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1110.2659
Efficient Detection of Hot Span in Information Diffusion from Observation
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We addressed the problem of detecting the change in behavior of information diffusion from a small amount of observation data, where the behavior changes were assumed to be effectively reflected in changes in the diffusion parameter value. The problem is to detect where in time and how long this change persisted and how big this change is. We solved this problem by searching the change pattern that maximizes the likelihood of generating the observed diffusion sequences. The naive learning algorithm has to iteratively update the patten boundaries, each requiring optimization of diffusion parameters by the EM algorithm, and is very inefficient. We devised a very efficient search algorithm using the derivative of likelihood which avoids parameter value optimization during the search. The results tested using three real world network structures confirmed that the algorithm can efficiently identify the correct change pattern. We further compared our algorithm with the naive method that finds the best combination of change boundaries by an exhaustive search through a set of randomly selected boundary candidates, and showed that the proposed algorithm far outperforms the native method both in terms of accuracy and computation time.
1110.2704
An Efficient Fuzzy Clustering-Based Approach for Intrusion Detection
cs.DB
The need to increase accuracy in detecting sophisticated cyber attacks poses a great challenge not only to the research community but also to corporations. So far, many approaches have been proposed to cope with this threat. Among them, data mining has brought on remarkable contributions to the intrusion detection problem. However, the generalization ability of data mining-based methods remains limited, and hence detecting sophisticated attacks remains a tough task. In this thread, we present a novel method based on both clustering and classification for developing an efficient intrusion detection system (IDS). The key idea is to take useful information exploited from fuzzy clustering into account for the process of building an IDS. To this aim, we first present cornerstones to construct additional cluster features for a training set. Then, we come up with an algorithm to generate an IDS based on such cluster features and the original input features. Finally, we experimentally prove that our method outperforms several well-known methods.
1110.2711
Generalized network community detection
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
Community structure is largely regarded as an intrinsic property of complex real-world networks. However, recent studies reveal that networks comprise even more sophisticated modules than classical cohesive communities. More precisely, real-world networks can also be naturally partitioned according to common patterns of connections between the nodes. Recently, a propagation based algorithm has been proposed for the detection of arbitrary network modules. We here advance the latter with a more adequate community modeling based on network clustering. The resulting algorithm is evaluated on various synthetic benchmark networks and random graphs. It is shown to be comparable to current state-of-the-art algorithms, however, in contrast to other approaches, it does not require some prior knowledge of the true community structure. To demonstrate its generality, we further employ the proposed algorithm for community detection in different unipartite and bipartite real-world networks, for generalized community detection and also predictive data clustering.
1110.2722
Compressive and Noncompressive Power Spectral Density Estimation from Periodic Nonuniform Samples
cs.IT math.IT
This paper presents a novel power spectral density estimation technique for band-limited, wide-sense stationary signals from sub-Nyquist sampled data. The technique employs multi-coset sampling and incorporates the advantages of compressed sensing (CS) when the power spectrum is sparse, but applies to sparse and nonsparse power spectra alike. The estimates are consistent piecewise constant approximations whose resolutions (width of the piecewise constant segments) are controlled by the periodicity of the multi-coset sampling. We show that compressive estimates exhibit better tradeoffs among the estimator's resolution, system complexity, and average sampling rate compared to their noncompressive counterparts. For suitable sampling patterns, noncompressive estimates are obtained as least squares solutions. Because of the non-negativity of power spectra, compressive estimates can be computed by seeking non-negative least squares solutions (provided appropriate sampling patterns exist) instead of using standard CS recovery algorithms. This flexibility suggests a reduction in computational overhead for systems estimating both sparse and nonsparse power spectra because one algorithm can be used to compute both compressive and noncompressive estimates.
1110.2724
Information Transfer in Social Media
cs.SI physics.soc-ph stat.AP
Recent research has explored the increasingly important role of social media by examining the dynamics of individual and group behavior, characterizing patterns of information diffusion, and identifying influential individuals. In this paper we suggest a measure of causal relationships between nodes based on the information-theoretic notion of transfer entropy, or information transfer. This theoretically grounded measure is based on dynamic information, captures fine-grain notions of influence, and admits a natural, predictive interpretation. Causal networks inferred by transfer entropy can differ significantly from static friendship networks because most friendship links are not useful for predicting future dynamics. We demonstrate through analysis of synthetic and real-world data that transfer entropy reveals meaningful hidden network structures. In addition to altering our notion of who is influential, transfer entropy allows us to differentiate between weak influence over large groups and strong influence over small groups.
1110.2726
Combining Spatial and Temporal Logics: Expressiveness vs. Complexity
cs.AI
In this paper, we construct and investigate a hierarchy of spatio-temporal formalisms that result from various combinations of propositional spatial and temporal logics such as the propositional temporal logic PTL, the spatial logics RCC-8, BRCC-8, S4u and their fragments. The obtained results give a clear picture of the trade-off between expressiveness and computational realisability within the hierarchy. We demonstrate how different combining principles as well as spatial and temporal primitives can produce NP-, PSPACE-, EXPSPACE-, 2EXPSPACE-complete, and even undecidable spatio-temporal logics out of components that are at most NP- or PSPACE-complete.
1110.2728
An Approach to Temporal Planning and Scheduling in Domains with Predictable Exogenous Events
cs.AI
The treatment of exogenous events in planning is practically important in many real-world domains where the preconditions of certain plan actions are affected by such events. In this paper we focus on planning in temporal domains with exogenous events that happen at known times, imposing the constraint that certain actions in the plan must be executed during some predefined time windows. When actions have durations, handling such temporal constraints adds an extra difficulty to planning. We propose an approach to planning in these domains which integrates constraint-based temporal reasoning into a graph-based planning framework using local search. Our techniques are implemented in a planner that took part in the 4th International Planning Competition (IPC-4). A statistical analysis of the results of IPC-4 demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach in terms of both CPU-time and plan quality. Additional experiments show the good performance of the temporal reasoning techniques integrated into our planner.
1110.2729
The Power of Modeling - a Response to PDDL2.1
cs.AI
In this commentary I argue that although PDDL is a very useful standard for the planning competition, its design does not properly consider the issue of domain modeling. Hence, I would not advocate its use in specifying planning domains outside of the context of the planning competition. Rather, the field needs to explore different approaches and grapple more directly with the problem of effectively modeling and utilizing all of the diverse pieces of knowledge we typically have about planning domains.
1110.2730
Imperfect Match: PDDL 2.1 and Real Applications
cs.AI
PDDL was originally conceived and constructed as a lingua franca for the International Planning Competition. PDDL2.1 embodies a set of extensions intended to support the expression of something closer to real planning problems. This objective has only been partially achieved, due in large part to a deliberate focus on not moving too far from classical planning models and solution methods.
1110.2731
PDDL 2.1: Representation vs. Computation
cs.AI
I comment on the PDDL 2.1 language and its use in the planning competition, focusing on the choices made for accommodating time and concurrency. I also discuss some methodological issues that have to do with the move toward more expressive planning languages and the balance needed in planning research between semantics and computation.
1110.2732
Proactive Algorithms for Job Shop Scheduling with Probabilistic Durations
cs.AI
Most classical scheduling formulations assume a fixed and known duration for each activity. In this paper, we weaken this assumption, requiring instead that each duration can be represented by an independent random variable with a known mean and variance. The best solutions are ones which have a high probability of achieving a good makespan. We first create a theoretical framework, formally showing how Monte Carlo simulation can be combined with deterministic scheduling algorithms to solve this problem. We propose an associated deterministic scheduling problem whose solution is proved, under certain conditions, to be a lower bound for the probabilistic problem. We then propose and investigate a number of techniques for solving such problems based on combinations of Monte Carlo simulation, solutions to the associated deterministic problem, and either constraint programming or tabu search. Our empirical results demonstrate that a combination of the use of the associated deterministic problem and Monte Carlo simulation results in algorithms that scale best both in terms of problem size and uncertainty. Further experiments point to the correlation between the quality of the deterministic solution and the quality of the probabilistic solution as a major factor responsible for this success.
1110.2733
Auctions with Severely Bounded Communication
cs.GT cs.AI
We study auctions with severe bounds on the communication allowed: each bidder may only transmit t bits of information to the auctioneer. We consider both welfare- and profit-maximizing auctions under this communication restriction. For both measures, we determine the optimal auction and show that the loss incurred relative to unconstrained auctions is mild. We prove non-surprising properties of these kinds of auctions, e.g., that in optimal mechanisms bidders simply report the interval in which their valuation lies in, as well as some surprising properties, e.g., that asymmetric auctions are better than symmetric ones and that multi-round auctions reduce the communication complexity only by a linear factor.
1110.2734
The Language of Search
cs.AI
This paper is concerned with a class of algorithms that perform exhaustive search on propositional knowledge bases. We show that each of these algorithms defines and generates a propositional language. Specifically, we show that the trace of a search can be interpreted as a combinational circuit, and a search algorithm then defines a propositional language consisting of circuits that are generated across all possible executions of the algorithm. In particular, we show that several versions of exhaustive DPLL search correspond to such well-known languages as FBDD, OBDD, and a precisely-defined subset of d-DNNF. By thus mapping search algorithms to propositional languages, we provide a uniform and practical framework in which successful search techniques can be harnessed for compilation of knowledge into various languages of interest, and a new methodology whereby the power and limitations of search algorithms can be understood by looking up the tractability and succinctness of the corresponding propositional languages.
1110.2735
Understanding Algorithm Performance on an Oversubscribed Scheduling Application
cs.AI
The best performing algorithms for a particular oversubscribed scheduling application, Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN) scheduling, appear to have little in common. Yet, through careful experimentation and modeling of performance in real problem instances, we can relate characteristics of the best algorithms to characteristics of the application. In particular, we find that plateaus dominate the search spaces (thus favoring algorithms that make larger changes to solutions) and that some randomization in exploration is critical to good performance (due to the lack of gradient information on the plateaus). Based on our explanations of algorithm performance, we develop a new algorithm that combines characteristics of the best performers; the new algorithms performance is better than the previous best. We show how hypothesis driven experimentation and search modeling can both explain algorithm performance and motivate the design of a new algorithm.
1110.2736
Marvin: A Heuristic Search Planner with Online Macro-Action Learning
cs.AI
This paper describes Marvin, a planner that competed in the Fourth International Planning Competition (IPC 4). Marvin uses action-sequence-memoisation techniques to generate macro-actions, which are then used during search for a solution plan. We provide an overview of its architecture and search behaviour, detailing the algorithms used. We also empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of its features in various planning domains; in particular, the effects on performance due to the use of macro-actions, the novel features of its search behaviour, and the native support of ADL and Derived Predicates.
