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1404.3378
Complexity theoretic limitations on learning DNF's
cs.LG cs.CC
Using the recently developed framework of [Daniely et al, 2014], we show that under a natural assumption on the complexity of refuting random K-SAT formulas, learning DNF formulas is hard. Furthermore, the same assumption implies the hardness of learning intersections of $\omega(\log(n))$ halfspaces, agnostically learning conjunctions, as well as virtually all (distribution free) learning problems that were previously shown hard (under complexity assumptions).
1404.3389
Mean-Field Games for Marriage
math.OC cs.GT cs.SY math.DS math.PR
This article examines mean-field games for marriage. The results support the argument that optimizing the long-term well-being through effort and social feeling state distribution (mean-field) will help to stabilize marriage. However, if the cost of effort is very high, the couple fluctuates in a bad feeling state or the marriage breaks down. We then examine the influence of society on a couple using mean field sentimental games. We show that, in mean-field equilibrium, the optimal effort is always higher than the one-shot optimal effort. We illustrate numerically the influence of the couple's network on their feeling states and their well-being.
1404.3394
Decentralized and Collaborative Subspace Pursuit: A Communication-Efficient Algorithm for Joint Sparsity Pattern Recovery with Sensor Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider the problem of joint sparsity pattern recovery in a distributed sensor network. The sparse multiple measurement vector signals (MMVs) observed by all the nodes are assumed to have a common (but unknown) sparsity pattern. To accurately recover the common sparsity pattern in a decentralized manner with a low communication overhead of the network, we develop an algorithm named decentralized and collaborative subspace pursuit (DCSP). In DCSP, each node is required to perform three kinds of operations per iteration: 1) estimate the local sparsity pattern by finding the subspace that its measurement vector most probably lies in; 2) share its local sparsity pattern estimate with one-hop neighboring nodes; and 3) update the final sparsity pattern estimate by majority vote based fusion of all the local sparsity pattern estimates obtained in its neighborhood. The convergence of DCSP is proved and its communication overhead is quantitatively analyzed. We also propose another decentralized algorithm named generalized DCSP (GDCSP) by allowing more information exchange among neighboring nodes to further improve the accuracy of sparsity pattern recovery at the cost of increased communication overhead. Experimental results show that, 1) compared with existing decentralized algorithms, DCSP provides much better accuracy of sparsity pattern recovery at a comparable communication cost; and 2) the accuracy of GDCSP is very close to that of centralized processing.
1404.3411
Achievable Secrecy Rates over MIMOME Gaussian Channels with GMM Signals in Low-Noise Regime
cs.IT math.IT
We consider a wiretap multiple-input multiple-output multiple-eavesdropper (MIMOME) channel, where agent Alice aims at transmitting a secret message to agent Bob, while leaking no information on it to an eavesdropper agent Eve. We assume that Alice has more antennas than both Bob and Eve, and that she has only statistical knowledge of the channel towards Eve. We focus on the low-noise regime, and assess the secrecy rates that are achievable when the secret message determines the distribution of a multivariate Gaussian mixture model (GMM) from which a realization is generated and transmitted over the channel. In particular, we show that if Eve has fewer antennas than Bob, secret transmission is always possible at low-noise. Moreover, we show that in the low-noise limit the secrecy capacity of our scheme coincides with its unconstrained capacity, by providing a class of covariance matrices that allow to attain such limit without the need of wiretap coding.
1404.3415
Generalized version of the support vector machine for binary classification problems: supporting hyperplane machine
cs.LG stat.ML
In this paper there is proposed a generalized version of the SVM for binary classification problems in the case of using an arbitrary transformation x -> y. An approach similar to the classic SVM method is used. The problem is widely explained. Various formulations of primal and dual problems are proposed. For one of the most important cases the formulae are derived in detail. A simple computational example is demonstrated. The algorithm and its implementation is presented in Octave language.
1404.3418
Active Learning for Undirected Graphical Model Selection
stat.ML cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.TH
This paper studies graphical model selection, i.e., the problem of estimating a graph of statistical relationships among a collection of random variables. Conventional graphical model selection algorithms are passive, i.e., they require all the measurements to have been collected before processing begins. We propose an active learning algorithm that uses junction tree representations to adapt future measurements based on the information gathered from prior measurements. We prove that, under certain conditions, our active learning algorithm requires fewer scalar measurements than any passive algorithm to reliably estimate a graph. A range of numerical results validate our theory and demonstrates the benefits of active learning.
1404.3435
Web Search of New Linearized Medical Drug Leads
cs.IR
The Web is a potentially huge source of medical drug leads. But despite the significant amount of multi- dimensional information about drugs, currently commercial search engines accept only linear keyword strings as inputs. This work uses linearized fragments of molecular structures as knowledge representation units to serve as inputs to search engines. It is shown that quite arbitrary fragments are surprisingly free of ambiguity, obtaining relatively small result sets, which are both manageable and rich in novel potential drug leads.
1404.3438
Constant Delay and Constant Feedback Moving Window Network Coding for Wireless Multicast: Design and Asymptotic Analysis
cs.IT math.IT
A major challenge of wireless multicast is to be able to support a large number of users while simultaneously maintaining low delay and low feedback overhead. In this paper, we develop a joint coding and feedback scheme named Moving Window Network Coding with Anonymous Feedback (MWNC-AF) that successfully addresses this challenge. In particular, we show that our scheme simultaneously achieves both a constant decoding delay and a constant feedback overhead, irrespective of the number of receivers $n$, without sacrificing either throughput or reliability. We explicitly characterize the asymptotic decay rate of the tail of the delay distribution, and prove that transmitting a fixed amount of information bits into the MWNC-AF encoder buffer in each time-slot (called "constant data injection process") achieves the fastest decay rate, thus showing how to obtain delay optimality in a large deviation sense. We then investigate the average decoding delay of MWNC-AF, and show that when the traffic load approaches the capacity, the average decoding delay under the constant injection process is at most one half of that under a Bernoulli injection process. In addition, we prove that the per-packet encoding and decoding complexity of MWNC-AF both scale as $O(\log n)$, with the number of receivers $n$. Our simulations further underscore the performance of our scheme through comparisons with other schemes and show that the delay, encoding and decoding complexity are low even for a large number of receivers, demonstrating the efficiency, scalability, and ease of implementability of MWNC-AF.
1404.3439
Anytime Hierarchical Clustering
stat.ML cs.IR cs.LG
We propose a new anytime hierarchical clustering method that iteratively transforms an arbitrary initial hierarchy on the configuration of measurements along a sequence of trees we prove for a fixed data set must terminate in a chain of nested partitions that satisfies a natural homogeneity requirement. Each recursive step re-edits the tree so as to improve a local measure of cluster homogeneity that is compatible with a number of commonly used (e.g., single, average, complete) linkage functions. As an alternative to the standard batch algorithms, we present numerical evidence to suggest that appropriate adaptations of this method can yield decentralized, scalable algorithms suitable for distributed/parallel computation of clustering hierarchies and online tracking of clustering trees applicable to large, dynamically changing databases and anomaly detection.
1404.3442
Optimal versus Nash Equilibrium Computation for Networked Resource Allocation
cs.GT cs.DM cs.SY math.CO
Motivated by emerging resource allocation and data placement problems such as web caches and peer-to-peer systems, we consider and study a class of resource allocation problems over a network of agents (nodes). In this model, nodes can store only a limited number of resources while accessing the remaining ones through their closest neighbors. We consider this problem under both optimization and game-theoretic frameworks. In the case of optimal resource allocation we will first show that when there are only k=2 resources, the optimal allocation can be found efficiently in O(n^2\log n) steps, where n denotes the total number of nodes. However, for k>2 this problem becomes NP-hard with no polynomial time approximation algorithm with a performance guarantee better than 1+1/102k^2, even under metric access costs. We then provide a 3-approximation algorithm for the optimal resource allocation which runs only in linear time O(n). Subsequently, we look at this problem under a selfish setting formulated as a noncooperative game and provide a 3-approximation algorithm for obtaining its pure Nash equilibria under metric access costs. We then establish an equivalence between the set of pure Nash equilibria and flip-optimal solutions of the Max-k-Cut problem over a specific weighted complete graph. Using this reduction, we show that finding the lexicographically smallest Nash equilibrium for k> 2 is NP-hard, and provide an algorithm to find it in O(n^3 2^n) steps. While the reduction to weighted Max-k-Cut suggests that finding a pure Nash equilibrium using best response dynamics might be PLS-hard, it allows us to use tools from quadratic programming to devise more systematic algorithms towards obtaining Nash equilibrium points.
1404.3447
Group homomorphisms as error correcting codes
cs.IT math.GR math.IT
We investigate the minimum distance of the error correcting code formed by the homomorphisms between two finite groups $G$ and $H$. We prove some general structural results on how the distance behaves with respect to natural group operations, such as passing to subgroups and quotients, and taking products. Our main result is a general formula for the distance when $G$ is solvable or $H$ is nilpotent, in terms of the normal subgroup structure of $G$ as well as the prime divisors of $|G|$ and $|H|$. In particular, we show that in the above case, the distance is independent of the subgroup structure of $H$. We complement this by showing that, in general, the distance depends on the subgroup structure $G$.
1404.3448
Solving The Longest Overlap Region Problem for Noncoding DNA Sequences with GPU
cs.DC cs.CE
Early hardware limitations of GPU (lack of synchronization primitives and limited memory caching mechanisms) can make GPU-based computation inefficient. Now Bio-technologies bring more chances to Bioinformatics and Biological Engineering. Our paper introduces a way to solve the longest overlap region of non-coding DNA sequences on using the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) platform Intel(R) Core(TM) i3- 3110m quad-core. Compared to standard CPU implementation, CUDA performance proves the method of the longest overlap region recognition of noncoding DNA is an efficient approach to high-performance bioinformatics applications. Studies show the fact that efficiency of GPU performance is more than 20 times speedup than that of CPU serial implementation. We believe our method gives a cost-efficient solution to the bioinformatics community for solving longest overlap region recognition problem and other related fields.
