming metric. For instance, from binary BCH codes we obtain codes correcting $t$ Kendall errors in $n$ memory cells that support the order of $n!/(\log_2n!)^t$ messages, for any constant $t= 1,2,...$ We also construct families of codes that correct a number of errors that grows with $n$ at varying rates, from $\Theta(n)$ to $\Theta(n^{2})$. One of our constructions gives rise to a family of rank modulation codes for which the trade-off between the number of messages and the number of correctable Kendall errors approaches the optimal scaling rate. Finally, we list a number of possibilities for constructing codes of finite length, and give examples of rank modulation codes with specific parameters.
1110.2558
Epidemic centrality - is there an underestimated epidemic impact of network peripheral nodes?
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-bio.PE
In the study of disease spreading on empirical complex networks in SIR model, initially infected nodes can be ranked according to some measure of their epidemic impact. The highest ranked nodes, also referred to as "superspreaders", are associated to dominant epidemic risks and therefore deserve special attention. In simulations on studied empirical complex networks, it is shown that the ranking depends on the dynamical regime of the disease spreading. A possible mechanism leading to this dependence is illustrated in an analytically tractable example. In systems where the allocation of resources to counter disease spreading to individual nodes is based on their ranking, the dynamical regime of disease spreading is frequently not known before the outbreak of the disease. Therefore, we introduce a quantity called epidemic centrality as an average over all relevant regimes of disease spreading as a basis of the ranking. A recently introduced concept of phase diagram of epidemic spreading is used as a framework in which several types of averaging are studied. The epidemic centrality is compared to structural properties of nodes such as node degree, k-cores and betweenness. There is a growing trend of epidemic centrality with degree and k-cores values, but the variation of epidemic centrality is much smaller than the variation of degree or k-cores value. It is found that the epidemic centrality of the structurally peripheral nodes is of the same order of magnitude as the epidemic centrality of the structurally central nodes. The implications of these findings for the distributions of resources to counter disease spreading are discussed.
1110.2593
Blind Source Separation with Compressively Sensed Linear Mixtures
cs.IT math.IT
This work studies the problem of simultaneously separating and reconstructing signals from compressively sensed linear mixtures. We assume that all source signals share a common sparse representation basis. The approach combines classical Compressive Sensing (CS) theory with a linear mixing model. It allows the mixtures to be sampled independently of each other. If samples are acquired in the time domain, this means that the sensors need not be synchronized. Since Blind Source Separation (BSS) from a linear mixture is only possible up to permutation and scaling, factoring out these ambiguities leads to a minimization problem on the so-called oblique manifold. We develop a geometric conjugate subgradient method that scales to large systems for solving the problem. Numerical results demonstrate the promising performance of the proposed algorithm compared to several state of the art methods.
1110.2610
Issues,Challenges and Tools of Clustering Algorithms
cs.IR cs.LG
Clustering is an unsupervised technique of Data Mining. It means grouping similar objects together and separating the dissimilar ones. Each object in the data set is assigned a class label in the clustering process using a distance measure. This paper has captured the problems that are faced in real when clustering algorithms are implemented .It also considers the most extensively used tools which are readily available and support functions which ease the programming. Once algorithms have been implemented, they also need to be tested for its validity. There exist several validation indexes for testing the performance and accuracy which have also been discussed here.
1110.2615
Alternatives with stronger convergence than coordinate-descent iterative LMI algorithms
math.OC cs.SY eess.SY
In this note we aim at putting more emphasis on the fact that trying to solve non-convex optimization problems with coordinate-descent iterative linear matrix inequality algorithms leads to suboptimal solutions, and put forward other optimization methods better equipped to deal with such problems (having theoretical convergence guarantees and/or being more efficient in practice). This fact, already outlined at several places in the literature, still appears to be disregarded by a sizable part of the systems and control community. Thus, main elements on this issue and better optimization alternatives are presented and illustrated by means of an example.
1110.2626
Analysis of Heart Diseases Dataset using Neural Network Approach
cs.LG cs.DB
One of the important techniques of Data mining is Classification. Many real world problems in various fields such as business, science, industry and medicine can be solved by using classification approach. Neural Networks have emerged as an important tool for classification. The advantages of Neural Networks helps for efficient classification of given data. In this study a Heart diseases dataset is analyzed using Neural Network approach. To increase the efficiency of the classification process parallel approach is also adopted in the training phase.