1110.2737
Anytime Heuristic Search
cs.AI
We describe how to convert the heuristic search algorithm A* into an anytime algorithm that finds a sequence of improved solutions and eventually converges to an optimal solution. The approach we adopt uses weighted heuristic search to find an approximate solution quickly, and then continues the weighted search to find improved solutions as well as to improve a bound on the suboptimality of the current solution. When the time available to solve a search problem is limited or uncertain, this creates an anytime heuristic search algorithm that allows a flexible tradeoff between search time and solution quality. We analyze the properties of the resulting Anytime A* algorithm, and consider its performance in three domains; sliding-tile puzzles, STRIPS planning, and multiple sequence alignment. To illustrate the generality of this approach, we also describe how to transform the memory-efficient search algorithm Recursive Best-First Search (RBFS) into an anytime algorithm.
1110.2738
Discovering Classes of Strongly Equivalent Logic Programs
cs.AI
In this paper we apply computer-aided theorem discovery technique to discover theorems about strongly equivalent logic programs under the answer set semantics. Our discovered theorems capture new classes of strongly equivalent logic programs that can lead to new program simplification rules that preserve strong equivalence. Specifically, with the help of computers, we discovered exact conditions that capture the strong equivalence between a rule and the empty set, between two rules, between two rules and one of the two rules, between two rules and another rule, and between three rules and two of the three rules.
1110.2739
Phase Transition for Random Quantified XOR-Formulas
cs.AI
The QXORSAT problem is the quantified version of the satisfiability problem XORSAT in which the connective exclusive-or is used instead of the usual or. We study the phase transition associated with random QXORSAT instances. We give a description of this phase transition in the case of one alternation of quantifiers, thus performing an advanced practical and theoretical study on the phase transition of a quantified roblem.
1110.2740
Cutset Sampling for Bayesian Networks
cs.AI
The paper presents a new sampling methodology for Bayesian networks that samples only a subset of variables and applies exact inference to the rest. Cutset sampling is a network structure-exploiting application of the Rao-Blackwellisation principle to sampling in Bayesian networks. It improves convergence by exploiting memory-based inference algorithms. It can also be viewed as an anytime approximation of the exact cutset-conditioning algorithm developed by Pearl. Cutset sampling can be implemented efficiently when the sampled variables constitute a loop-cutset of the Bayesian network and, more generally, when the induced width of the networks graph conditioned on the observed sampled variables is bounded by a constant w. We demonstrate empirically the benefit of this scheme on a range of benchmarks.
1110.2741
An Algebraic Graphical Model for Decision with Uncertainties, Feasibilities, and Utilities
cs.AI
Numerous formalisms and dedicated algorithms have been designed in the last decades to model and solve decision making problems. Some formalisms, such as constraint networks, can express "simple" decision problems, while others are designed to take into account uncertainties, unfeasible decisions, and utilities. Even in a single formalism, several variants are often proposed to model different types of uncertainty (probability, possibility...) or utility (additive or not). In this article, we introduce an algebraic graphical model that encompasses a large number of such formalisms: (1) we first adapt previous structures from Friedman, Chu and Halpern for representing uncertainty, utility, and expected utility in order to deal with generic forms of sequential decision making; (2) on these structures, we then introduce composite graphical models that express information via variables linked by "local" functions, thanks to conditional independence; (3) on these graphical models, we finally define a simple class of queries which can represent various scenarios in terms of observabilities and controllabilities. A natural decision-tree semantics for such queries is completed by an equivalent operational semantics, which induces generic algorithms. The proposed framework, called the Plausibility-Feasibility-Utility (PFU) framework, not only provides a better understanding of the links between existing formalisms, but it also covers yet unpublished frameworks (such as possibilistic influence diagrams) and unifies formalisms such as quantified boolean formulas and influence diagrams. Our backtrack and variable elimination generic algorithms are a first step towards unified algorithms.
1110.2742
Semantic Matchmaking as Non-Monotonic Reasoning: A Description Logic Approach
cs.AI
Matchmaking arises when supply and demand meet in an electronic marketplace, or when agents search for a web service to perform some task, or even when recruiting agencies match curricula and job profiles. In such open environments, the objective of a matchmaking process is to discover best available offers to a given request. We address the problem of matchmaking from a knowledge representation perspective, with a formalization based on Description Logics. We devise Concept Abduction and Concept Contraction as non-monotonic inferences in Description Logics suitable for modeling matchmaking in a logical framework, and prove some related complexity results. We also present reasonable algorithms for semantic matchmaking based on the devised inferences, and prove that they obey to some commonsense properties. Finally, we report on the implementation of the proposed matchmaking framework, which has been used both as a mediator in e-marketplaces and for semantic web services discovery.
1110.2743
Solution-Guided Multi-Point Constructive Search for Job Shop Scheduling
cs.AI
Solution-Guided Multi-Point Constructive Search (SGMPCS) is a novel constructive search technique that performs a series of resource-limited tree searches where each search begins either from an empty solution (as in randomized restart) or from a solution that has been encountered during the search. A small number of these "elite solutions is maintained during the search. We introduce the technique and perform three sets of experiments on the job shop scheduling problem. First, a systematic, fully crossed study of SGMPCS is carried out to evaluate the performance impact of various parameter settings. Second, we inquire into the diversity of the elite solution set, showing, contrary to expectations, that a less diverse set leads to stronger performance. Finally, we compare the best parameter setting of SGMPCS from the first two experiments to chronological backtracking, limited discrepancy search, randomized restart, and a sophisticated tabu search algorithm on a set of well-known benchmark problems. Results demonstrate that SGMPCS is significantly better than the other constructive techniques tested, though lags behind the tabu search.
1110.2755
Efficient Tracking of Large Classes of Experts
cs.LG cs.IT math.IT
In the framework of prediction of individual sequences, sequential prediction methods are to be constructed that perform nearly as well as the best expert from a given class. We consider prediction strategies that compete with the class of switching strategies that can segment a given sequence into several blocks, and follow the advice of a different "base" expert in each block. As usual, the performance of the algorithm is measured by the regret defined as the excess loss relative to the best switching strategy selected in hindsight for the particular sequence to be predicted. In this paper we construct prediction strategies of low computational cost for the case where the set of base experts is large. In particular we provide a method that can transform any prediction algorithm $\A$ that is designed for the base class into a tracking algorithm. The resulting tracking algorithm can take advantage of the prediction performance and potential computational efficiency of $\A$ in the sense that it can be implemented with time and space complexity only $O(n^{\gamma} \ln n)$ times larger than that of $\A$, where $n$ is the time horizon and $\gamma \ge 0$ is a parameter of the algorithm. With $\A$ properly chosen, our algorithm achieves a regret bound of optimal order for $\gamma>0$, and only $O(\ln n)$ times larger than the optimal order for $\gamma=0$ for all typical regret bound types we examined. For example, for predicting binary sequences with switching parameters under the logarithmic loss, our method achieves the optimal $O(\ln n)$ regret rate with time complexity $O(n^{1+\gamma}\ln n)$ for any $\gamma\in (0,1)$.
1110.2765
Multi-Issue Negotiation with Deadlines
cs.MA cs.AI
This paper studies bilateral multi-issue negotiation between self-interested autonomous agents. Now, there are a number of different procedures that can be used for this process; the three main ones being the package deal procedure in which all the issues are bundled and discussed together, the simultaneous procedure in which the issues are discussed simultaneously but independently of each other, and the sequential procedure in which the issues are discussed one after another. Since each of them yields a different outcome, a key problem is to decide which one to use in which circumstances. Specifically, we consider this question for a model in which the agents have time constraints (in the form of both deadlines and discount factors) and information uncertainty (in that the agents do not know the opponents utility function). For this model, we consider issues that are both independent and those that are interdependent and determine equilibria for each case for each procedure. In so doing, we show that the package deal is in fact the optimal procedure for each party. We then go on to show that, although the package deal may be computationally more complex than the other two procedures, it generates Pareto optimal outcomes (unlike the other two), it has similar earliest and latest possible times of agreement to the simultaneous procedure (which is better than the sequential procedure), and that it (like the other two procedures) generates a unique outcome only under certain conditions (which we define).
1110.2766
The Strategy-Proofness Landscape of Merging
cs.GT cs.MA
Merging operators aim at defining the beliefs/goals of a group of agents from the beliefs/goals of each member of the group. Whenever an agent of the group has preferences over the possible results of the merging process (i.e., the possible merged bases), she can try to rig the merging process by lying on her true beliefs/goals if this leads to better merged base according to her point of view. Obviously, strategy-proof operators are highly desirable in order to guarantee equity among agents even when some of them are not sincere. In this paper, we draw the strategy-proof landscape for many merging operators from the literature, including model-based ones and formula-based ones. Both the general case and several restrictions on the merging process are considered.
1110.2767
Resource Allocation Among Agents with MDP-Induced Preferences
cs.MA cs.AI
Allocating scarce resources among agents to maximize global utility is, in general, computationally challenging. We focus on problems where resources enable agents to execute actions in stochastic environments, modeled as Markov decision processes (MDPs), such that the value of a resource bundle is defined as the expected value of the optimal MDP policy realizable given these resources. We present an algorithm that simultaneously solves the resource-allocation and the policy-optimization problems. This allows us to avoid explicitly representing utilities over exponentially many resource bundles, leading to drastic (often exponential) reductions in computational complexity. We then use this algorithm in the context of self-interested agents to design a combinatorial auction for allocating resources. We empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by showing that it can, in minutes, optimally solve problems for which a straightforward combinatorial resource-allocation technique would require the agents to enumerate up to 2^100 resource bundles and the auctioneer to solve an NP-complete problem with an input of that size.
1110.2813
Towards Quantifying Vertex Similarity in Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Vertex similarity is a major problem in network science with a wide range of applications. In this work we provide novel perspectives on finding (dis)similar vertices within a network and across two networks with the same number of vertices (graph matching). With respect to the former problem, we propose to optimize a geometric objective which allows us to express each vertex uniquely as a convex combination of a few extreme types of vertices. Our method has the important advantage of supporting efficiently several types of queries such as "which other vertices are most similar to this vertex?" by the use of the appropriate data structures and of mining interesting patterns in the network. With respect to the latter problem (graph matching), we propose the generalized condition number --a quantity widely used in numerical analysis-- $\kappa(L_G,L_H)$ of the Laplacian matrix representations of $G,H$ as a measure of graph similarity, where $G,H$ are the graphs of interest. We show that this objective has a solid theoretical basis and propose a deterministic and a randomized graph alignment algorithm. We evaluate our algorithms on both synthetic and real data. We observe that our proposed methods achieve high-quality results and provide us with significant insights into the network structure.