1404.3456
A Way For Accelerating The DNA Sequence Reconstruction Problem By CUDA
cs.DC cs.CE
Traditionally, we usually utilize the method of shotgun to cut a DNA sequence into pieces and we have to reconstruct the original DNA sequence from the pieces, those are widely used method for DNA assembly. Emerging DNA sequence technologies open up more opportunities for molecular biology. This paper introduce a new method to improve the efficiency of reconstructing DNA sequence using suffix array based on CUDA programming model. The experimental result show the construction of suffix array using GPU is an more efficient approach on Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3110K quad-core and NVIDIA GeForce 610M GPU, and study show the performance of our method is more than 20 times than that of CPU serial implementation. We believe our method give a cost-efficient solution to the bioinformatics community.
1404.3458
Novel Polynomial Basis and Its Application to Reed-Solomon Erasure Codes
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we present a new basis of polynomial over finite fields of characteristic two and then apply it to the encoding/decoding of Reed-Solomon erasure codes. The proposed polynomial basis allows that $h$-point polynomial evaluation can be computed in $O(h\log_2(h))$ finite field operations with small leading constant. As compared with the canonical polynomial basis, the proposed basis improves the arithmetic complexity of addition, multiplication, and the determination of polynomial degree from $O(h\log_2(h)\log_2\log_2(h))$ to $O(h\log_2(h))$. Based on this basis, we then develop the encoding and erasure decoding algorithms for the $(n=2^r,k)$ Reed-Solomon codes. Thanks to the efficiency of transform based on the polynomial basis, the encoding can be completed in $O(n\log_2(k))$ finite field operations, and the erasure decoding in $O(n\log_2(n))$ finite field operations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach supporting Reed-Solomon erasure codes over characteristic-2 finite fields while achieving a complexity of $O(n\log_2(n))$, in both additive and multiplicative complexities. As the complexity leading factor is small, the algorithms are advantageous in practical applications.
1404.3461
A 2D based Partition Strategy for Solving Ranking under Team Context (RTP)
cs.DB
In this paper, we propose a 2D based partition method for solving the problem of Ranking under Team Context(RTC) on datasets without a priori. We first map the data into 2D space using its minimum and maximum value among all dimensions. Then we construct window queries with consideration of current team context. Besides, during the query mapping procedure, we can pre-prune some tuples which are not top ranked ones. This pre-classified step will defer processing those tuples and can save cost while providing solutions for the problem. Experiments show that our algorithm performs well especially on large datasets with correctness.
1404.3482
On the hardness of the decoding and the minimum distance problems for rank codes
cs.CC cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we give a randomized reduction for the Rank Syndrome Decoding problem and Rank Minimum Distance problem for rank codes. Our results are based on an embedding from linear codes equipped with Hamming distance unto linear codes over an extension field equipped with the rank metric. We prove that if both previous problems for rank metric are in ZPP = RP$\cap$coRP, then we would have NP=ZPP. We also give complexity results for the respective approximation problems in rank metric.
1404.3497
Using Wireless Network Coding to Replace a Wired with Wireless Backhaul
cs.IT math.IT
Cellular networks are evolving towards dense deployment of small cells. This in turn demands flexible and efficient backhauling solutions. A viable solution that reuses the same spectrum is wireless backhaul where the Small Base Station (SBS) acts as a relay. In this paper we consider a reference system that uses wired backhaul and each Mobile Station (MS) in the small cell has its uplink and downlink rates defined. The central question is: if we remove the wired backhaul, how much extra power should the wireless backhaul use in order to support the same uplink/downlink rates? We introduce the idea of wireless-emulated wire (WEW), based on two-way relaying and network coding. Furthermore, in a scenario where two SBSs are served simultaneously, WEW gives rise to new communication strategies, partially inspired by the private/public messages from the Han-Kobayashi scheme for interference channel. We formulate and solve the associated optimization problems. The proposed approach provides a convincing argument that two-way communication is the proper context to design and optimize wireless backhauling solutions.
1404.3520
A Theoretical Assessment of Solution Quality in Evolutionary Algorithms for the Knapsack Problem
cs.NE
Evolutionary algorithms are well suited for solving the knapsack problem. Some empirical studies claim that evolutionary algorithms can produce good solutions to the 0-1 knapsack problem. Nonetheless, few rigorous investigations address the quality of solutions that evolutionary algorithms may produce for the knapsack problem. The current paper focuses on a theoretical investigation of three types of (N+1) evolutionary algorithms that exploit bitwise mutation, truncation selection, plus different repair methods for the 0-1 knapsack problem. It assesses the solution quality in terms of the approximation ratio. Our work indicates that the solution produced by pure strategy and mixed strategy evolutionary algorithms is arbitrarily bad. Nevertheless, the evolutionary algorithm using helper objectives may produce 1/2-approximation solutions to the 0-1 knapsack problem.
1404.3525
Distributed Asynchronous Optimization Framework for the MISO Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
We study the distributed optimization of transmit strategies in a multiple-input, single-output (MISO) interference channel (IFC). Existing distributed algorithms rely on stricly synchronized update steps by the individual users. They require a global synchronization mechanism and potentially suffer from the synchronization penalty caused by e.g., backhaul communication delays and fixed update sequences. We establish a general optimization framework that allows asynchronous update steps. The users perform their computations at arbitrary instants of time, and do not wait for information that has been sent to them. Based on certain bounds on the amount of asynchronism that is present in the execution of the algorithm, we are able to characterize its convergence. As illustrated by our numerical results, the proposed algorithm can alleviate communication overloads and is not excessively slowed down by neither communication delays, nor by differences in the computation intervals.
1404.3538
Proceedings of The 38th Annual Workshop of the Austrian Association for Pattern Recognition (\"OAGM), 2014
cs.CV
The 38th Annual Workshop of the Austrian Association for Pattern Recognition (\"OAGM) will be held at IST Austria, on May 22-23, 2014. The workshop provides a platform for researchers and industry to discuss traditional and new areas of computer vision. This year the main topic is: Pattern Recognition: interdisciplinary challenges and opportunities.
1404.3543
Recover Canonical-View Faces in the Wild with Deep Neural Networks
cs.CV
Face images in the wild undergo large intra-personal variations, such as poses, illuminations, occlusions, and low resolutions, which cause great challenges to face-related applications. This paper addresses this challenge by proposing a new deep learning framework that can recover the canonical view of face images. It dramatically reduces the intra-person variances, while maintaining the inter-person discriminativeness. Unlike the existing face reconstruction methods that were either evaluated in controlled 2D environment or employed 3D information, our approach directly learns the transformation from the face images with a complex set of variations to their canonical views. At the training stage, to avoid the costly process of labeling canonical-view images from the training set by hand, we have devised a new measurement to automatically select or synthesize a canonical-view image for each identity. As an application, this face recovery approach is used for face verification. Facial features are learned from the recovered canonical-view face images by using a facial component-based convolutional neural network. Our approach achieves the state-of-the-art performance on the LFW dataset.
1404.3580
Joint Estimation and Localization in Sensor Networks
cs.MA cs.NI cs.RO cs.SY
This paper addresses the problem of collaborative tracking of dynamic targets in wireless sensor networks. A novel distributed linear estimator, which is a version of a distributed Kalman filter, is derived. We prove that the filter is mean square consistent in the case of static target estimation. When large sensor networks are deployed, it is common that the sensors do not have good knowledge of their locations, which affects the target estimation procedure. Unlike most existing approaches for target tracking, we investigate the performance of our filter when the sensor poses need to be estimated by an auxiliary localization procedure. The sensors are localized via a distributed Jacobi algorithm from noisy relative measurements. We prove strong convergence guarantees for the localization method and in turn for the joint localization and target estimation approach. The performance of our algorithms is demonstrated in simulation on environmental monitoring and target tracking tasks.
1404.3581
Random forests with random projections of the output space for high dimensional multi-label classification
stat.ML cs.LG
We adapt the idea of random projections applied to the output space, so as to enhance tree-based ensemble methods in the context of multi-label classification. We show how learning time complexity can be reduced without affecting computational complexity and accuracy of predictions. We also show that random output space projections may be used in order to reach different bias-variance tradeoffs, over a broad panel of benchmark problems, and that this may lead to improved accuracy while reducing significantly the computational burden of the learning stage.
1404.3591
Hybrid Conditional Gradient - Smoothing Algorithms with Applications to Sparse and Low Rank Regularization
math.OC cs.LG stat.ML
We study a hybrid conditional gradient - smoothing algorithm (HCGS) for solving composite convex optimization problems which contain several terms over a bounded set. Examples of these include regularization problems with several norms as penalties and a norm constraint. HCGS extends conditional gradient methods to cases with multiple nonsmooth terms, in which standard conditional gradient methods may be difficult to apply. The HCGS algorithm borrows techniques from smoothing proximal methods and requires first-order computations (subgradients and proximity operations). Unlike proximal methods, HCGS benefits from the advantages of conditional gradient methods, which render it more efficient on certain large scale optimization problems. We demonstrate these advantages with simulations on two matrix optimization problems: regularization of matrices with combined $\ell_1$ and trace norm penalties; and a convex relaxation of sparse PCA.
1404.3596
Face Detection with a 3D Model
cs.CV
This paper presents a part-based face detection approach where the spatial relationship between the face parts is represented by a hidden 3D model with six parameters. The computational complexity of the search in the six dimensional pose space is addressed by proposing meaningful 3D pose candidates by image-based regression from detected face keypoint locations. The 3D pose candidates are evaluated using a parameter sensitive classifier based on difference features relative to the 3D pose. A compatible subset of candidates is then obtained by non-maximal suppression. Experiments on two standard face detection datasets show that the proposed 3D model based approach obtains results comparable to or better than state of the art.
1404.3606
PCANet: A Simple Deep Learning Baseline for Image Classification?
cs.CV cs.LG cs.NE
In this work, we propose a very simple deep learning network for image classification which comprises only the very basic data processing components: cascaded principal component analysis (PCA), binary hashing, and block-wise histograms. In the proposed architecture, PCA is employed to learn multistage filter banks. It is followed by simple binary hashing and block histograms for indexing and pooling. This architecture is thus named as a PCA network (PCANet) and can be designed and learned extremely easily and efficiently. For comparison and better understanding, we also introduce and study two simple variations to the PCANet, namely the RandNet and LDANet. They share the same topology of PCANet but their cascaded filters are either selected randomly or learned from LDA. We have tested these basic networks extensively on many benchmark visual datasets for different tasks, such as LFW for face verification, MultiPIE, Extended Yale B, AR, FERET datasets for face recognition, as well as MNIST for hand-written digits recognition. Surprisingly, for all tasks, such a seemingly naive PCANet model is on par with the state of the art features, either prefixed, highly hand-crafted or carefully learned (by DNNs). Even more surprisingly, it sets new records for many classification tasks in Extended Yale B, AR, FERET datasets, and MNIST variations. Additional experiments on other public datasets also demonstrate the potential of the PCANet serving as a simple but highly competitive baseline for texture classification and object recognition.