1110.2825
Scaling of nestedness in complex networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.dis-nn cs.SI
Nestedness characterizes the linkage pattern of networked systems, indicating the likelihood that a node is linked to the nodes linked to the nodes with larger degrees than it. Networks of mutualistic relationship between distinct groups of species in ecological communities exhibit such nestedness, which is known to support the network robustness. Despite such importance, quantitative characteristics of nestedness is little understood. Here we take graph-theoretic approach to derive the scaling properties of nestedness in various model networks. Our results show how the heterogeneous connectivity patterns enhance nestedness. Also we find that the nestedness of bipartite networks depend sensitively on the fraction of different types of nodes, causing nestedness to scale differently for nodes of different types.
1110.2834
Interspecific competition underlying mutualistic networks
q-bio.PE cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The architecture of bipartite networks linking two classes of constituents is affected by the interactions within each class. For the bipartite networks representing the mutualistic relationship between pollinating animals and plants, it has been known that their degree distributions are broad but often deviate from power-law form, more significantly for plants than animals. Here we consider a model for the evolution of the mutualistic networks and find that their topology is strongly dependent on the asymmetry and non-linearity of the preferential selection of mutualistic partners. Real-world mutualistic networks analyzed in the framework of the model show that a new animal species determines its partners not only by their attractiveness but also as a result of the competition with pre-existing animals, which leads to the stretched-exponential degree distributions of plant species.
1110.2842
A tail inequality for quadratic forms of subgaussian random vectors
math.PR cs.LG
We prove an exponential probability tail inequality for positive semidefinite quadratic forms in a subgaussian random vector. The bound is analogous to one that holds when the vector has independent Gaussian entries.
1110.2855
Sparse Image Representation with Epitomes
cs.LG cs.CV stat.ML
Sparse coding, which is the decomposition of a vector using only a few basis elements, is widely used in machine learning and image processing. The basis set, also called dictionary, is learned to adapt to specific data. This approach has proven to be very effective in many image processing tasks. Traditionally, the dictionary is an unstructured "flat" set of atoms. In this paper, we study structured dictionaries which are obtained from an epitome, or a set of epitomes. The epitome is itself a small image, and the atoms are all the patches of a chosen size inside this image. This considerably reduces the number of parameters to learn and provides sparse image decompositions with shiftinvariance properties. We propose a new formulation and an algorithm for learning the structured dictionaries associated with epitomes, and illustrate their use in image denoising tasks.
1110.2867
Robust Beamforming in Interference Channels with Imperfect Transmitter Channel Information
cs.IT math.IT
We consider $K$ links operating concurrently in the same spectral band. Each transmitter has multiple antennas, while each receiver uses a single antenna. This setting corresponds to the multiple-input single-output interference channel. We assume perfect channel state information at the single-user decoding receivers whereas the transmitters only have estimates of the true channels. The channel estimation errors are assumed to be bounded in elliptical regions whose geometry is known at the transmitters. Robust beamforming optimizes worst-case received power gains, and a Pareto optimal point is a worst-case achievable rate tuple from which it is impossible to increase a link's performance without degrading the performance of another. We characterize the robust beamforming vectors necessary to operate at any Pareto optimal point. Moreover, these beamforming vectors are parameterized by $K(K-1)$ real-valued parameters. We analyze the system's spectral efficiency at high and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Zero forcing transmission achieves full multiplexing gain at high SNR only if the estimation errors scale linearly with inverse SNR. If the errors are SNR independent, then single-user transmission is optimal at high SNR. At low SNR, robust maximum ratio transmission optimizes the minimum energy per bit for reliable communication. Numerical simulations illustrate the gained theoretical results.
1110.2872
Exchange Economy in Two-User Multiple-Input Single-Output Interference Channels
cs.GT cs.IT math.IT
We study the conflict between two links in a multiple-input single-output interference channel. This setting is strictly competitive and can be related to perfectly competitive market models. In such models, general equilibrium theory is used to determine equilibrium measures that are Pareto optimal. First, we consider the links to be consumers that can trade goods within themselves. The goods in our setting correspond to beamforming vectors. We utilize the conflict representation of the consumers in the Edgeworth box, a graphical tool that depicts the allocation of the goods for the two consumers, to provide closed-form solution to all Pareto optimal outcomes. Afterwards, we model the situation between the links as a competitive market which additionally defines prices for the goods. The equilibrium in this economy is called Walrasian and corresponds to the prices that equate the demand to the supply of goods. We calculate the unique Walrasian equilibrium and propose a coordination process that is realized by an arbitrator which distributes the Walrasian prices to the consumers. The consumers then calculate in a decentralized manner their optimal demand corresponding to beamforming vectors that achieve the Walrasian equilibrium. This outcome is Pareto optimal and dominates the noncooperative outcome of the systems. Thus, based on the game theoretic model and solution concept, an algorithm for a distributed implementation of the beamforming problem in multiple-input single-output interference channels is provided.
1110.2890
ELCA Evaluation for Keyword Search on Probabilistic XML Data
cs.DB
As probabilistic data management is becoming one of the main research focuses and keyword search is turning into a more popular query means, it is natural to think how to support keyword queries on probabilistic XML data. With regards to keyword query on deterministic XML documents, ELCA (Exclusive Lowest Common Ancestor) semantics allows more relevant fragments rooted at the ELCAs to appear as results and is more popular compared with other keyword query result semantics (such as SLCAs). In this paper, we investigate how to evaluate ELCA results for keyword queries on probabilistic XML documents. After defining probabilistic ELCA semantics in terms of possible world semantics, we propose an approach to compute ELCA probabilities without generating possible worlds. Then we develop an efficient stack-based algorithm that can find all probabilistic ELCA results and their ELCA probabilities for a given keyword query on a probabilistic XML document. Finally, we experimentally evaluate the proposed ELCA algorithm and compare it with its SLCA counterpart in aspects of result effectiveness, time and space efficiency, and scalability.
1110.2897
Randomized Dimensionality Reduction for k-means Clustering
cs.DS cs.LG
We study the topic of dimensionality reduction for $k$-means clustering. Dimensionality reduction encompasses the union of two approaches: \emph{feature selection} and \emph{feature extraction}. A feature selection based algorithm for $k$-means clustering selects a small subset of the input features and then applies $k$-means clustering on the selected features. A feature extraction based algorithm for $k$-means clustering constructs a small set of new artificial features and then applies $k$-means clustering on the constructed features. Despite the significance of $k$-means clustering as well as the wealth of heuristic methods addressing it, provably accurate feature selection methods for $k$-means clustering are not known. On the other hand, two provably accurate feature extraction methods for $k$-means clustering are known in the literature; one is based on random projections and the other is based on the singular value decomposition (SVD). This paper makes further progress towards a better understanding of dimensionality reduction for $k$-means clustering. Namely, we present the first provably accurate feature selection method for $k$-means clustering and, in addition, we present two feature extraction methods. The first feature extraction method is based on random projections and it improves upon the existing results in terms of time complexity and number of features needed to be extracted. The second feature extraction method is based on fast approximate SVD factorizations and it also improves upon the existing results in terms of time complexity. The proposed algorithms are randomized and provide constant-factor approximation guarantees with respect to the optimal $k$-means objective value.
1110.2899
Discovering Emerging Topics in Social Streams via Link Anomaly Detection
stat.ML cs.LG cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Detection of emerging topics are now receiving renewed interest motivated by the rapid growth of social networks. Conventional term-frequency-based approaches may not be appropriate in this context, because the information exchanged are not only texts but also images, URLs, and videos. We focus on the social aspects of theses networks. That is, the links between users that are generated dynamically intentionally or unintentionally through replies, mentions, and retweets. We propose a probability model of the mentioning behaviour of a social network user, and propose to detect the emergence of a new topic from the anomaly measured through the model. We combine the proposed mention anomaly score with a recently proposed change-point detection technique based on the Sequentially Discounting Normalized Maximum Likelihood (SDNML), or with Kleinberg's burst model. Aggregating anomaly scores from hundreds of users, we show that we can detect emerging topics only based on the reply/mention relationships in social network posts. We demonstrate our technique in a number of real data sets we gathered from Twitter. The experiments show that the proposed mention-anomaly-based approaches can detect new topics at least as early as the conventional term-frequency-based approach, and sometimes much earlier when the keyword is ill-defined.
1110.2906
Multiple dynamical time-scales in networks with hierarchically nested modular organization
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.bio-ph
Many natural and engineered complex networks have intricate mesoscopic organization, e.g., the clustering of the constituent nodes into several communities or modules. Often, such modularity is manifested at several different hierarchical levels, where the clusters defined at one level appear as elementary entities at the next higher level. Using a simple model of a hierarchical modular network, we show that such a topological structure gives rise to characteristic time-scale separation between dynamics occurring at different levels of the hierarchy. This generalizes our earlier result for simple modular networks, where fast intra-modular and slow inter-modular processes were clearly distinguished. Investigating the process of synchronization of oscillators in a hierarchical modular network, we show the existence of as many distinct time-scales as there are hierarchical levels in the system. This suggests a possible functional role of such mesoscopic organization principle in natural systems, viz., in the dynamical separation of events occurring at different spatial scales.
1110.2907
System Identification Using Reweighted Zero Attracting Least Absolute Deviation Algorithm
cs.SY
In this paper, the l1 norm penalty on the filter coefficients is incorporated in the least mean absolute deviation (LAD) algorithm to improve the performance of the LAD algorithm. The performance of LAD, zero-attracting LAD (ZA-LAD) and reweighted zero-attracting LAD (RZA-LAD) are evaluated for linear time varying system identification under the non-Gaussian (alpha-stable) noise environments. Effectiveness of the ZA-LAD type algorithms is demonstrated through computer simulations.
1110.2931
Networking - A Statistical Physics Perspective
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
Efficient networking has a substantial economic and societal impact in a broad range of areas including transportation systems, wired and wireless communications and a range of Internet applications. As transportation and communication networks become increasingly more complex, the ever increasing demand for congestion control, higher traffic capacity, quality of service, robustness and reduced energy consumption require new tools and methods to meet these conflicting requirements. The new methodology should serve for gaining better understanding of the properties of networking systems at the macroscopic level, as well as for the development of new principled optimization and management algorithms at the microscopic level. Methods of statistical physics seem best placed to provide new approaches as they have been developed specifically to deal with non-linear large scale systems. This paper aims at presenting an overview of tools and methods that have been developed within the statistical physics community and that can be readily applied to address the emerging problems in networking. These include diffusion processes, methods from disordered systems and polymer physics, probabilistic inference, which have direct relevance to network routing, file and frequency distribution, the exploration of network structures and vulnerability, and various other practical networking applications.