1404.3610
Targeting HIV-related Medication Side Effects and Sentiment Using Twitter Data
cs.SI cs.CL cs.IR
We present a descriptive analysis of Twitter data. Our study focuses on extracting the main side effects associated with HIV treatments. The crux of our work was the identification of personal tweets referring to HIV. We summarize our results in an infographic aimed at the general public. In addition, we present a measure of user sentiment based on hand-rated tweets.
1404.3626
Optimal Power Flow as a Polynomial Optimization Problem
math.OC cs.SY
Formulating the alternating current optimal power flow (ACOPF) as a polynomial optimization problem makes it possible to solve large instances in practice and to guarantee asymptotic convergence in theory.
1404.3637
A Game-Theoretic Framework for Decentralized Cooperative Data Exchange using Network Coding
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we introduce a game theoretic framework for studying the problem of minimizing the delay of instantly decodable network coding (IDNC) for cooperative data exchange (CDE) in decentralized wireless network. In this configuration, clients cooperate with each other to recover the erased packets without a central controller. Game theory is employed herein as a tool for improving the distributed solution by overcoming the need for a central controller or additional signaling in the system. We model the session by self-interested players in a non-cooperative potential game. The utility functions are designed such that increasing individual payoff results in a collective behavior achieving both a desirable system performance in a shared network environment and the Nash bargaining solution. Three games are developed: the first aims to reduce the completion time, the second to reduce the maximum decoding delay and the third the sum decoding delay. We improve these formulations to include punishment policy upon collision occurrence and achieve the Nash bargaining solution. Through extensive simulations, our framework is tested against the best performance that could be found in the conventional point-to-multipoint (PMP) recovery process in numerous cases: first we simulate the problem with complete information. We, then, simulate with incomplete information and finally we test it in lossy feedback scenario. Numerical results show that our formulation with complete information largely outperforms the conventional PMP scheme in most situations and achieves a lower delay. They also show that the completion time formulation with incomplete information also outperforms the conventional PMP.
1404.3638
Approximate MMSE Estimator for Linear Dynamic Systems with Gaussian Mixture Noise
cs.SY
In this work we propose an approximate Minimum Mean-Square Error (MMSE) filter for linear dynamic systems with Gaussian Mixture noise. The proposed estimator tracks each component of the Gaussian Mixture (GM) posterior with an individual filter and minimizes the trace of the covariance matrix of the bank of filters, as opposed to minimizing the MSE of individual filters in the commonly used Gaussian sum filter (GSF). Hence, the spread of means in the proposed method is smaller than that of GSF which makes it more robust to removing components. Consequently, lower complexity reduction schemes can be used with the proposed filter without losing estimation accuracy and precision. This is supported through simulations on synthetic data as well as experimental data related to an indoor localization system. Additionally, we show that in two limit cases the state estimation provided by our proposed method converges to that of GSF, and we provide simulation results supporting this in other cases.
1404.3656
Methods for Ordinal Peer Grading
cs.LG cs.IR
MOOCs have the potential to revolutionize higher education with their wide outreach and accessibility, but they require instructors to come up with scalable alternates to traditional student evaluation. Peer grading -- having students assess each other -- is a promising approach to tackling the problem of evaluation at scale, since the number of "graders" naturally scales with the number of students. However, students are not trained in grading, which means that one cannot expect the same level of grading skills as in traditional settings. Drawing on broad evidence that ordinal feedback is easier to provide and more reliable than cardinal feedback, it is therefore desirable to allow peer graders to make ordinal statements (e.g. "project X is better than project Y") and not require them to make cardinal statements (e.g. "project X is a B-"). Thus, in this paper we study the problem of automatically inferring student grades from ordinal peer feedback, as opposed to existing methods that require cardinal peer feedback. We formulate the ordinal peer grading problem as a type of rank aggregation problem, and explore several probabilistic models under which to estimate student grades and grader reliability. We study the applicability of these methods using peer grading data collected from a real class -- with instructor and TA grades as a baseline -- and demonstrate the efficacy of ordinal feedback techniques in comparison to existing cardinal peer grading methods. Finally, we compare these peer-grading techniques to traditional evaluation techniques.
1404.3659
Avoiding Undesired Choices Using Intelligent Adaptive Systems
cs.AI
We propose a number of heuristics that can be used for identifying when intransitive choice behaviour is likely to occur in choice situations. We also suggest two methods for avoiding undesired choice behaviour, namely transparent communication and adaptive choice-set generation. We believe that these two ways can contribute to the avoidance of decision biases in choice situations that may often be regretted.
1404.3666
Unitary Query for the $M \times L \times N$ MIMO Backscatter RFID Channel
cs.IT math.IT
A MIMO backscatter RFID system consists of three operational ends: the query end (with $M$ reader transmitting antennas), the tag end (with $L$ tag antennas) and the receiving end (with $N$ reader receiving antennas). Such an $M \times L \times N$ setting in RFID can bring spatial diversity and has been studied for STC at the tag end. Current understanding of the query end is that it is only an energy provider for the tag and query signal designs cannot improve the performance. However, we propose a novel \textit{unitary query} scheme, which creates time diversity \emph{within channel coherent time} and can yield \emph{significant} performance improvements. To overcome the difficulty of evaluating the performance when the unitary query is employed at the query end and STC is employed at the tag end, we derive a new measure based on the ranks of certain carefully constructed matrices. The measure implies that the unitary query has superior performance. Simulations show that the unitary query can bring $5-10$ dB gain in mid SNR regimes. In addition, the unitary query can also improve the performance of single-antenna tags significantly, allowing employing low complex and small-size single-antenna tags for high performance. This improvement is unachievable for single-antenna tags when the conventional uniform query is employed.
1404.3675
On Backdoors To Tractable Constraint Languages
cs.AI cs.CC
In the context of CSPs, a strong backdoor is a subset of variables such that every complete assignment yields a residual instance guaranteed to have a specified property. If the property allows efficient solving, then a small strong backdoor provides a reasonable decomposition of the original instance into easy instances. An important challenge is the design of algorithms that can find quickly a small strong backdoor if one exists. We present a systematic study of the parameterized complexity of backdoor detection when the target property is a restricted type of constraint language defined by means of a family of polymorphisms. In particular, we show that under the weak assumption that the polymorphisms are idempotent, the problem is unlikely to be FPT when the parameter is either r (the constraint arity) or k (the size of the backdoor) unless P = NP or FPT = W[2]. When the parameter is k+r, however, we are able to identify large classes of languages for which the problem of finding a small backdoor is FPT.
1404.3677
Decoding Delay Controlled Reduction of Completion Time in Instantly Decodable Network Coding
cs.IT math.IT
For several years, the completion time and the decoding delay problems in Instantly Decodable Network Coding (IDNC) were considered separately and were thought to completely act against each other. Recently, some works aimed to balance the effects of these two important IDNC metrics but none of them studied a further optimization of one by controlling the other. In this paper, we study the effect of controlling the decoding delay to reduce the completion time below its currently best known solution in persistent erasure channels. We first derive the decoding-delay-dependent expressions of the users' and overall completion times. Although using such expressions to find the optimal overall completion time is NP-hard, we design two novel heuristics that minimizes the probability of increasing the maximum of these decoding-delay-dependent completion time expressions after each transmission through a layered control of their decoding delays. We, then, extend our study to the limited feedback scenario. Simulation results show that our new algorithms achieves both a lower mean completion time and mean decoding delay compared to the best known heuristic for completion time reduction. The gap in performance becomes significant for harsh erasure scenarios.
1404.3697
The configuration multi-edge model: Assessing the effect of fixing node strengths on weighted network magnitudes
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
Complex networks grow subject to structural constraints which affect their measurable properties. Assessing the effect that such constraints impose on their observables is thus a crucial aspect to be taken into account in their analysis. To this end,we examine the effect of fixing the strength sequence in multi-edge networks on several network observables such as degrees, disparity, average neighbor properties and weight distribution using an ensemble approach. We provide a general method to calculate any desired weighted network metric and we show that several features detected in real data could be explained solely by structural constraints. We thus justify the need of analytical null models to be used as basis to assess the relevance of features found in real data represented in weighted network form.
1404.3702
Upgrade of A Robot Workstation for Positioning of Measuring Objects on CMM
cs.RO
In order to decrease the measuring cycle time on the coordinate measuring machine (CMM) a robot workstation for the positioning of measuring objects was created. The application of a simple 5-axis industrial robot enables the positioning of the objects within the working space of CMM and measuring of different surfaces on the same object without human intervention. In this article an upgrade of an existing robot workstation through different design measures is shown. The main goal of this upgrade is to improve the measuring accuracy of the complex robot-CMM system.
1404.3706
Using industrial robot to manipulate the measured object in CMM
cs.RO
Coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) are widely used to check dimensions of manufactured parts, especially in automotive industry. The major obstacles in automation of these measurements are fixturing and clamping assemblies, which are required in order to position the measured object within the CMM. This paper describes how an industrial robot can be used to manipulate the measured object within the CMM work space, in order to enable automation of complex geometry measurement.
1404.3708
Inferring Social Status and Rich Club Effects in Enterprise Communication Networks
cs.SI cs.AI physics.soc-ph
Social status, defined as the relative rank or position that an individual holds in a social hierarchy, is known to be among the most important motivating forces in social behaviors. In this paper, we consider the notion of status from the perspective of a position or title held by a person in an enterprise. We study the intersection of social status and social networks in an enterprise. We study whether enterprise communication logs can help reveal how social interactions and individual status manifest themselves in social networks. To that end, we use two enterprise datasets with three communication channels --- voice call, short message, and email --- to demonstrate the social-behavioral differences among individuals with different status. We have several interesting findings and based on these findings we also develop a model to predict social status. On the individual level, high-status individuals are more likely to be spanned as structural holes by linking to people in parts of the enterprise networks that are otherwise not well connected to one another. On the community level, the principle of homophily, social balance and clique theory generally indicate a "rich club" maintained by high-status individuals, in the sense that this community is much more connected, balanced and dense. Our model can predict social status of individuals with 93% accuracy.