1110.2980
The Myth of Global Science Collaboration - Collaboration patterns in epistemic communities
physics.soc-ph cs.DL cs.SI
Scientific collaboration is often perceived as a joint global process that involves researchers worldwide, regardless of their place of work and residence. Globalization of science, in this respect, implies that collaboration among scientists takes place along the lines of common topics and irrespective of the spatial distances between the collaborators. The networks of collaborators, termed 'epistemic communities', should thus have a space-independent structure. This paper shows that such a notion of globalized scientific collaboration is not supported by empirical data. It introduces a novel approach of analyzing distance-dependent probabilities of collaboration. The results of the analysis of six distinct scientific fields reveal that intra-country collaboration is about 10-50 times more likely to occur than international collaboration. Moreover, strong dependencies exist between collaboration activity (measured in co-authorships) and spatial distance when confined to national borders. However, the fact that distance becomes irrelevant once collaboration is taken to the international scale suggests a globalized science system that is strongly influenced by the gravity of local science clusters. The similarity of the probability functions of the six science fields analyzed suggests a universal mode of spatial governance that is independent from the mode of knowledge creation in science.
1110.2995
On sequences of projections of the cubic lattice
math.CO cs.CG cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we study sequences of lattices which are, up to similarity, projections of $\mathbb{Z}^{n+1}$ onto a hyperplane $\bm{v}^{\perp}$, with $\bm{v} \in \mathbb{Z}^{n+1}$ and converge to a target lattice $\Lambda$ which is equivalent to an integer lattice. We show a sufficient condition to construct sequences converging at rate $O(1/ |\bm{v}|^{2/n})$ and exhibit explicit constructions for some important families of lattices.
1110.3001
Step size adaptation in first-order method for stochastic strongly convex programming
math.OC cs.LG
We propose a first-order method for stochastic strongly convex optimization that attains $O(1/n)$ rate of convergence, analysis show that the proposed method is simple, easily to implement, and in worst case, asymptotically four times faster than its peers. We derive this method from several intuitive observations that are generalized from existing first order optimization methods.
1110.3002
Are Minds Computable?
cs.AI
This essay explores the limits of Turing machines concerning the modeling of minds and suggests alternatives to go beyond those limits.
1110.3005
Symmetry in the sequence of approximation coefficients
math.NT cs.IT math.DS math.HO math.IT
Let $\{a_n\}_1^\infty$ and $\{\theta_n\}_0^\infty$ be the sequences of partial quotients and approximation coefficients for the continued fraction expansion of an irrational number. We will provide a function $f$ such that $a_{n+1} = f(\theta_{n\pm1},\theta_n)$. In tandem with a formula due to Dajani and Kraaikamp, we will write $\theta_{n \pm 1}$ as a function of $(\theta_{n \mp 1}, \theta_n)$, revealing an elegant symmetry in this classical sequence and allowing for its recovery from a pair of consecutive terms.
1110.3017
Towards a Query Language for the Web of Data (A Vision Paper)
cs.DB cs.NI
Research on querying the Web of Data is still in its infancy. In this paper, we provide an initial set of general features that we envision should be considered in order to define a query language for the Web of Data. Furthermore, for each of these features, we pose questions that have not been addressed before in the context of querying the Web of Data. We believe that addressing these questions and studying these features may guide the next 10 years of research on the Web of Data.
1110.3062
Separation Theorems for Phase-Incoherent Multiple-User Channels
cs.IT math.IT
We study the transmission of two correlated and memoryless sources $(U,V)$ over several multiple-user phase asynchronous channels. Namely, we consider a class of phase-incoherent multiple access relay channels (MARC) with both non-causal and causal unidirectional cooperation between encoders, referred to as phase-incoherent unidirectional non-causal cooperative MARC (PI-UNCC-MARC), and phase-incoherent unidirectional causal cooperative MARC (PI-UCC-MARC) respectively. We also consider phase-incoherent interference channels (PI-IC), and interference relay channel (PI-IRC) models in the same context. In all cases, the input signals are assumed to undergo non-ergodic phase shifts due to the channel. The shifts are assumed to be unknown to the transmitters and known to the receivers as a realistic assumption. Both necessary and sufficient conditions in order to reliably send the correlated sources to the destinations over the considered channels are derived. In particular, for all of the channel models, we first derive an outer bound for reliable communication that is defined with respect to the source entropy content (i.e., the triple $(H(U|V),H(V|U),H(U,V))$). Then, using {\em separate} source and channel coding, under specific gain conditions, we establish the same region as the inner bound and therefore obtain tight conditions for reliable communication for the specific channel under study. We thus establish a source-channel separation theorem for each channel and conclude that without the knowledge of the phase shifts at the transmitter sides, separation is optimal. It is further conjectured that separation in general is optimal for all channel coefficients.
1110.3069
Multiterminal Source Coding under Logarithmic Loss
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the classical two-encoder multiterminal source coding problem where distortion is measured under logarithmic loss. We provide a single-letter characterization of the achievable rate distortion region for arbitrarily correlated sources with finite alphabets. In doing so, we also give the rate distortion region for the $m$-encoder CEO problem (also under logarithmic loss). Several applications and examples are given.
1110.3076
Efficient Latent Variable Graphical Model Selection via Split Bregman Method
stat.ML cs.LG
We consider the problem of covariance matrix estimation in the presence of latent variables. Under suitable conditions, it is possible to learn the marginal covariance matrix of the observed variables via a tractable convex program, where the concentration matrix of the observed variables is decomposed into a sparse matrix (representing the graphical structure of the observed variables) and a low rank matrix (representing the marginalization effect of latent variables). We present an efficient first-order method based on split Bregman to solve the convex problem. The algorithm is guaranteed to converge under mild conditions. We show that our algorithm is significantly faster than the state-of-the-art algorithm on both artificial and real-world data. Applying the algorithm to a gene expression data involving thousands of genes, we show that most of the correlation between observed variables can be explained by only a few dozen latent factors.
1110.3088
Towards cross-lingual alerting for bursty epidemic events
cs.CL cs.IR cs.SI
Background: Online news reports are increasingly becoming a source for event based early warning systems that detect natural disasters. Harnessing the massive volume of information available from multilingual newswire presents as many challenges as opportunities due to the patterns of reporting complex spatiotemporal events. Results: In this article we study the problem of utilising correlated event reports across languages. We track the evolution of 16 disease outbreaks using 5 temporal aberration detection algorithms on text-mined events classified according to disease and outbreak country. Using ProMED reports as a silver standard, comparative analysis of news data for 13 languages over a 129 day trial period showed improved sensitivity, F1 and timeliness across most models using cross-lingual events. We report a detailed case study analysis for Cholera in Angola 2010 which highlights the challenges faced in correlating news events with the silver standard. Conclusions: The results show that automated health surveillance using multilingual text mining has the potential to turn low value news into high value alerts if informed choices are used to govern the selection of models and data sources. An implementation of the C2 alerting algorithm using multilingual news is available at the BioCaster portal http://born.nii.ac.jp/?page=globalroundup.
1110.3089
OMG U got flu? Analysis of shared health messages for bio-surveillance
cs.CL cs.IR cs.SI
Background: Micro-blogging services such as Twitter offer the potential to crowdsource epidemics in real-time. However, Twitter posts ('tweets') are often ambiguous and reactive to media trends. In order to ground user messages in epidemic response we focused on tracking reports of self-protective behaviour such as avoiding public gatherings or increased sanitation as the basis for further risk analysis. Results: We created guidelines for tagging self protective behaviour based on Jones and Salath\'e (2009)'s behaviour response survey. Applying the guidelines to a corpus of 5283 Twitter messages related to influenza like illness showed a high level of inter-annotator agreement (kappa 0.86). We employed supervised learning using unigrams, bigrams and regular expressions as features with two supervised classifiers (SVM and Naive Bayes) to classify tweets into 4 self-reported protective behaviour categories plus a self-reported diagnosis. In addition to classification performance we report moderately strong Spearman's Rho correlation by comparing classifier output against WHO/NREVSS laboratory data for A(H1N1) in the USA during the 2009-2010 influenza season. Conclusions: The study adds to evidence supporting a high degree of correlation between pre-diagnostic social media signals and diagnostic influenza case data, pointing the way towards low cost sensor networks. We believe that the signals we have modelled may be applicable to a wide range of diseases.
1110.3091
What's unusual in online disease outbreak news?
cs.CL cs.IR cs.SI
Background: Accurate and timely detection of public health events of international concern is necessary to help support risk assessment and response and save lives. Novel event-based methods that use the World Wide Web as a signal source offer potential to extend health surveillance into areas where traditional indicator networks are lacking. In this paper we address the issue of systematically evaluating online health news to support automatic alerting using daily disease-country counts text mined from real world data using BioCaster. For 18 data sets produced by BioCaster, we compare 5 aberration detection algorithms (EARS C2, C3, W2, F-statistic and EWMA) for performance against expert moderated ProMED-mail postings. Results: We report sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), mean alerts/100 days and F1, at 95% confidence interval (CI) for 287 ProMED-mail postings on 18 outbreaks across 14 countries over a 366 day period. Results indicate that W2 had the best F1 with a slight benefit for day of week effect over C2. In drill down analysis we indicate issues arising from the granular choice of country-level modeling, sudden drops in reporting due to day of week effects and reporting bias. Automatic alerting has been implemented in BioCaster available from http://born.nii.ac.jp. Conclusions: Online health news alerts have the potential to enhance manual analytical methods by increasing throughput, timeliness and detection rates. Systematic evaluation of health news aberrations is necessary to push forward our understanding of the complex relationship between news report volumes and case numbers and to select the best performing features and algorithms.
1110.3094
Syndromic classification of Twitter messages
cs.CL cs.IR cs.SI
Recent studies have shown strong correlation between social networking data and national influenza rates. We expanded upon this success to develop an automated text mining system that classifies Twitter messages in real time into six syndromic categories based on key terms from a public health ontology. 10-fold cross validation tests were used to compare Naive Bayes (NB) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) models on a corpus of 7431 Twitter messages. SVM performed better than NB on 4 out of 6 syndromes. The best performing classifiers showed moderately strong F1 scores: respiratory = 86.2 (NB); gastrointestinal = 85.4 (SVM polynomial kernel degree 2); neurological = 88.6 (SVM polynomial kernel degree 1); rash = 86.0 (SVM polynomial kernel degree 1); constitutional = 89.3 (SVM polynomial kernel degree 1); hemorrhagic = 89.9 (NB). The resulting classifiers were deployed together with an EARS C2 aberration detection algorithm in an experimental online system.