1404.3722
Design of Policy-Aware Differentially Private Algorithms
cs.DB cs.CR
The problem of designing error optimal differentially private algorithms is well studied. Recent work applying differential privacy to real world settings have used variants of differential privacy that appropriately modify the notion of neighboring databases. The problem of designing error optimal algorithms for such variants of differential privacy is open. In this paper, we show a novel transformational equivalence result that can turn the problem of query answering under differential privacy with a modified notion of neighbors to one of query answering under standard differential privacy, for a large class of neighbor definitions. We utilize the Blowfish privacy framework that generalizes differential privacy. Blowfish uses a {\em policy graph} to instantiate different notions of neighboring databases. We show that the error incurred when answering a workload $\mathbf{W}$ on a database $\mathbf{x}$ under a Blowfish policy graph $G$ is identical to the error required to answer a transformed workload $f_G(\mathbf{W})$ on database $g_G(\mathbf{x})$ under standard differential privacy, where $f_G$ and $g_G$ are linear transformations based on $G$. Using this result, we develop error efficient algorithms for releasing histograms and multidimensional range queries under different Blowfish policies. We believe the tools we develop will be useful for finding mechanisms to answer many other classes of queries with low error under other policy graphs.
1404.3733
Quantum Information Complexity and Amortized Communication
quant-ph cs.CC cs.IT math.IT
We define a new notion of information cost for quantum protocols, and a corresponding notion of quantum information complexity for bipartite quantum channels, and then investigate the properties of such quantities. These are the fully quantum generalizations of the analogous quantities for bipartite classical functions that have found many applications recently, in particular for proving communication complexity lower bounds. Our definition is strongly tied to the quantum state redistribution task. Previous attempts have been made to define such a quantity for quantum protocols, with particular applications in mind; our notion differs from these in many respects. First, it directly provides a lower bound on the quantum communication cost, independent of the number of rounds of the underlying protocol. Secondly, we provide an operational interpretation for quantum information complexity: we show that it is exactly equal to the amortized quantum communication complexity of a bipartite channel on a given state. This generalizes a result of Braverman and Rao to quantum protocols, and even strengthens the classical result in a bounded round scenario. Also, this provides an analogue of the Schumacher source compression theorem for interactive quantum protocols, and answers a question raised by Braverman. We also discuss some potential applications to quantum communication complexity lower bounds by specializing our definition for classical functions and inputs. Building on work of Jain, Radhakrishnan and Sen, we provide new evidence suggesting that the bounded round quantum communication complexity of the disjointness function is \Omega (n/M + M), for M-message protocols. This would match the best known upper bound.
1404.3757
Inheritance patterns in citation networks reveal scientific memes
cs.SI cs.DL physics.soc-ph
Memes are the cultural equivalent of genes that spread across human culture by means of imitation. What makes a meme and what distinguishes it from other forms of information, however, is still poorly understood. Our analysis of memes in the scientific literature reveals that they are governed by a surprisingly simple relationship between frequency of occurrence and the degree to which they propagate along the citation graph. We propose a simple formalization of this pattern and we validate it with data from close to 50 million publication records from the Web of Science, PubMed Central, and the American Physical Society. Evaluations relying on human annotators, citation network randomizations, and comparisons with several alternative approaches confirm that our formula is accurate and effective, without a dependence on linguistic or ontological knowledge and without the application of arbitrary thresholds or filters.
1404.3759
Meta-evaluation of comparability metrics using parallel corpora
cs.CL
Metrics for measuring the comparability of corpora or texts need to be developed and evaluated systematically. Applications based on a corpus, such as training Statistical MT systems in specialised narrow domains, require finding a reasonable balance between the size of the corpus and its consistency, with controlled and benchmarked levels of comparability for any newly added sections. In this article we propose a method that can meta-evaluate comparability metrics by calculating monolingual comparability scores separately on the 'source' and 'target' sides of parallel corpora. The range of scores on the source side is then correlated (using Pearson's r coefficient) with the range of 'target' scores; the higher the correlation - the more reliable is the metric. The intuition is that a good metric should yield the same distance between different domains in different languages. Our method gives consistent results for the same metrics on different data sets, which indicates that it is reliable and can be used for metric comparison or for optimising settings of parametrised metrics.
1404.3766
Distributed Approximate Message Passing for Compressed Sensing
cs.DC cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, an efficient distributed approach for implementing the approximate message passing (AMP) algorithm, named distributed AMP (DAMP), is developed for compressed sensing (CS) recovery in sensor networks with the sparsity K unknown. In the proposed DAMP, distributed sensors do not have to use or know the entire global sensing matrix, and the burden of computation and storage for each sensor is reduced. To reduce communications among the sensors, a new data query algorithm, called global computation for AMP (GCAMP), is proposed. The proposed GCAMP based DAMP approach has exactly the same recovery solution as the centralized AMP algorithm, which is proved theoretically in the paper. The performance of the DAMP approach is evaluated in terms of the communication cost saved by using GCAMP. For comparison purpose, thresholding algorithm (TA), a well known distributed Top-K algorithm, is modified so that it also leads to the same recovery solution as the centralized AMP. Numerical results demonstrate that the GCAMP based DAMP outperforms the Modified TA based DAMP, and reduces the communication cost significantly.
1404.3785
Reducing the Barrier to Entry of Complex Robotic Software: a MoveIt! Case Study
cs.RO
Developing robot agnostic software frameworks involves synthesizing the disparate fields of robotic theory and software engineering while simultaneously accounting for a large variability in hardware designs and control paradigms. As the capabilities of robotic software frameworks increase, the setup difficulty and learning curve for new users also increase. If the entry barriers for configuring and using the software on robots is too high, even the most powerful of frameworks are useless. A growing need exists in robotic software engineering to aid users in getting started with, and customizing, the software framework as necessary for particular robotic applications. In this paper a case study is presented for the best practices found for lowering the barrier of entry in the MoveIt! framework, an open-source tool for mobile manipulation in ROS, that allows users to 1) quickly get basic motion planning functionality with minimal initial setup, 2) automate its configuration and optimization, and 3) easily customize its components. A graphical interface that assists the user in configuring MoveIt! is the cornerstone of our approach, coupled with the use of an existing standardized robot model for input, automatically generated robot-specific configuration files, and a plugin-based architecture for extensibility. These best practices are summarized into a set of barrier to entry design principles applicable to other robotic software. The approaches for lowering the entry barrier are evaluated by usage statistics, a user survey, and compared against our design objectives for their effectiveness to users.
1404.3788
Data Modeling with Large Random Matrices in a Cognitive Radio Network Testbed: Initial Experimental Demonstrations with 70 Nodes
cs.IT math.IT
This short paper reports some initial experimental demonstrations of the theoretical framework: the massive amount of data in the large-scale cognitive radio network can be naturally modeled as (large) random matrices. In particular, using experimental data we will demonstrate that the empirical spectral distribution of the large sample covariance matrix---a Hermitian random matrix---agree with its theoretical distribution (Marchenko-Pastur law). On the other hand, the eigenvalues of the large data matrix ---a non-Hermitian random matrix---are experimentally found to follow the single ring law, a theoretical result that has been discovered relatively recently. To our best knowledge, our paper is the first such attempt, in the context of large-scale wireless network, to compare theoretical predictions with experimental findings.
1404.3808
Robust Dynamic State Feedback Guaranteed Cost Control of Nonlinear Systems using Copies of Plant Nonlinearities
cs.SY
This paper presents a systematic approach to the design of a robust dynamic state feedback controller using copies of the plant nonlinearities, which is based on the use of IQCs and minimax LQR control. The approach combines a linear state feedback guaranteed cost controller and copies of the plant nonlinearities to form a robust nonlinear controller.
1404.3811
A strong restricted isometry property, with an application to phaseless compressed sensing
cs.IT math.IT math.NA
The many variants of the restricted isometry property (RIP) have proven to be crucial theoretical tools in the fields of compressed sensing and matrix completion. The study of extending compressed sensing to accommodate phaseless measurements naturally motivates a strong notion of restricted isometry property (SRIP), which we develop in this paper. We show that if $A \in \mathbb{R}^{m\times n}$ satisfies SRIP and phaseless measurements $|Ax_0| = b$ are observed about a $k$-sparse signal $x_0 \in \mathbb{R}^n$, then minimizing the $\ell_1$ norm subject to $ |Ax| = b $ recovers $x_0$ up to multiplication by a global sign. Moreover, we establish that the SRIP holds for the random Gaussian matrices typically used for standard compressed sensing, implying that phaseless compressed sensing is possible from $O(k \log (n/k))$ measurements with these matrices via $\ell_1$ minimization over $|Ax| = b$. Our analysis also yields an erasure robust version of the Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma.
1404.3839
Towards Understanding Cyberbullying Behavior in a Semi-Anonymous Social Network
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Cyberbullying has emerged as an important and growing social problem, wherein people use online social networks and mobile phones to bully victims with offensive text, images, audio and video on a 247 basis. This paper studies negative user behavior in the Ask.fm social network, a popular new site that has led to many cases of cyberbullying, some leading to suicidal behavior.We examine the occurrence of negative words in Ask.fms question+answer profiles along with the social network of likes of questions+answers. We also examine properties of users with cutting behavior in this social network.
1404.3840
Surpassing Human-Level Face Verification Performance on LFW with GaussianFace
cs.CV cs.LG stat.ML
Face verification remains a challenging problem in very complex conditions with large variations such as pose, illumination, expression, and occlusions. This problem is exacerbated when we rely unrealistically on a single training data source, which is often insufficient to cover the intrinsically complex face variations. This paper proposes a principled multi-task learning approach based on Discriminative Gaussian Process Latent Variable Model, named GaussianFace, to enrich the diversity of training data. In comparison to existing methods, our model exploits additional data from multiple source-domains to improve the generalization performance of face verification in an unknown target-domain. Importantly, our model can adapt automatically to complex data distributions, and therefore can well capture complex face variations inherent in multiple sources. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model in learning from diverse data sources and generalize to unseen domain. Specifically, the accuracy of our algorithm achieves an impressive accuracy rate of 98.52% on the well-known and challenging Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) benchmark. For the first time, the human-level performance in face verification (97.53%) on LFW is surpassed.