1110.3109
Robust Image Analysis by L1-Norm Semi-supervised Learning
cs.CV cs.LG
This paper presents a novel L1-norm semi-supervised learning algorithm for robust image analysis by giving new L1-norm formulation of Laplacian regularization which is the key step of graph-based semi-supervised learning. Since our L1-norm Laplacian regularization is defined directly over the eigenvectors of the normalized Laplacian matrix, we successfully formulate semi-supervised learning as an L1-norm linear reconstruction problem which can be effectively solved with sparse coding. By working with only a small subset of eigenvectors, we further develop a fast sparse coding algorithm for our L1-norm semi-supervised learning. Due to the sparsity induced by sparse coding, the proposed algorithm can deal with the noise in the data to some extent and thus has important applications to robust image analysis, such as noise-robust image classification and noise reduction for visual and textual bag-of-words (BOW) models. In particular, this paper is the first attempt to obtain robust image representation by sparse co-refinement of visual and textual BOW models. The experimental results have shown the promising performance of the proposed algorithm.
1110.3121
Transient fluctuation of the prosperity of firms in a network economy
q-bio.MN cs.CE physics.bio-ph physics.soc-ph
The transient fluctuation of the prosperity of firms in a network economy is investigated with an abstract stochastic model. The model describes the profit which firms make when they sell materials to a firm which produces a product and the fixed cost expense to the firms to produce those materials and product. The formulae for this model are parallel to those for population dynamics. The swinging changes in the fluctuation in the transient state from the initial growth to the final steady state are the consequence of a topology-dependent time trial competition between the profitable interactions and expense. The firm in a sparse random network economy is more likely to go bankrupt than expected from the value of the limit of the fluctuation in the steady state, and there is a risk of failing to reach by far the less fluctuating steady state.
1110.3158
Efficient Incremental Breadth-Depth XML Event Mining
cs.DB
Many applications log a large amount of events continuously. Extracting interesting knowledge from logged events is an emerging active research area in data mining. In this context, we propose an approach for mining frequent events and association rules from logged events in XML format. This approach is composed of two-main phases: I) constructing a novel tree structure called Frequency XML-based Tree (FXT), which contains the frequency of events to be mined; II) querying the constructed FXT using XQuery to discover frequent itemsets and association rules. The FXT is constructed with a single-pass over logged data. We implement the proposed algorithm and study various performance issues. The performance study shows that the algorithm is efficient, for both constructing the FXT and discovering association rules.
1110.3177
On a Class of Quadratic Polynomials with no Zeros and its Application to APN Functions
cs.IT math.IT
We show that the there exists an infinite family of APN functions of the form $F(x)=x^{2^{s}+1} + x^{2^{k+s}+2^k} + cx^{2^{k+s}+1} + c^{2^k}x^{2^k + 2^s} + \delta x^{2^{k}+1}$, over $\gf_{2^{2k}}$, where $k$ is an even integer and $\gcd(2k,s)=1, 3\nmid k$. This is actually a proposed APN family of Lilya Budaghyan and Claude Carlet who show in \cite{carlet-1} that the function is APN when there exists $c$ such that the polynomial $y^{2^s+1}+cy^{2^s}+c^{2^k}y+1=0$ has no solutions in the field $\gf_{2^{2k}}$. In \cite{carlet-1} they demonstrate by computer that such elements $c$ can be found over many fields, particularly when the degree of the field is not divisible by 3. We show that such $c$ exists when $k$ is even and $3\nmid k$ (and demonstrate why the $k$ odd case only re-describes an existing family of APN functions). The form of these coefficients is given so that we may write the infinite family of APN functions.
1110.3194
Controlled Total Variation regularization for inverse problems
cs.CV
This paper provides a new algorithm for solving inverse problems, based on the minimization of the $L^2$ norm and on the control of the Total Variation. It consists in relaxing the role of the Total Variation in the classical Total Variation minimization approach, which permits us to get better approximation to the inverse problems. The numerical results on the deconvolution problem show that our method outperforms some previous ones.
1110.3195
Blind Known Interference Cancellation
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
This paper investigates interference-cancellation schemes at the receiver, in which the original data of the interference is known a priori. Such a priori knowledge is common in wireless relay networks. For example, a transmitting relay could be relaying data that was previously transmitted by a node, in which case the interference received by the node now is actually self information. Besides the case of self information, the node could also have overheard or received the interference data in a prior transmission by another node. Directly removing the known interference requires accurate estimate of the interference channel, which may be difficult in many situations. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme, Blind Known Interference Cancellation (BKIC), to cancel known interference without interference channel information. BKIC consists of two steps. The first step combines adjacent symbols to cancel the interference, exploiting the fact that the channel coefficients are almost the same between successive symbols. After such interference cancellation, however, the signal of interest is also distorted. The second step recovers the signal of interest amidst the distortion. We propose two algorithms for the critical second steps. The first algorithm (BKIC-S) is based on the principle of smoothing. It is simple and has near optimal performance in the slow fading scenario. The second algorithm (BKIC-RBP) is based on the principle of real-valued belief propagation. It can achieve MAP-optimal performance with fast convergence, and has near optimal performance even in the fast fading scenario. Both BKIC schemes outperform the traditional self-interference cancellation schemes with perfect initial channel information by a large margin, while having lower complexities.
1110.3197
Non-memoryless Analog Network Coding in Two-Way Relay Channel
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
Physical-layer Network Coding (PNC) can significantly improve the throughput of two-way relay channels. An interesting variant of PNC is Analog Network Coding (ANC). Almost all ANC schemes proposed to date, however, operate in a symbol by symbol manner (memoryless) and cannot exploit the redundant information in channel-coded packets to enhance performance. This paper proposes a non-memoryless ANC scheme. In particular, we design a soft-input soft-output decoder for the relay node to process the superimposed packets from the two end nodes to yield an estimated MMSE packet for forwarding back to the end nodes. Our decoder takes into account the correlation among different symbols in the packets due to channel coding, and provides significantly improved MSE performance. Our analysis shows that the SNR improvement at the relay node is lower bounded by 1/R (R is the code rate) with the simplest LDPC code (repeat code). The SNR improvement is also verified by numerical simulation with LDPC code. Our results indicate that LDPC codes of different degrees are preferred in different SNR regions. Generally speaking, smaller degrees are preferred for lower SNRs.
1110.3216
An Enhanced Multiple Random Access Scheme for Satellite Communications
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
In this paper, we introduce Multi-Slots Coded ALOHA (MuSCA) as a multiple random access method for satellite communications. This scheme can be considered as a generalization of the Contention Resolution Diversity Slotted Aloha (CRDSA) mechanism. Instead of transmitting replicas, this system replaces them by several parts of a single word of an error correcting code. It is also different from Coded Slotted ALOHA (CSA) as the assumption of destructive collisions is not adopted. In MuSCA, the entity in charge of the decoding mechanism collects all bursts of the same user (including the interfered slots) before decoding and implements a successive interference cancellation (SIC) process to remove successfully decoded signals. Simulations show that for a frame of 100 slots, the achievable total normalized throughput is greater than 1.25 and 1.4 for a frame of 500 slots, resulting in a gain of 80% and 75% with respect to CRDSA and CSA respectively. This paper is a first analysis of the proposed scheme and opens several perspectives.
1110.3225
Mining Patterns in Networks using Homomorphism
cs.DS cs.SI physics.soc-ph
In recent years many algorithms have been developed for finding patterns in graphs and networks. A disadvantage of these algorithms is that they use subgraph isomorphism to determine the support of a graph pattern; subgraph isomorphism is a well-known NP complete problem. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach which mines tree patterns in networks by using subgraph homomorphism. The advantage of homomorphism is that it can be computed in polynomial time, which allows us to develop an algorithm that mines tree patterns in arbitrary graphs in incremental polynomial time. Homomorphism however entails two problems not found when using isomorphism: (1) two patterns of different size can be equivalent; (2) patterns of unbounded size can be frequent. In this paper we formalize these problems and study solutions that easily fit within our algorithm.
1110.3239
Improving parameter learning of Bayesian nets from incomplete data
cs.LG cs.AI stat.ML
This paper addresses the estimation of parameters of a Bayesian network from incomplete data. The task is usually tackled by running the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm several times in order to obtain a high log-likelihood estimate. We argue that choosing the maximum log-likelihood estimate (as well as the maximum penalized log-likelihood and the maximum a posteriori estimate) has severe drawbacks, being affected both by overfitting and model uncertainty. Two ideas are discussed to overcome these issues: a maximum entropy approach and a Bayesian model averaging approach. Both ideas can be easily applied on top of EM, while the entropy idea can be also implemented in a more sophisticated way, through a dedicated non-linear solver. A vast set of experiments shows that these ideas produce significantly better estimates and inferences than the traditional and widely used maximum (penalized) log-likelihood and maximum a posteriori estimates. In particular, if EM is adopted as optimization engine, the model averaging approach is the best performing one; its performance is matched by the entropy approach when implemented using the non-linear solver. The results suggest that the applicability of these ideas is immediate (they are easy to implement and to integrate in currently available inference engines) and that they constitute a better way to learn Bayesian network parameters.
1110.3264
Reduced-dimension multiuser detection: detectors and performance guarantees
cs.IT math.IT
We explore several reduced-dimension multiuser detection (RD-MUD) structures that significantly decrease the number of required correlation branches at the receiver front-end, while still achieving performance similar to that of the conventional matched-filter (MF) bank. RD-MUD exploits the fact that the number of active users is typically small relative to the total number of users in the system and relies on ideas of analog compressed sensing to reduce the number of correlators. We first develop a general framework for both linear and nonlinear RD-MUD detectors. We then present theoretical performance analysis for two specific detectors: the linear reduced-dimension decorrelating (RDD) detector, which combines subspace projection and thresholding to determine active users and sign detection for data recovery, and the nonlinear reduced-dimension decision-feedback (RDDF) detector, which combines decision-feedback orthogonal matching pursuit for active user detection and sign detection for data recovery. The theoretical performance results for both detectors are validated via numerical simulations.