1404.3862
Optimizing the CVaR via Sampling
stat.ML cs.AI cs.LG
Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) is a prominent risk measure that is being used extensively in various domains. We develop a new formula for the gradient of the CVaR in the form of a conditional expectation. Based on this formula, we propose a novel sampling-based estimator for the CVaR gradient, in the spirit of the likelihood-ratio method. We analyze the bias of the estimator, and prove the convergence of a corresponding stochastic gradient descent algorithm to a local CVaR optimum. Our method allows to consider CVaR optimization in new domains. As an example, we consider a reinforcement learning application, and learn a risk-sensitive controller for the game of Tetris.
1404.3881
Collision Tolerant Packet Scheduling for Underwater Acoustic Localization
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
This article considers the joint problem of packet scheduling and self-localization in an underwater acoustic sensor network where sensor nodes are distributed randomly in an operating area. In terms of packet scheduling, our goal is to minimize the localization time, and to do so we consider two packet transmission schemes, namely a collision-free scheme (CFS), and a collision-tolerant scheme (CTS). The required localization time is formulated for these schemes, and through analytical results and numerical examples their performances are shown to be generally comparable. However, when the packet duration is short (as is the case for a localization packet), and the operating area is large (above 3km in at least one dimension), the collision-tolerant scheme requires a smaller localization time than the collision-free scheme. After gathering enough measurements, an iterative Gauss-Newton algorithm is employed by each sensor node for self-localization, and the Cramer Rao lower bound is evaluated as a benchmark. Although CTS consumes more energy for packet transmission, it provides a better localization accuracy. Additionally, in this scheme the anchor nodes work independently of each other, and can operate asynchronously which leads to a simplified implementation.
1404.3884
Performance Analysis and Coherent Guaranteed Cost Control for Uncertain Quantum Systems
quant-ph cs.SY
This paper presents several results on performance analysis for a class of uncertain linear quantum systems subject to either quadratic or non-quadratic perturbations in the system Hamiltonian. Also, coherent guaranteed cost controllers are designed for the uncertain quantum systems to achieve improved control performance. The coherent controller is realized by adding a control Hamiltonian to the quantum system and its performance is demonstrated by an example.
1404.3905
Tensor completion in hierarchical tensor representations
math.NA cs.IT math.IT
Compressed sensing extends from the recovery of sparse vectors from undersampled measurements via efficient algorithms to the recovery of matrices of low rank from incomplete information. Here we consider a further extension to the reconstruction of tensors of low multi-linear rank in recently introduced hierarchical tensor formats from a small number of measurements. Hierarchical tensors are a flexible generalization of the well-known Tucker representation, which have the advantage that the number of degrees of freedom of a low rank tensor does not scale exponentially with the order of the tensor. While corresponding tensor decompositions can be computed efficiently via successive applications of (matrix) singular value decompositions, some important properties of the singular value decomposition do not extend from the matrix to the tensor case. This results in major computational and theoretical difficulties in designing and analyzing algorithms for low rank tensor recovery. For instance, a canonical analogue of the tensor nuclear norm is NP-hard to compute in general, which is in stark contrast to the matrix case. In this book chapter we consider versions of iterative hard thresholding schemes adapted to hierarchical tensor formats. A variant builds on methods from Riemannian optimization and uses a retraction mapping from the tangent space of the manifold of low rank tensors back to this manifold. We provide first partial convergence results based on a tensor version of the restricted isometry property (TRIP) of the measurement map. Moreover, an estimate of the number of measurements is provided that ensures the TRIP of a given tensor rank with high probability for Gaussian measurement maps.
1404.3925
Complexity of Grammar Induction for Quantum Types
cs.CL math.CT
Most categorical models of meaning use a functor from the syntactic category to the semantic category. When semantic information is available, the problem of grammar induction can therefore be defined as finding preimages of the semantic types under this forgetful functor, lifting the information flow from the semantic level to a valid reduction at the syntactic level. We study the complexity of grammar induction, and show that for a variety of type systems, including pivotal and compact closed categories, the grammar induction problem is NP-complete. Our approach could be extended to linguistic type systems such as autonomous or bi-closed categories.
1404.3933
Scalable Matting: A Sub-linear Approach
cs.CV
Natural image matting, which separates foreground from background, is a very important intermediate step in recent computer vision algorithms. However, it is severely underconstrained and difficult to solve. State-of-the-art approaches include matting by graph Laplacian, which significantly improves the underconstrained nature by reducing the solution space. However, matting by graph Laplacian is still very difficult to solve and gets much harder as the image size grows: current iterative methods slow down as $\mathcal{O}\left(n^2 \right)$ in the resolution $n$. This creates uncomfortable practical limits on the resolution of images that we can matte. Current literature mitigates the problem, but they all remain super-linear in complexity. We expose properties of the problem that remain heretofore unexploited, demonstrating that an optimization technique originally intended to solve PDEs can be adapted to take advantage of this knowledge to solve the matting problem, not heuristically, but exactly and with sub-linear complexity. This makes ours the most efficient matting solver currently known by a very wide margin and allows matting finally to be practical and scalable in the future as consumer photos exceed many dozens of megapixels, and also relieves matting from being a bottleneck for vision algorithms that depend on it.
1404.3945
A Game Theoretic Approach to Minimize the Completion Time of Network Coded Cooperative Data Exchange
cs.IT cs.GT math.IT
In this paper, we introduce a game theoretic framework for studying the problem of minimizing the completion time of instantly decodable network coding (IDNC) for cooperative data exchange (CDE) in decentralized wireless network. In this configuration, clients cooperate with each other to recover the erased packets without a central controller. Game theory is employed herein as a tool for improving the distributed solution by overcoming the need for a central controller or additional signaling in the system. We model the session by self-interested players in a non-cooperative potential game. The utility function is designed such that increasing individual payoff results in a collective behavior achieving both a desirable system performance in a shared network environment and the Pareto optimal solution. Through extensive simulations, our approach is compared to the best performance that could be found in the conventional point-to-multipoint (PMP) recovery process. Numerical results show that our formulation largely outperforms the conventional PMP scheme in most practical situations and achieves a lower delay.
1404.3959
Is it morally acceptable for a system to lie to persuade me?
cs.CY cs.CL
Given the fast rise of increasingly autonomous artificial agents and robots, a key acceptability criterion will be the possible moral implications of their actions. In particular, intelligent persuasive systems (systems designed to influence humans via communication) constitute a highly sensitive topic because of their intrinsically social nature. Still, ethical studies in this area are rare and tend to focus on the output of the required action. Instead, this work focuses on the persuasive acts themselves (e.g. "is it morally acceptable that a machine lies or appeals to the emotions of a person to persuade her, even if for a good end?"). Exploiting a behavioral approach, based on human assessment of moral dilemmas -- i.e. without any prior assumption of underlying ethical theories -- this paper reports on a set of experiments. These experiments address the type of persuader (human or machine), the strategies adopted (purely argumentative, appeal to positive emotions, appeal to negative emotions, lie) and the circumstances. Findings display no differences due to the agent, mild acceptability for persuasion and reveal that truth-conditional reasoning (i.e. argument validity) is a significant dimension affecting subjects' judgment. Some implications for the design of intelligent persuasive systems are discussed.
1404.3984
Nonparametric Infinite Horizon Kullback-Leibler Stochastic Control
cs.SY
We present two nonparametric approaches to Kullback-Leibler (KL) control, or linearly-solvable Markov decision problem (LMDP) based on Gaussian processes (GP) and Nystr\"{o}m approximation. Compared to recently developed parametric methods, the proposed data-driven frameworks feature accurate function approximation and efficient on-line operations. Theoretically, we derive the mathematical connection of KL control based on dynamic programming with earlier work in control theory which relies on information theoretic dualities for the infinite time horizon case. Algorithmically, we give explicit optimal control policies in nonparametric forms, and propose on-line update schemes with budgeted computational costs. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed frameworks.
1404.3991
Spiralet Sparse Representation
cs.CV
This is the first report on Working Paper WP-RFM-14-01. The potential and capability of sparse representations is well-known. However, their (multivariate variable) vectorial form, which is completely fine in many fields and disciplines, results in removal and filtering of important "spatial" relations that are implicitly carried by two-dimensional [or multi-dimensional] objects, such as images. In this paper, a new approach, called spiralet sparse representation, is proposed in order to develop an augmented representation and therefore a modified sparse representation and theory, which is capable to preserve the data associated to the spatial relations.
1404.3992
Assessing the Quality of MT Systems for Hindi to English Translation
cs.CL
Evaluation plays a vital role in checking the quality of MT output. It is done either manually or automatically. Manual evaluation is very time consuming and subjective, hence use of automatic metrics is done most of the times. This paper evaluates the translation quality of different MT Engines for Hindi-English (Hindi data is provided as input and English is obtained as output) using various automatic metrics like BLEU, METEOR etc. Further the comparison automatic evaluation results with Human ranking have also been given.
1404.3997
Lossless Coding of Correlated Sources with Actions
cs.IT math.IT
This work studies the problem of distributed compression of correlated sources with an action-dependent joint distribution. This class of problems is, in fact, an extension of the Slepian-Wolf model, but where cost-constrained actions taken by the encoder or the decoder affect the generation of one of the sources. The purpose of this work is to study the implications of actions on the achievable rates. In particular, two cases where transmission occurs over a rate-limited link are studied; case A for actions taken at the decoder and case B where actions are taken at the encoder. A complete single-letter characterization of the set of achievable rates is given in both cases. Furthermore, a network coding setup is investigated for the case where actions are taken at the encoder. The sources are generated at different nodes of the network and are required at a set of terminal nodes, yet transmission occurs over a general, acyclic, directed network. For this setup, generalized cut-set bounds are derived, and a full characterization of the set of achievable rates using single-letter expressions is provided. For this scenario, random linear network coding is proved to be optimal, even though this is not a classical multicast problem. Additionally, two binary examples are investigated and demonstrate how actions taken at different nodes of the system have a significant affect on the achievable rate region in comparison to a naive time-sharing strategy.
1404.4032
Recovery of Coherent Data via Low-Rank Dictionary Pursuit
stat.ME cs.IT cs.LG math.IT math.ST stat.TH
The recently established RPCA method provides us a convenient way to restore low-rank matrices from grossly corrupted observations. While elegant in theory and powerful in reality, RPCA may be not an ultimate solution to the low-rank matrix recovery problem. Indeed, its performance may not be perfect even when data are strictly low-rank. This is because conventional RPCA ignores the clustering structures of the data which are ubiquitous in modern applications. As the number of cluster grows, the coherence of data keeps increasing, and accordingly, the recovery performance of RPCA degrades. We show that the challenges raised by coherent data (i.e., the data with high coherence) could be alleviated by Low-Rank Representation (LRR), provided that the dictionary in LRR is configured appropriately. More precisely, we mathematically prove that if the dictionary itself is low-rank then LRR is immune to the coherence parameter which increases with the underlying cluster number. This provides an elementary principle for dealing with coherent data. Subsequently, we devise a practical algorithm to obtain proper dictionaries in unsupervised environments. Our extensive experiments on randomly generated matrices verify our claims.
1404.4038
Discovering and Exploiting Entailment Relationships in Multi-Label Learning
cs.LG
This work presents a sound probabilistic method for enforcing adherence of the marginal probabilities of a multi-label model to automatically discovered deterministic relationships among labels. In particular we focus on discovering two kinds of relationships among the labels. The first one concerns pairwise positive entailement: pairs of labels, where the presence of one implies the presence of the other in all instances of a dataset. The second concerns exclusion: sets of labels that do not coexist in the same instances of the dataset. These relationships are represented with a Bayesian network. Marginal probabilities are entered as soft evidence in the network and adjusted through probabilistic inference. Our approach offers robust improvements in mean average precision compared to the standard binary relavance approach across all 12 datasets involved in our experiments. The discovery process helps interesting implicit knowledge to emerge, which could be useful in itself.
1404.4067
An effective AHP-based metaheuristic approach to solve supplier selection problem
cs.NE
The supplier selection problem is based on electing the best supplier from a group of pre-specified candidates, is identified as a Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), is proportionately significant in terms of qualitative and quantitative attributes. It is a fundamental issue to achieve a trade-off between such quantifiable and unquantifiable attributes with an aim to accomplish the best solution to the abovementioned problem. This article portrays a metaheuristic based optimization model to solve this NP-Complete problem. Initially the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is implemented to generate an initial feasible solution of the problem. Thereafter a Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm is exploited to improve the quality of the obtained solution. The Taguchi robust design method is exploited to solve the critical issues on the subject of the parameter selection of the SA technique. In order to verify the proposed methodology the numerical results are demonstrated based on tangible industry data.
1404.4078
Modeling Massive Amount of Experimental Data with Large Random Matrices in a Real-Time UWB-MIMO System
cs.IT math.IT
The aim of this paper is to study data modeling for massive datasets. Large random matrices are used to model the massive amount of data collected from our experimental testbed. This testbed was developed for a real-time ultra-wideband, multiple input multiple output (UWB-MIMO) system. Empirical spectral density is the relevant information we seek for. After we treat this UWB-MIMO system as a black box, we aim to model the output of the black box as a large statistical system, whose outputs can be described by (large) random matrices. This model is extremely general to allow for the study of non-linear and non-Gaussian phenomenon. The good agreements between the theoretical predictions and the empirical findings validate the correctness of the our suggested data model.
1404.4088
Ensemble Classifiers and Their Applications: A Review
cs.LG
Ensemble classifier refers to a group of individual classifiers that are cooperatively trained on data set in a supervised classification problem. In this paper we present a review of commonly used ensemble classifiers in the literature. Some ensemble classifiers are also developed targeting specific applications. We also present some application driven ensemble classifiers in this paper.
1404.4089
On the Role of Canonicity in Bottom-up Knowledge Compilation
cs.AI
We consider the problem of bottom-up compilation of knowledge bases, which is usually predicated on the existence of a polytime function for combining compilations using Boolean operators (usually called an Apply function). While such a polytime Apply function is known to exist for certain languages (e.g., OBDDs) and not exist for others (e.g., DNNF), its existence for certain languages remains unknown. Among the latter is the recently introduced language of Sentential Decision Diagrams (SDDs), for which a polytime Apply function exists for unreduced SDDs, but remains unknown for reduced ones (i.e. canonical SDDs). We resolve this open question in this paper and consider some of its theoretical and practical implications. Some of the findings we report question the common wisdom on the relationship between bottom-up compilation, language canonicity and the complexity of the Apply function.
1404.4095
Multi-borders classification
stat.ML cs.LG
The number of possible methods of generalizing binary classification to multi-class classification increases exponentially with the number of class labels. Often, the best method of doing so will be highly problem dependent. Here we present classification software in which the partitioning of multi-class classification problems into binary classification problems is specified using a recursive control language.
1404.4104
Sparse Bilinear Logistic Regression
math.OC cs.CV cs.LG
In this paper, we introduce the concept of sparse bilinear logistic regression for decision problems involving explanatory variables that are two-dimensional matrices. Such problems are common in computer vision, brain-computer interfaces, style/content factorization, and parallel factor analysis. The underlying optimization problem is bi-convex; we study its solution and develop an efficient algorithm based on block coordinate descent. We provide a theoretical guarantee for global convergence and estimate the asymptotical convergence rate using the Kurdyka-{\L}ojasiewicz inequality. A range of experiments with simulated and real data demonstrate that sparse bilinear logistic regression outperforms current techniques in several important applications.
1404.4105
Sparse Compositional Metric Learning
cs.LG cs.AI stat.ML
We propose a new approach for metric learning by framing it as learning a sparse combination of locally discriminative metrics that are inexpensive to generate from the training data. This flexible framework allows us to naturally derive formulations for global, multi-task and local metric learning. The resulting algorithms have several advantages over existing methods in the literature: a much smaller number of parameters to be estimated and a principled way to generalize learned metrics to new testing data points. To analyze the approach theoretically, we derive a generalization bound that justifies the sparse combination. Empirically, we evaluate our algorithms on several datasets against state-of-the-art metric learning methods. The results are consistent with our theoretical findings and demonstrate the superiority of our approach in terms of classification performance and scalability.
1404.4108
Representation as a Service
cs.LG
Consider a Machine Learning Service Provider (MLSP) designed to rapidly create highly accurate learners for a never-ending stream of new tasks. The challenge is to produce task-specific learners that can be trained from few labeled samples, even if tasks are not uniquely identified, and the number of tasks and input dimensionality are large. In this paper, we argue that the MLSP should exploit knowledge from previous tasks to build a good representation of the environment it is in, and more precisely, that useful representations for such a service are ones that minimize generalization error for a new hypothesis trained on a new task. We formalize this intuition with a novel method that minimizes an empirical proxy of the intra-task small-sample generalization error. We present several empirical results showing state-of-the art performance on single-task transfer, multitask learning, and the full lifelong learning problem.
1404.4114
Structured Stochastic Variational Inference
cs.LG
Stochastic variational inference makes it possible to approximate posterior distributions induced by large datasets quickly using stochastic optimization. The algorithm relies on the use of fully factorized variational distributions. However, this "mean-field" independence approximation limits the fidelity of the posterior approximation, and introduces local optima. We show how to relax the mean-field approximation to allow arbitrary dependencies between global parameters and local hidden variables, producing better parameter estimates by reducing bias, sensitivity to local optima, and sensitivity to hyperparameters.
1404.4120
Harvest-Then-Cooperate: Wireless-Powered Cooperative Communications
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider a wireless-powered cooperative communication network consisting of one hybrid access-point (AP), one source, and one relay. In contrast to conventional cooperative networks, the source and relay in the considered network have no embedded energy supply. They need to rely on the energy harvested from the signals broadcasted by the AP for their cooperative information transmission. Based on this three-node reference model, we propose a harvest-then-cooperate (HTC) protocol, in which the source and relay harvest energy from the AP in the downlink and work cooperatively in the uplink for the source's information transmission. Considering a delay-limited transmission mode, the approximate closed-form expression for the average throughput of the proposed protocol is derived over Rayleigh fading channels. Subsequently, this analysis is extended to the multi-relay scenario, where the approximate throughput of the HTC protocol with two popular relay selection schemes is derived. The asymptotic analyses for the throughput performance of the considered schemes at high signal-to-noise radio are also provided. All theoretical results are validated by numerical simulations. The impacts of the system parameters, such as time allocation, relay number, and relay position, on the throughput performance are extensively investigated.
1404.4157
Phase Precoding for the Compute-and-Forward Protocol
cs.IT math.IT
The compute-and-forward (CoF) is a relaying protocol, which uses algebraic structured codes to harness the interference and remove the noise in wireless networks. We propose the use of phase precoders at the transmitters of a network, where relays apply CoF strategy. We define the {\em phase precoded computation rate} and show that it is greater than the original computation rate of CoF protocol. We further give a new low-complexity method for finding network equations. We finally show that the proposed precoding scheme increases the degrees-of-freedom (DoF) of CoF protocol. This overcomes the limitations on the DoF of the CoF protocol, recently presented by Niesen and Whiting. Using tools from Diophantine approximation and algebraic geometry, we prove the existence of a phase precoder that approaches the maximum DoF when the number of transmitters tends to infinity.
1404.4163
Multiplicative weights in monotropic games
cs.GT cs.MA math.OC
We introduce a new class of population games that we call monotropic; these are games characterized by the presence of a unique globally neutrally stable Nash equilibrium. Monotropic games generalize strictly concave potential games and zero sum games with a unique minimax solution. Within the class of monotropic games, we study a multiplicative weights dynamic. We show that, depending on a parameter called the learning rate, multiplicative weights are interior globally convergent to the unique equilibrium of monotropic games, but may also induce chaotic behavior if the learning rate is not carefully chosen.
1404.4164
Time-Frequency Packing for High Capacity Coherent Optical Links
cs.IT math.IT
We consider realistic long-haul optical links, with linear and nonlinear impairments, and investigate the application of time-frequency packing with low-order constellations as a possible solution to increase the spectral efficiency. A detailed comparison with available techniques from the literature will be also performed. We will see that this technique represents a feasible solution to overcome the relevant theoretical and technological issues related to this spectral efficiency increase and could be more effective than the simple adoption of high-order modulation formats.