1110.3267
Multi-tier Network Performance Analysis using a Shotgun Cellular System
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies the carrier-to-interference ratio (CIR) and carrier-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (CINR) performance at the mobile station (MS) within a multi-tier network composed of M tiers of wireless networks, with each tier modeled as the homogeneous n-dimensional (n-D, n=1,2, and 3) shotgun cellular system, where the base station (BS) distribution is given by the homogeneous Poisson point process in n-D. The CIR and CINR at the MS in a single tier network are thoroughly analyzed to simplify the analysis of the multi-tier network. For the multi-tier network with given system parameters, the following are the main results of this paper: (1) semi-analytical expressions for the tail probabilities of CIR and CINR; (2) a closed form expression for the tail probability of CIR in the range [1,Infinity); (3) a closed form expression for the tail probability of an approximation to CIR in the entire range [0,Infinity); (4) a lookup table based approach for obtaining the tail probability of CINR, and (5) the study of the effect of shadow fading and BSs with ideal sectorized antennas on the CIR and CINR. Based on these results, it is shown that, in a practical cellular system, the installation of additional wireless networks (microcells, picocells and femtocells) with low power BSs over the already existing macrocell network will always improve the CINR performance at the MS.
1110.3280
Stochastic Ordering based Carrier-to-Interference Ratio Analysis for the Shotgun Cellular Systems
cs.IT math.IT
A simple analytical tool based on stochastic ordering is developed to compare the distributions of carrier-to-interference ratio at the mobile station of two cellular systems where the base stations are distributed randomly according to certain non-homogeneous Poisson point processes. The comparison is conveniently done by studying only the base station densities without having to solve for the distributions of the carrier-to-interference ratio, that are often hard to obtain.
1110.3315
Evolution of spatially embedded branching trees with interacting nodes
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
We study the evolution of branching trees embedded in Euclidean spaces with suppressed branching of spatially close nodes. This cooperative branching process accounts for the effect of overcrowding of nodes in the embedding space and mimics the evolution of life processes (the so-called "tree of life") in which a new level of complexity emerges as a short transition followed by a long period of gradual evolution or even complete extinction. We consider the models of branching trees in which each new node can produce up to two twigs within a unit distance from the node in the Euclidean space, but this branching is suppressed if the newborn node is closer than at distance $a$ from one of the previous generation nodes. This results in an explosive (exponential) growth in the initial period, and, after some crossover time $t_x \sim \ln(1/a)$ for small $a$, in a slow (power-law) growth. This special point is also a transition from "small" to "large words" in terms of network science. We show that if the space is restricted, then this evolution may end by extinction.
1110.3347
Dynamic Batch Bayesian Optimization
cs.LG
Bayesian optimization (BO) algorithms try to optimize an unknown function that is expensive to evaluate using minimum number of evaluations/experiments. Most of the proposed algorithms in BO are sequential, where only one experiment is selected at each iteration. This method can be time inefficient when each experiment takes a long time and more than one experiment can be ran concurrently. On the other hand, requesting a fix-sized batch of experiments at each iteration causes performance inefficiency in BO compared to the sequential policies. In this paper, we present an algorithm that asks a batch of experiments at each time step t where the batch size p_t is dynamically determined in each step. Our algorithm is based on the observation that the sequence of experiments selected by the sequential policy can sometimes be almost independent from each other. Our algorithm identifies such scenarios and request those experiments at the same time without degrading the performance. We evaluate our proposed method using the Expected Improvement policy and the results show substantial speedup with little impact on the performance in eight real and synthetic benchmarks.
1110.3365
Secure Hybrid Digital-Analog Coding With Side Information at the Receiver
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, the problem of transmitting an i.i.d Gaussian source over an i.i.d Gaussian wiretap channel with an i.i.d Gaussian side information available at the intended receiver is considered. The intended receiver is assumed to have a certain minimum SNR and the eavesdropper is assumed to have a strictly lower SNR, compared to the intended receiver. The objective is to minimize the distortion of source reconstruction at the intended receiver. In this work, it is shown that the source-channel separation coding scheme is optimum in the sense of achieving minimum distortion. Two hybrid digital-analog Wyner-Ziv coding schemes are then proposed which achieve the minimum distortion. These secure joint source-channel coding schemes are based on the Wyner-Ziv coding scheme and wiretap channel coding scheme when the analog source is not explicitly quantized. The proposed secure hybrid digital-analog schemes are analyzed under the main channel SNR mismatch. It is proven that the proposed schemes can give a graceful degradation of distortion with SNR under SNR mismatch, i.e., when the actual SNR is larger than the designed SNR.
1110.3366
Optimum Relay Scheme in a Secure Two-Hop Amplify and Forward Cooperative Communication System
cs.IT math.IT
A MIMO secure two-hop wireless communication system is considered in this paper. In this model, there are no direct links between the source-destination and the source-eavesdropper. The problem is maximizing the secrecy capacity of the system over all possible amplify and forward (AF) relay strategies, such that the power consumption at the source node and the relay node is limited. When all the nodes are equipped with single antenna, this non-convex optimization problem is fully characterized. When all the nodes (except the intended receiver) are equipped with multiple antennas, the optimization problem is characterized based on the generalized eigenvalues-eigenvectors of the channel gain matrices.
1110.3382
Sampling Techniques in Bayesian Finite Element Model Updating
cs.CE
Recent papers in the field of Finite Element Model (FEM) updating have highlighted the benefits of Bayesian techniques. The Bayesian approaches are designed to deal with the uncertainties associated with complex systems, which is the main problem in the development and updating of FEMs. This paper highlights the complexities and challenges of implementing any Bayesian method when the analysis involves a complicated structural dynamic model. In such systems an analytical Bayesian formulation might not be available in an analytic form; therefore this leads to the use of numerical methods, i.e. sampling methods. The main challenge then is to determine an efficient sampling of the model parameter space. In this paper, three sampling techniques, the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm, Slice Sampling and the Hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) technique, are tested by updating a structural beam model. The efficiency and limitations of each technique is investigated when the FEM updating problem is implemented using the Bayesian Approach. Both MH and HMC techniques are found to perform better than the Slice sampling when Young's modulus is chosen as the updating parameter. The HMC method gives better results than MH and Slice sampling techniques, when the area moment of inertias and section areas are updated.
1110.3385
Fuzzy Inference Systems Optimization
cs.AI
This paper compares various optimization methods for fuzzy inference system optimization. The optimization methods compared are genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization and simulated annealing. When these techniques were implemented it was observed that the performance of each technique within the fuzzy inference system classification was context dependent.
1110.3450
Regime Change: Bit-Depth versus Measurement-Rate in Compressive Sensing
cs.IT math.IT
The recently introduced compressive sensing (CS) framework enables digital signal acquisition systems to take advantage of signal structures beyond bandlimitedness. Indeed, the number of CS measurements required for stable reconstruction is closer to the order of the signal complexity than the Nyquist rate. To date, the CS theory has focused on real-valued measurements, but in practice, measurements are mapped to bits from a finite alphabet. Moreover, in many potential applications the total number of measurement bits is constrained, which suggests a tradeoff between the number of measurements and the number of bits per measurement. We study this situation in this paper and show that there exist two distinct regimes of operation that correspond to high/low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In the measurement compression (MC) regime, a high SNR favors acquiring fewer measurements with more bits per measurement; in the quantization compression (QC) regime, a low SNR favors acquiring more measurements with fewer bits per measurement. A surprise from our analysis and experiments is that in many practical applications it is better to operate in the QC regime, even acquiring as few as 1 bit per measurement.
1110.3459
Two-Way Training Design for Discriminatory Channel Estimation in Wireless MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT math.OC
This work examines the use of two-way training in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems to discriminate the channel estimation performances between a legitimate receiver (LR) and an unauthorized receiver (UR). This thesis extends upon the previously proposed discriminatory channel estimation (DCE) scheme that allows only the transmitter to send training signals. The goal of DCE is to minimize the channel estimation error at LR while requiring the channel estimation error at UR to remain beyond a certain level. If the training signal is sent only by the transmitter, the performance discrimination between LR and UR will be limited since the training signals help both receivers perform estimates of their downlink channels. In this work, we consider instead the two-way training methodology that allows both the transmitter and LR to send training signals. In this case, the training signal sent by LR helps the transmitter obtain knowledge of the transmitter-to-LR channel, but does not help UR estimate its downlink channel (i.e., the transmitter-to-UR channel). With transmitter knowledge of the estimated transmitter-to-LR channel, artificial noise (AN) can then be embedded in the null space of the transmitter-to-LR channel to disrupt UR's channel estimation without severely degrading the channel estimation at LR. Based on these ideas, two-way DCE training schemes are developed for both reciprocal and non-reciprocal channels. The optimal power allocation between training and AN signals is devised under both average and individual power constraints. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed two-way DCE training schemes.
1110.3460
Performance analysis and optimal selection of large mean-variance portfolios under estimation risk
q-fin.PM cs.IT math.IT
We study the consistency of sample mean-variance portfolios of arbitrarily high dimension that are based on Bayesian or shrinkage estimation of the input parameters as well as weighted sampling. In an asymptotic setting where the number of assets remains comparable in magnitude to the sample size, we provide a characterization of the estimation risk by providing deterministic equivalents of the portfolio out-of-sample performance in terms of the underlying investment scenario. The previous estimates represent a means of quantifying the amount of risk underestimation and return overestimation of improved portfolio constructions beyond standard ones. Well-known for the latter, if not corrected, these deviations lead to inaccurate and overly optimistic Sharpe-based investment decisions. Our results are based on recent contributions in the field of random matrix theory. Along with the asymptotic analysis, the analytical framework allows us to find bias corrections improving on the achieved out-of-sample performance of typical portfolio constructions. Some numerical simulations validate our theoretical findings.
1110.3531
Switching Strategies for Linear Feedback Stabilization with Sparsified State Measurements
math.OC cs.SY
In this paper, we address the problem of stabilization in continuous time linear dynamical systems using state feedback when compressive sampling techniques are used for state measurement and reconstruction. In [5], we had introduced the concept of using l1 reconstruction technique, commonly used in sparse data reconstruction, for state measurement and estimation in a discrete time linear system. In this work, we extend the previous scenario to analyse continuous time linear systems. We investigate the effect of switching within a set of sparsifiers, introduced in [5], on the stability of a linear plant in continuous time settings. Initially, we analyze the problem of stabilization in low dimensional systems, following which we generalize the results to address the problem of stabilization in systems of arbitrary dimensions.
1110.3546
On the Computational Complexity of Measuring Global Stability of Banking Networks
q-fin.RM cs.CC cs.CE cs.DM
Threats on the stability of a financial system may severely affect the functioning of the entire economy, and thus considerable emphasis is placed on the analyzing the cause and effect of such threats. The financial crisis in the current and past decade has shown that one important cause of instability in global markets is the so-called financial contagion, namely the spreading of instabilities or failures of individual components of the network to other, perhaps healthier, components. This leads to a natural question of whether the regulatory authorities could have predicted and perhaps mitigated the current economic crisis by effective computations of some stability measure of the banking networks. Motivated by such observations, we consider the problem of defining and evaluating stabilities of both homogeneous and heterogeneous banking networks against propagation of synchronous idiosyncratic shocks given to a subset of banks. We formalize the homogeneous banking network model of Nier et al. and its corresponding heterogeneous version, formalize the synchronous shock propagation procedures, define two appropriate stability measures and investigate the computational complexities of evaluating these measures for various network topologies and parameters of interest. Our results and proofs also shed some light on the properties of topologies and parameters of the network that may lead to higher or lower stabilities.
1110.3559
Separation of source-network coding and channel coding in wireline networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we prove the separation of source-network coding and channel coding in wireline networks. For the purposes of this work, a wireline network is any network of independent, memoryless, point-to-point, finite-alphabet channels used to transmit dependent sources either losslessly or subject to a distortion constraint. In deriving this result, we also prove that in a general memoryless network with dependent sources, lossless and zero-distortion reconstruction are equivalent provided that the conditional entropy of each source given the other sources is non-zero. Furthermore, we extend the separation result to the case of continuous-alphabet, point-to-point channels such as additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels.
1110.3561
Minimum Complexity Pursuit
cs.IT math.IT
The fast growing field of compressed sensing is founded on the fact that if a signal is 'simple' and has some 'structure', then it can be reconstructed accurately with far fewer samples than its ambient dimension. Many different plausible structures have been explored in this field, ranging from sparsity to low-rankness and to finite rate of innovation. However, there are important abstract questions that are yet to be answered. For instance, what are the general abstract meanings of 'structure' and 'simplicity'? Do there exist universal algorithms for recovering such simple structured objects from fewer samples than their ambient dimension? In this paper, we aim to address these two questions. Using algorithmic information theory tools such as Kolmogorov complexity, we provide a unified method of describing 'simplicity' and 'structure'. We then explore the performance of an algorithm motivated by Ocam's Razor (called MCP for minimum complexity pursuit) and show that it requires $O(k\log n)$ number of samples to recover a signal, where $k$ and $n$ represent its complexity and ambient dimension, respectively. Finally, we discuss more general classes of signals and provide guarantees on the performance of MCP.
1110.3563
Network Clustering Approximation Algorithm Using One Pass Black Box Sampling
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Finding a good clustering of vertices in a network, where vertices in the same cluster are more tightly connected than those in different clusters, is a useful, important, and well-studied task. Many clustering algorithms scale well, however they are not designed to operate upon internet-scale networks with billions of nodes or more. We study one of the fastest and most memory efficient algorithms possible - clustering based on the connected components in a random edge-induced subgraph. When defining the cost of a clustering to be its distance from such a random clustering, we show that this surprisingly simple algorithm gives a solution that is within an expected factor of two or three of optimal with either of two natural distance functions. In fact, this approximation guarantee works for any problem where there is a probability distribution on clusterings. We then examine the behavior of this algorithm in the context of social network trust inference.
1110.3564
Budget-Optimal Task Allocation for Reliable Crowdsourcing Systems
cs.LG cs.DS cs.HC stat.ML
Crowdsourcing systems, in which numerous tasks are electronically distributed to numerous "information piece-workers", have emerged as an effective paradigm for human-powered solving of large scale problems in domains such as image classification, data entry, optical character recognition, recommendation, and proofreading. Because these low-paid workers can be unreliable, nearly all such systems must devise schemes to increase confidence in their answers, typically by assigning each task multiple times and combining the answers in an appropriate manner, e.g. majority voting. In this paper, we consider a general model of such crowdsourcing tasks and pose the problem of minimizing the total price (i.e., number of task assignments) that must be paid to achieve a target overall reliability. We give a new algorithm for deciding which tasks to assign to which workers and for inferring correct answers from the workers' answers. We show that our algorithm, inspired by belief propagation and low-rank matrix approximation, significantly outperforms majority voting and, in fact, is optimal through comparison to an oracle that knows the reliability of every worker. Further, we compare our approach with a more general class of algorithms which can dynamically assign tasks. By adaptively deciding which questions to ask to the next arriving worker, one might hope to reduce uncertainty more efficiently. We show that, perhaps surprisingly, the minimum price necessary to achieve a target reliability scales in the same manner under both adaptive and non-adaptive scenarios. Hence, our non-adaptive approach is order-optimal under both scenarios. This strongly relies on the fact that workers are fleeting and can not be exploited. Therefore, architecturally, our results suggest that building a reliable worker-reputation system is essential to fully harnessing the potential of adaptive designs.
1110.3566
Asymptotics of the number of threshold functions on a two-dimensional rectangular grid
math.CO cs.IT math.IT math.LO math.NT
Let $m,n\ge 2$, $m\le n$. It is well-known that the number of (two-dimensional) threshold functions on an $m\times n$ rectangular grid is {eqnarray*} t(m,n)=\frac{6}{\pi^2}(mn)^2+O(m^2n\log{n})+O(mn^2\log{\log{n}})= \frac{6}{\pi^2}(mn)^2+O(mn^2\log{m}). {eqnarray*} We improve the error term by showing that $$ t(m,n)=\frac{6}{\pi^2}(mn)^2+O(mn^2). $$
1110.3569
Dimension Reduction of Health Data Clustering
cs.DB
The current data tends to be more complex than conventional data and need dimension reduction. Dimension reduction is important in cluster analysis and creates a smaller data in volume and has the same analytical results as the original representation. A clustering process needs data reduction to obtain an efficient processing time while clustering and mitigate curse of dimensionality. This paper proposes a model for extracting multidimensional data clustering of health database. We implemented four dimension reduction techniques such as Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Self Organizing Map (SOM) and FastICA. The results show that dimension reductions significantly reduce dimension and shorten processing time and also increased performance of cluster in several health datasets.
1110.3586
Period-halving Bifurcation of a Neuronal Recurrence Equation
cs.NE math.DS nlin.CD
We study the sequences generated by neuronal recurrence equations of the form $x(n) = {\bf 1}[\sum_{j=1}^{h} a_{j} x(n-j)- \theta]$. From a neuronal recurrence equation of memory size $h$ which describes a cycle of length $\rho(m) \times lcm(p_0, p_1,..., p_{-1+\rho(m)})$, we construct a set of $\rho(m)$ neuronal recurrence equations whose dynamics describe respectively the transient of length $O(\rho(m) \times lcm(p_0, ..., p_{d}))$ and the cycle of length $O(\rho(m) \times lcm(p_{d+1}, ..., p_{-1+\rho(m)}))$ if $0 \leq d \leq -2+\rho(m)$ and 1 if $d=\rho(m)-1$. This result shows the exponential time of the convergence of neuronal recurrence equation to fixed points and the existence of the period-halving bifurcation.
1110.3592
Information, learning and falsification
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT stat.ML
There are (at least) three approaches to quantifying information. The first, algorithmic information or Kolmogorov complexity, takes events as strings and, given a universal Turing machine, quantifies the information content of a string as the length of the shortest program producing it. The second, Shannon information, takes events as belonging to ensembles and quantifies the information resulting from observing the given event in terms of the number of alternate events that have been ruled out. The third, statistical learning theory, has introduced measures of capacity that control (in part) the expected risk of classifiers. These capacities quantify the expectations regarding future data that learning algorithms embed into classifiers. This note describes a new method of quantifying information, effective information, that links algorithmic information to Shannon information, and also links both to capacities arising in statistical learning theory. After introducing the measure, we show that it provides a non-universal analog of Kolmogorov complexity. We then apply it to derive basic capacities in statistical learning theory: empirical VC-entropy and empirical Rademacher complexity. A nice byproduct of our approach is an interpretation of the explanatory power of a learning algorithm in terms of the number of hypotheses it falsifies, counted in two different ways for the two capacities. We also discuss how effective information relates to information gain, Shannon and mutual information.
1110.3619
Playing Mastermind With Constant-Size Memory
cs.DS cs.NE
We analyze the classic board game of Mastermind with $n$ holes and a constant number of colors. A result of Chv\'atal (Combinatorica 3 (1983), 325-329) states that the codebreaker can find the secret code with $\Theta(n / \log n)$ questions. We show that this bound remains valid if the codebreaker may only store a constant number of guesses and answers. In addition to an intrinsic interest in this question, our result also disproves a conjecture of Droste, Jansen, and Wegener (Theory of Computing Systems 39 (2006), 525-544) on the memory-restricted black-box complexity of the OneMax function class.
1110.3649
Algorithms to automatically quantify the geometric similarity of anatomical surfaces
math.NA cs.CV cs.GR
We describe new approaches for distances between pairs of 2-dimensional surfaces (embedded in 3-dimensional space) that use local structures and global information contained in inter-structure geometric relationships. We present algorithms to automatically determine these distances as well as geometric correspondences. This is motivated by the aspiration of students of natural science to understand the continuity of form that unites the diversity of life. At present, scientists using physical traits to study evolutionary relationships among living and extinct animals analyze data extracted from carefully defined anatomical correspondence points (landmarks). Identifying and recording these landmarks is time consuming and can be done accurately only by trained morphologists. This renders these studies inaccessible to non-morphologists, and causes phenomics to lag behind genomics in elucidating evolutionary patterns. Unlike other algorithms presented for morphological correspondences our approach does not require any preliminary marking of special features or landmarks by the user. It also differs from other seminal work in computational geometry in that our algorithms are polynomial in nature and thus faster, making pairwise comparisons feasible for significantly larger numbers of digitized surfaces. We illustrate our approach using three datasets representing teeth and different bones of primates and humans, and show that it leads to highly accurate results.
1110.3672
Reasoning about Actions with Temporal Answer Sets
cs.AI cs.LO
In this paper we combine Answer Set Programming (ASP) with Dynamic Linear Time Temporal Logic (DLTL) to define a temporal logic programming language for reasoning about complex actions and infinite computations. DLTL extends propositional temporal logic of linear time with regular programs of propositional dynamic logic, which are used for indexing temporal modalities. The action language allows general DLTL formulas to be included in domain descriptions to constrain the space of possible extensions. We introduce a notion of Temporal Answer Set for domain descriptions, based on the usual notion of Answer Set. Also, we provide a translation of domain descriptions into standard ASP and we use Bounded Model Checking techniques for the verification of DLTL constraints.