1404.4171
Dropout Training for Support Vector Machines
cs.LG
Dropout and other feature noising schemes have shown promising results in controlling over-fitting by artificially corrupting the training data. Though extensive theoretical and empirical studies have been performed for generalized linear models, little work has been done for support vector machines (SVMs), one of the most successful approaches for supervised learning. This paper presents dropout training for linear SVMs. To deal with the intractable expectation of the non-smooth hinge loss under corrupting distributions, we develop an iteratively re-weighted least square (IRLS) algorithm by exploring data augmentation techniques. Our algorithm iteratively minimizes the expectation of a re-weighted least square problem, where the re-weights have closed-form solutions. The similar ideas are applied to develop a new IRLS algorithm for the expected logistic loss under corrupting distributions. Our algorithms offer insights on the connection and difference between the hinge loss and logistic loss in dropout training. Empirical results on several real datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of dropout training on significantly boosting the classification accuracy of linear SVMs.
1404.4175
MEG Decoding Across Subjects
stat.ML cs.LG q-bio.NC
Brain decoding is a data analysis paradigm for neuroimaging experiments that is based on predicting the stimulus presented to the subject from the concurrent brain activity. In order to make inference at the group level, a straightforward but sometimes unsuccessful approach is to train a classifier on the trials of a group of subjects and then to test it on unseen trials from new subjects. The extreme difficulty is related to the structural and functional variability across the subjects. We call this approach "decoding across subjects". In this work, we address the problem of decoding across subjects for magnetoencephalographic (MEG) experiments and we provide the following contributions: first, we formally describe the problem and show that it belongs to a machine learning sub-field called transductive transfer learning (TTL). Second, we propose to use a simple TTL technique that accounts for the differences between train data and test data. Third, we propose the use of ensemble learning, and specifically of stacked generalization, to address the variability across subjects within train data, with the aim of producing more stable classifiers. On a face vs. scramble task MEG dataset of 16 subjects, we compare the standard approach of not modelling the differences across subjects, to the proposed one of combining TTL and ensemble learning. We show that the proposed approach is consistently more accurate than the standard one.
1404.4181
Prediction of Transformed (DCT) Video Coding Residual for Video Compression
cs.IT cs.MM math.IT
Video compression has been investigated by means of analysis-synthesis, and more particularly by means of inpainting. The first part of our approach has been to develop the inpainting of DCT coefficients in an image. This has shown good results for image compression without overpassing todays compression standards like JPEG. We then looked at integrating the same approach in a video coder, and in particular in the widely used H264 AVC standard coder, but the same approach can be used in the framework of HEVC. The originality of this work consists in cancelling at the coder, then automatically restoring, at the decoder, some well chosen DCT residual coefficients. For this purpose, we have developed a restoration model of transformed coefficients. By using a total variation based model, we derive conditions for the reconstruction of transformed coefficients that have been suppressed or altered. The main purpose here, in a video coding context, is to improve the ratedistortion performance of existing coders. To this end DCT restoration is used as an additional prediction step to the spatial prediction of the transformed coefficients, based on an image regularization process. The method has been successfully tested with the H.264 AVC video codec standard.
1404.4191
The Dynamics of Emotional Chats with Bots: Experiment and Agent-Based Simulations
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Quantitative research of emotions in psychology and machine-learning methods for extracting emotion components from text messages open an avenue for physical science to explore the nature of stochastic processes in which emotions play a role, e.g., in human dynamics online. Here, we investigate the occurrence of collective behavior of users that is induced by chats with emotional Bots. The Bots, designed in an experimental environment, are considered. Furthermore, using the agent-based modeling approach, the activity of these experimental Bots is simulated within a social network of interacting emotional agents. Quantitative analysis of time series carrying emotional messages by agents suggests temporal correlations and persistent fluctuations with clustering according to emotion similarity. {All data used in this study are fully anonymized.}
1404.4258
An Analysis of State-Relevance Weights and Sampling Distributions on L1-Regularized Approximate Linear Programming Approximation Accuracy
cs.AI
Recent interest in the use of $L_1$ regularization in the use of value function approximation includes Petrik et al.'s introduction of $L_1$-Regularized Approximate Linear Programming (RALP). RALP is unique among $L_1$-regularized approaches in that it approximates the optimal value function using off-policy samples. Additionally, it produces policies which outperform those of previous methods, such as LSPI. RALP's value function approximation quality is affected heavily by the choice of state-relevance weights in the objective function of the linear program, and by the distribution from which samples are drawn; however, there has been no discussion of these considerations in the previous literature. In this paper, we discuss and explain the effects of choices in the state-relevance weights and sampling distribution on approximation quality, using both theoretical and experimental illustrations. The results provide insight not only onto these effects, but also provide intuition into the types of MDPs which are especially well suited for approximation with RALP.
1404.4273
List decoding group homomorphisms between supersolvable groups
cs.IT cs.CC math.IT
We show that the set of homomorphisms between two supersolvable groups can be locally list decoded up to the minimum distance of the code, extending the results of Dinur et al who studied the case where the groups are abelian. Moreover, when specialized to the abelian case, our proof is more streamlined and gives a better constant in the exponent of the list size. The constant is improved from about 3.5 million to 105.
1404.4274
Managing Change in Graph-structured Data Using Description Logics (long version with appendix)
cs.AI cs.LO
In this paper, we consider the setting of graph-structured data that evolves as a result of operations carried out by users or applications. We study different reasoning problems, which range from ensuring the satisfaction of a given set of integrity constraints after a given sequence of updates, to deciding the (non-)existence of a sequence of actions that would take the data to an (un)desirable state, starting either from a specific data instance or from an incomplete description of it. We consider an action language in which actions are finite sequences of conditional insertions and deletions of nodes and labels, and use Description Logics for describing integrity constraints and (partial) states of the data. We then formalize the above data management problems as a static verification problem and several planning problems. We provide algorithms and tight complexity bounds for the formalized problems, both for an expressive DL and for a variant of DL-Lite.
1404.4275
A Bitcoin system with no mining and no history transactions: Build a compact Bitcoin system
cs.CE cs.CR q-fin.GN
We give an explicit definition of decentralization and show you that decentralization is almost impossible for the current stage and Bitcoin is the first truly noncentralized currency in the currency history. We propose a new framework of noncentralized cryptocurrency system with an assumption of the existence of a weak adversary for a bank alliance. It abandons the mining process and blockchain, and removes history transactions from data synchronization. We propose a consensus algorithm named Converged Consensus for a noncentralized cryptocurrency system.
1404.4282
Modeling the wind circulation around mills with a Lagrangian stochastic approach
cs.CE
This work aims at introducing model methodology and numerical studies related to a Lagrangian stochastic approach applied to the computation of the wind circulation around mills. We adapt the Lagrangian stochastic downscaling method that we have introduced in [3] and [4] to the atmospheric boundary layer and we introduce here a Lagrangian version of the actuator disc methods to take account of the mills. We present our numerical method and numerical experiments in the case of non rotating and rotating actuator disc models. We also present some features of our numerical method, in particular the computation of the probability distribution of the wind in the wake zone, as a byproduct of the fluid particle model and the associated PDF method.
1404.4286
Case study: Data Mining of Associate Degree Accepted Candidates by Modular Method
cs.DB
Since about 10 years ago, University of Applied Science and Technology (UAST) in Iran has admitted students in discontinuous associate degree by modular method, so that almost 100,000 students are accepted every year. Although the first aim of holding such courses was to improve scientific and skill level of employees, over time a considerable group of unemployed people have been interested to participate in these courses. According to this fact, in this paper, we mine and analyze a sample data of accepted candidates in modular 2008 and 2009 courses by using unsupervised and supervised learning paradigms. In the first step, by using unsupervised paradigm, we grouped (clustered) set of modular accepted candidates based on their student status and labeled data sets by three classes so that each class somehow shows educational and student status of modular accepted candidates. In the second step, by using supervised and unsupervised algorithms, we generated predicting models in 2008 data sets. Then, by making a comparison between performances of generated models, we selected predicting model of association rules through which some rules were extracted. Finally, this model is executed for Test set which includes accepted candidates of next course then by evaluation of results, the percentage of correctness and confidentiality of obtained results can be viewed.
1404.4304
Automated Classification of Airborne Laser Scanning Point Clouds
cs.CE cs.AI
Making sense of the physical world has always been at the core of mapping. Up until recently, this has always dependent on using the human eye. Using airborne lasers, it has become possible to quickly "see" more of the world in many more dimensions. The resulting enormous point clouds serve as data sources for applications far beyond the original mapping purposes ranging from flooding protection and forestry to threat mitigation. In order to process these large quantities of data, novel methods are required. In this contribution, we develop models to automatically classify ground cover and soil types. Using the logic of machine learning, we critically review the advantages of supervised and unsupervised methods. Focusing on decision trees, we improve accuracy by including beam vector components and using a genetic algorithm. We find that our approach delivers consistently high quality classifications, surpassing classical methods.
1404.4314
An Empirical Comparison of Parsing Methods for Stanford Dependencies
cs.CL
Stanford typed dependencies are a widely desired representation of natural language sentences, but parsing is one of the major computational bottlenecks in text analysis systems. In light of the evolving definition of the Stanford dependencies and developments in statistical dependency parsing algorithms, this paper revisits the question of Cer et al. (2010): what is the tradeoff between accuracy and speed in obtaining Stanford dependencies in particular? We also explore the effects of input representations on this tradeoff: part-of-speech tags, the novel use of an alternative dependency representation as input, and distributional representaions of words. We find that direct dependency parsing is a more viable solution than it was found to be in the past. An accompanying software release can be found at: http://www.ark.cs.cmu.edu/TBSD
1404.4316
Generic Object Detection With Dense Neural Patterns and Regionlets
cs.CV
This paper addresses the challenge of establishing a bridge between deep convolutional neural networks and conventional object detection frameworks for accurate and efficient generic object detection. We introduce Dense Neural Patterns, short for DNPs, which are dense local features derived from discriminatively trained deep convolutional neural networks. DNPs can be easily plugged into conventional detection frameworks in the same way as other dense local features(like HOG or LBP). The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with the Regionlets object detection framework. It achieved 46.1% mean average precision on the PASCAL VOC 2007 dataset, and 44.1% on the PASCAL VOC 2010 dataset, which dramatically improves the original Regionlets approach without DNPs.
1404.4326
Open Question Answering with Weakly Supervised Embedding Models
cs.CL cs.LG
Building computers able to answer questions on any subject is a long standing goal of artificial intelligence. Promising progress has recently been achieved by methods that learn to map questions to logical forms or database queries. Such approaches can be effective but at the cost of either large amounts of human-labeled data or by defining lexicons and grammars tailored by practitioners. In this paper, we instead take the radical approach of learning to map questions to vectorial feature representations. By mapping answers into the same space one can query any knowledge base independent of its schema, without requiring any grammar or lexicon. Our method is trained with a new optimization procedure combining stochastic gradient descent followed by a fine-tuning step using the weak supervision provided by blending automatically and collaboratively generated resources. We empirically demonstrate that our model can capture meaningful signals from its noisy supervision leading to major improvements over paralex, the only existing method able to be trained on similar weakly labeled data.
1404.4350
Kalman meets Shannon
cs.IT math.IT math.OC
We consider the problem of communicating the state of a dynamical system via a Shannon Gaussian channel. The receiver, which acts as both a decoder and estimator, observes the noisy measurement of the channel output and makes an optimal estimate of the state of the dynamical system in the minimum mean square sense. The transmitter observes a possibly noisy measurement of the state of the dynamical system. These measurements are then used to encode the message to be transmitted over a noisy Gaussian channel, where a per sample power constraint is imposed on the transmitted message. Thus, we get a mixed problem of Shannon's source-channel coding problem and a sort of Kalman filtering problem. We first consider the problem of communication with full state measurements at the transmitter and show that optimal linear encoders don't need to have memory and the optimal linear decoders have an order of at most that of the state dimension. We also give explicitly the structure of the optimal linear filters. For the case where the transmitter has access to noisy measurements of the state, we derive a separation principle for the optimal communication scheme, where the transmitter needs a filter with an order of at most the dimension of the state of the dynamical system. The results are derived for first order linear dynamical systems, but may be extended to MIMO systems with arbitrary order.
1404.4351
Stable Graphical Models
cs.LG stat.ML
Stable random variables are motivated by the central limit theorem for densities with (potentially) unbounded variance and can be thought of as natural generalizations of the Gaussian distribution to skewed and heavy-tailed phenomenon. In this paper, we introduce stable graphical (SG) models, a class of multivariate stable densities that can also be represented as Bayesian networks whose edges encode linear dependencies between random variables. One major hurdle to the extensive use of stable distributions is the lack of a closed-form analytical expression for their densities. This makes penalized maximum-likelihood based learning computationally demanding. We establish theoretically that the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) can asymptotically be reduced to the computationally more tractable minimum dispersion criterion (MDC) and develop StabLe, a structure learning algorithm based on MDC. We use simulated datasets for five benchmark network topologies to empirically demonstrate how StabLe improves upon ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. We also apply StabLe to microarray gene expression data for lymphoblastoid cells from 727 individuals belonging to eight global population groups. We establish that StabLe improves test set performance relative to OLS via ten-fold cross-validation. Finally, we develop SGEX, a method for quantifying differential expression of genes between different population groups.
1404.4356
Phase transition in kinetic exchange opinion models with independence
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
In this work we study the critical behavior of a three-state ($+1$, $-1$, $0$) opinion model with independence. Each agent has a probability $q$ to act as independent, i.e., he/she can choose his/her opinion independently of the opinions of the other agents. On the other hand, with the complementary probability $1-q$ the agent interacts with a randomly chosen individual through a kinetic exchange. Our analytical and numerical results show that the independence mechanism acts as a noise that induces an order-disorder transition at critical points $q_{c}$ that depend on the individuals' flexibility. For a special value of this flexibility the system undergoes a transition to an absorbing state with all opinions $0$.
1404.4386
Probabilistic Data Association-Feedback Particle Filter for Multiple Target Tracking Applications
math.PR cs.SY math.OC
This paper is concerned with the problem of tracking single or multiple targets with multiple non-target specific observations (measurements). For such filtering problems with data association uncertainty, a novel feedback control-based particle filter algorithm is introduced. The algorithm is referred to as the probabilistic data association-feedback particle filter (PDA-FPF). The proposed filter is shown to represent a generalization to the nonlinear non-Gaussian case of the classical Kalman filter-based probabilistic data association filter (PDAF). One remarkable conclusion is that the proposed PDA-FPF algorithm retains the innovation error-based feedback structure of the classical PDAF algorithm, even in the nonlinear non-Gaussian case. The theoretical results are illustrated with the aid of numerical examples motivated by multiple target tracking applications.
1404.4388
Partially Observed, Multi-objective Markov Games
math.OC cs.AI cs.GT
The intent of this research is to generate a set of non-dominated policies from which one of two agents (the leader) can select a most preferred policy to control a dynamic system that is also affected by the control decisions of the other agent (the follower). The problem is described by an infinite horizon, partially observed Markov game (POMG). At each decision epoch, each agent knows: its past and present states, its past actions, and noise corrupted observations of the other agent's past and present states. The actions of each agent are determined at each decision epoch based on these data. The leader considers multiple objectives in selecting its policy. The follower considers a single objective in selecting its policy with complete knowledge of and in response to the policy selected by the leader. This leader-follower assumption allows the POMG to be transformed into a specially structured, partially observed Markov decision process (POMDP). This POMDP is used to determine the follower's best response policy. A multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) is used to create the next generation of leader policies based on the fitness measures of each leader policy in the current generation. Computing a fitness measure for a leader policy requires a value determination calculation, given the leader policy and the follower's best response policy. The policies from which the leader can select a most preferred policy are the non-dominated policies of the final generation of leader policies created by the MOGA. An example is presented that illustrates how these results can be used to support a manager of a liquid egg production process (the leader) in selecting a sequence of actions to best control this process over time, given that there is an attacker (the follower) who seeks to contaminate the liquid egg production process with a chemical or biological toxin.
1404.4391
Control of Robotic Mobility-On-Demand Systems: a Queueing-Theoretical Perspective
cs.RO cs.MA
In this paper we present and analyze a queueing-theoretical model for autonomous mobility-on-demand (MOD) systems where robotic, self-driving vehicles transport customers within an urban environment and rebalance themselves to ensure acceptable quality of service throughout the entire network. We cast an autonomous MOD system within a closed Jackson network model with passenger loss. It is shown that an optimal rebalancing algorithm minimizing the number of (autonomously) rebalancing vehicles and keeping vehicles availabilities balanced throughout the network can be found by solving a linear program. The theoretical insights are used to design a robust, real-time rebalancing algorithm, which is applied to a case study of New York City. The case study shows that the current taxi demand in Manhattan can be met with about 8,000 robotic vehicles (roughly 60% of the size of the current taxi fleet). Finally, we extend our queueing-theoretical setup to include congestion effects, and we study the impact of autonomously rebalancing vehicles on overall congestion. Collectively, this paper provides a rigorous approach to the problem of system-wide coordination of autonomously driving vehicles, and provides one of the first characterizations of the sustainability benefits of robotic transportation networks.
1404.4400
Strong Divergence of Reconstruction Procedures for the Paley-Wiener Space $\mathcal{PW}^1_\pi$ and the Hardy Space $\mathcal{H}^1$
cs.IT math.IT
Previous results on certain sampling series have left open if divergence only occurs for certain subsequences or, in fact, in the limit. Here we prove that divergence occurs in the limit. We consider three canonical reconstruction methods for functions in the Paley-Wiener space $\mathcal{PW}^1_\pi$. For each of these we prove an instance when the reconstruction diverges in the limit. This is a much stronger statement than previous results that provide only $\limsup$ divergence. We also address reconstruction for functions in the Hardy space $\mathcal{H}^1$ and show that for any subsequence of the natural numbers there exists a function in $\mathcal{H}^1$ for which reconstruction diverges in $\limsup$. For two of these sampling series we show that when divergence occurs, the sampling series has strong oscillations so that the maximum and the minimum tend to positive and negative infinity. Our results are of interest in functional analysis because they go beyond the type of result that can be obtained using the Banach-Steinhaus Theorem. We discuss practical implications of this work; in particular the work shows that methods using specially chosen subsequences of reconstructions cannot yield convergence for the Paley-Wiener Space $\mathcal{PW}^1_\pi$.
1404.4412
Efficient Nonnegative Tucker Decompositions: Algorithms and Uniqueness
cs.LG cs.CV stat.ML
Nonnegative Tucker decomposition (NTD) is a powerful tool for the extraction of nonnegative parts-based and physically meaningful latent components from high-dimensional tensor data while preserving the natural multilinear structure of data. However, as the data tensor often has multiple modes and is large-scale, existing NTD algorithms suffer from a very high computational complexity in terms of both storage and computation time, which has been one major obstacle for practical applications of NTD. To overcome these disadvantages, we show how low (multilinear) rank approximation (LRA) of tensors is able to significantly simplify the computation of the gradients of the cost function, upon which a family of efficient first-order NTD algorithms are developed. Besides dramatically reducing the storage complexity and running time, the new algorithms are quite flexible and robust to noise because any well-established LRA approaches can be applied. We also show how nonnegativity incorporating sparsity substantially improves the uniqueness property and partially alleviates the curse of dimensionality of the Tucker decompositions. Simulation results on synthetic and real-world data justify the validity and high efficiency of the proposed NTD algorithms.
1404.4420
Random Matrix Systems with Block-Based Behavior and Operator-Valued Models
math.PR cs.IT math.IT
A model to estimate the asymptotic isotropic mutual information of a multiantenna channel is considered. Using a block-based dynamics and the angle diversity of the system, we derived what may be thought of as the operator-valued version of the Kronecker correlation model. This model turns out to be more flexible than the classical version, as it incorporates both an arbitrary channel correlation and the correlation produced by the asymptotic antenna patterns. A method to calculate the asymptotic isotropic mutual information of the system is established using operator-valued free probability tools. A particular case is considered in which we start with explicit Cauchy transforms and all the computations are done with diagonal matrices, which make the implementation simpler and more efficient.