1110.3695
Geometric methods for estimation of structured covariances
math.OC cs.SY math.ST stat.TH
We consider problems of estimation of structured covariance matrices, and in particular of matrices with a Toeplitz structure. We follow a geometric viewpoint that is based on some suitable notion of distance. To this end, we overview and compare several alternatives metrics and divergence measures. We advocate a specific one which represents the Wasserstein distance between the corresponding Gaussians distributions and show that it coincides with the so-called Bures/Hellinger distance between covariance matrices as well. Most importantly, besides the physically appealing interpretation, computation of the metric requires solving a linear matrix inequality (LMI). As a consequence, computations scale nicely for problems involving large covariance matrices, and linear prior constraints on the covariance structure are easy to handle. We compare this transportation/Bures/Hellinger metric with the maximum likelihood and the Burg methods as to their performance with regard to estimation of power spectra with spectral lines on a representative case study from the literature.
1110.3711
Optimization strategies for parallel CPU and GPU implementations of a meshfree particle method
cs.PF cs.CE
Much of the current focus in high performance computing (HPC) for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) deals with grid based methods. However, parallel implementations for new meshfree particle methods such as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) are less studied. In this work, we present optimizations for both central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) of a SPH method. These optimization strategies can be further applied to many other meshfree methods. The obtained performance for each architecture and a comparison between the most efficient implementations for CPU and GPU are shown.
1110.3717
A critical evaluation of network and pathway based classifiers for outcome prediction in breast cancer
cs.LG q-bio.QM
Recently, several classifiers that combine primary tumor data, like gene expression data, and secondary data sources, such as protein-protein interaction networks, have been proposed for predicting outcome in breast cancer. In these approaches, new composite features are typically constructed by aggregating the expression levels of several genes. The secondary data sources are employed to guide this aggregation. Although many studies claim that these approaches improve classification performance over single gene classifiers, the gain in performance is difficult to assess. This stems mainly from the fact that different breast cancer data sets and validation procedures are employed to assess the performance. Here we address these issues by employing a large cohort of six breast cancer data sets as benchmark set and by performing an unbiased evaluation of the classification accuracies of the different approaches. Contrary to previous claims, we find that composite feature classifiers do not outperform simple single gene classifiers. We investigate the effect of (1) the number of selected features; (2) the specific gene set from which features are selected; (3) the size of the training set and (4) the heterogeneity of the data set on the performance of composite feature and single gene classifiers. Strikingly, we find that randomization of secondary data sources, which destroys all biological information in these sources, does not result in a deterioration in performance of composite feature classifiers. Finally, we show that when a proper correction for gene set size is performed, the stability of single gene sets is similar to the stability of composite feature sets. Based on these results there is currently no reason to prefer prognostic classifiers based on composite features over single gene classifiers for predicting outcome in breast cancer.
1110.3741
Multi-criteria Anomaly Detection using Pareto Depth Analysis
cs.LG cs.CV cs.DB stat.ML
We consider the problem of identifying patterns in a data set that exhibit anomalous behavior, often referred to as anomaly detection. In most anomaly detection algorithms, the dissimilarity between data samples is calculated by a single criterion, such as Euclidean distance. However, in many cases there may not exist a single dissimilarity measure that captures all possible anomalous patterns. In such a case, multiple criteria can be defined, and one can test for anomalies by scalarizing the multiple criteria using a linear combination of them. If the importance of the different criteria are not known in advance, the algorithm may need to be executed multiple times with different choices of weights in the linear combination. In this paper, we introduce a novel non-parametric multi-criteria anomaly detection method using Pareto depth analysis (PDA). PDA uses the concept of Pareto optimality to detect anomalies under multiple criteria without having to run an algorithm multiple times with different choices of weights. The proposed PDA approach scales linearly in the number of criteria and is provably better than linear combinations of the criteria.
1110.3767
Anti-sparse coding for approximate nearest neighbor search
cs.CV cs.DB cs.IR cs.IT math.IT
This paper proposes a binarization scheme for vectors of high dimension based on the recent concept of anti-sparse coding, and shows its excellent performance for approximate nearest neighbor search. Unlike other binarization schemes, this framework allows, up to a scaling factor, the explicit reconstruction from the binary representation of the original vector. The paper also shows that random projections which are used in Locality Sensitive Hashing algorithms, are significantly outperformed by regular frames for both synthetic and real data if the number of bits exceeds the vector dimensionality, i.e., when high precision is required.
1110.3774
Time-Stampless Adaptive Nonuniform Sampling for Stochastic Signals
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we introduce a time-stampless adaptive nonuniform sampling (TANS) framework, in which time increments between samples are determined by a function of the $m$ most recent increments and sample values. Since only past samples are used in computing time increments, it is not necessary to save sampling times (time stamps) for use in the reconstruction process. We focus on two TANS schemes for discrete-time stochastic signals: a greedy method, and a method based on dynamic programming. We analyze the performances of these schemes by computing (or bounding) their trade-offs between sampling rate and expected reconstruction distortion for autoregressive and Markovian signals. Simulation results support the analysis of the sampling schemes. We show that, by opportunistically adapting to local signal characteristics, TANS may lead to improved power efficiency in some applications.
1110.3832
Distributed flow optimization and cascading effects in weighted complex networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
We investigate the effect of a specific edge weighting scheme $\sim (k_i k_j)^{\beta}$ on distributed flow efficiency and robustness to cascading failures in scale-free networks. In particular, we analyze a simple, yet fundamental distributed flow model: current flow in random resistor networks. By the tuning of control parameter $\beta$ and by considering two general cases of relative node processing capabilities as well as the effect of bandwidth, we show the dependence of transport efficiency upon the correlations between the topology and weights. By studying the severity of cascades for different control parameter $\beta$, we find that network resilience to cascading overloads and network throughput is optimal for the same value of $\beta$ over the range of node capacities and available bandwidth.
1110.3843
Robustness of Information Diffusion Algorithms to Locally Bounded Adversaries
cs.SI cs.DC cs.MA cs.SY math.OC physics.soc-ph
We consider the problem of diffusing information in networks that contain malicious nodes. We assume that each normal node in the network has no knowledge of the network topology other than an upper bound on the number of malicious nodes in its neighborhood. We introduce a topological property known as r-robustness of a graph, and show that this property provides improved bounds on tolerating malicious behavior, in comparison to traditional concepts such as connectivity and minimum degree. We use this topological property to analyze the canonical problems of distributed consensus and broadcasting, and provide sufficient conditions for these operations to succeed. Finally, we provide a construction for r-robust graphs and show that the common preferential-attachment model for scale-free networks produces a robust graph.
1110.3854
Consistency of community detection in networks under degree-corrected stochastic block models
math.ST cs.SI physics.soc-ph stat.TH
Community detection is a fundamental problem in network analysis, with applications in many diverse areas. The stochastic block model is a common tool for model-based community detection, and asymptotic tools for checking consistency of community detection under the block model have been recently developed. However, the block model is limited by its assumption that all nodes within a community are stochastically equivalent, and provides a poor fit to networks with hubs or highly varying node degrees within communities, which are common in practice. The degree-corrected stochastic block model was proposed to address this shortcoming and allows variation in node degrees within a community while preserving the overall block community structure. In this paper we establish general theory for checking consistency of community detection under the degree-corrected stochastic block model and compare several community detection criteria under both the standard and the degree-corrected models. We show which criteria are consistent under which models and constraints, as well as compare their relative performance in practice. We find that methods based on the degree-corrected block model, which includes the standard block model as a special case, are consistent under a wider class of models and that modularity-type methods require parameter constraints for consistency, whereas likelihood-based methods do not. On the other hand, in practice, the degree correction involves estimating many more parameters, and empirically we find it is only worth doing if the node degrees within communities are indeed highly variable. We illustrate the methods on simulated networks and on a network of political blogs.
1110.3855
An Upper Bound on Broadcast Subspace Codes
cs.IT math.AG math.IT
Linear operator broadcast channel (LOBC) models the scenario of multi-rate packet broadcasting over a network, when random network coding is applied. This paper presents the framework of algebraic coding for LOBCs and provides a Hamming-like upper bound on (multishot) subspace codes for LOBCs.
1110.3860
Contending Parties: A Logistic Choice Analysis of Inter- and Intra-group Blog Citation Dynamics in the 2004 US Presidential Election
cs.SI physics.soc-ph stat.AP stat.OT
The 2004 US Presidential Election cycle marked the debut of Internet-based media such as blogs and social networking websites as institutionally recognized features of the American political landscape. Using a longitudinal sample of all DNC/RNC-designated blog-citation networks we are able to test the influence of various strategic, institutional, and balance-theoretic mechanisms and exogenous factors such as seasonality and political events on the propensity of blogs to cite one another over time. Capitalizing on the temporal resolution of our data, we utilize an autoregressive network regression framework to carry out inference for a logistic choice process. Using a combination of deviance-based model selection criteria and simulation-based model adequacy tests, we identify the combination of processes that best characterizes the choice behavior of the contending blogs.
1110.3879
GTRACE-RS: Efficient Graph Sequence Mining using Reverse Search
cs.DB
The mining of frequent subgraphs from labeled graph data has been studied extensively. Furthermore, much attention has recently been paid to frequent pattern mining from graph sequences. A method, called GTRACE, has been proposed to mine frequent patterns from graph sequences under the assumption that changes in graphs are gradual. Although GTRACE mines the frequent patterns efficiently, it still needs substantial computation time to mine the patterns from graph sequences containing large graphs and long sequences. In this paper, we propose a new version of GTRACE that enables efficient mining of frequent patterns based on the principle of a reverse search. The underlying concept of the reverse search is a general scheme for designing efficient algorithms for hard enumeration problems. Our performance study shows that the proposed method is efficient and scalable for mining both long and large graph sequence patterns and is several orders of magnitude faster than the original GTRACE.
1110.3888
Handling controversial arguments by matrix
cs.AI
We introduce matrix and its block to the Dung's theory of argumentation framework. It is showed that each argumentation framework has a matrix representation, and the indirect attack relation and indirect defence relation can be characterized by computing the matrix. This provide a powerful mathematics way to determine the "controversial arguments" in an argumentation framework. Also, we introduce several kinds of blocks based on the matrix, and various prudent semantics of argumentation frameworks can all be determined by computing and comparing the matrices and their blocks which we have defined. In contrast with traditional method of directed graph, the matrix method has an excellent advantage: computability(even can be realized on computer easily). So, there is an intensive perspective to import the theory of matrix to the research of argumentation frameworks and its related areas.