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cs/0108004
Links tell us about lexical and semantic Web content
cs.IR cs.DL
The latest generation of Web search tools is beginning to exploit hypertext link information to improve ranking\cite{Brin98,Kleinberg98} and crawling\cite{Menczer00,Ben-Shaul99etal,Chakrabarti99} algorithms. The hidden assumption behind such approaches, a correlation between the graph structure of the Web and its content, has not been tested explicitly despite increasing research on Web topology\cite{Lawrence98,Albert99,Adamic99,Butler00}. Here I formalize and quantitatively validate two conjectures drawing connections from link information to lexical and semantic Web content. The clink-content conjecture states that a page is similar to the pages that link to it, i.e., one can infer the lexical content of a page by looking at the pages that link to it. I also show that lexical inferences based on link cues are quite heterogeneous across Web communities. The link-cluster conjecture states that pages about the same topic are clustered together, i.e., one can infer the meaning of a page by looking at its neighbours. These results explain the success of the newest search technologies and open the way for more dynamic and scalable methods to locate information in a topic or user driven way.
cs/0108005
A Bit of Progress in Language Modeling
cs.CL
In the past several years, a number of different language modeling improvements over simple trigram models have been found, including caching, higher-order n-grams, skipping, interpolated Kneser-Ney smoothing, and clustering. We present explorations of variations on, or of the limits of, each of these techniques, including showing that sentence mixture models may have more potential. While all of these techniques have been studied separately, they have rarely been studied in combination. We find some significant interactions, especially with smoothing and clustering techniques. We compare a combination of all techniques together to a Katz smoothed trigram model with no count cutoffs. We achieve perplexity reductions between 38% and 50% (1 bit of entropy), depending on training data size, as well as a word error rate reduction of 8.9%. Our perplexity reductions are perhaps the highest reported compared to a fair baseline. This is the extended version of the paper; it contains additional details and proofs, and is designed to be a good introduction to the state of the art in language modeling.
cs/0108006
Classes for Fast Maximum Entropy Training
cs.CL
Maximum entropy models are considered by many to be one of the most promising avenues of language modeling research. Unfortunately, long training times make maximum entropy research difficult. We present a novel speedup technique: we change the form of the model to use classes. Our speedup works by creating two maximum entropy models, the first of which predicts the class of each word, and the second of which predicts the word itself. This factoring of the model leads to fewer non-zero indicator functions, and faster normalization, achieving speedups of up to a factor of 35 over one of the best previous techniques. It also results in typically slightly lower perplexities. The same trick can be used to speed training of other machine learning techniques, e.g. neural networks, applied to any problem with a large number of outputs, such as language modeling.
cs/0108008
Using Methods of Declarative Logic Programming for Intelligent Information Agents
cs.MA cs.AI
The search for information on the web is faced with several problems, which arise on the one hand from the vast number of available sources, and on the other hand from their heterogeneity. A promising approach is the use of multi-agent systems of information agents, which cooperatively solve advanced information-retrieval problems. This requires capabilities to address complex tasks, such as search and assessment of sources, query planning, information merging and fusion, dealing with incomplete information, and handling of inconsistency. In this paper, our interest is in the role which some methods from the field of declarative logic programming can play in the realization of reasoning capabilities for information agents. In particular, we are interested in how they can be used and further developed for the specific needs of this application domain. We review some existing systems and current projects, which address information-integration problems. We then focus on declarative knowledge-representation methods, and review and evaluate approaches from logic programming and nonmonotonic reasoning for information agents. We discuss advantages and drawbacks, and point out possible extensions and open issues.
cs/0108009
Artificial Neurons with Arbitrarily Complex Internal Structures
cs.NE q-bio.NC
Artificial neurons with arbitrarily complex internal structure are introduced. The neurons can be described in terms of a set of internal variables, a set activation functions which describe the time evolution of these variables and a set of characteristic functions which control how the neurons interact with one another. The information capacity of attractor networks composed of these generalized neurons is shown to reach the maximum allowed bound. A simple example taken from the domain of pattern recognition demonstrates the increased computational power of these neurons. Furthermore, a specific class of generalized neurons gives rise to a simple transformation relating attractor networks of generalized neurons to standard three layer feed-forward networks. Given this correspondence, we conjecture that the maximum information capacity of a three layer feed-forward network is 2 bits per weight.
cs/0108011
On Classes of Functions for which No Free Lunch Results Hold
cs.NE math.OC nlin.AO
In a recent paper it was shown that No Free Lunch results hold for any subset F of the set of all possible functions from a finite set X to a finite set Y iff F is closed under permutation of X. In this article, we prove that the number of those subsets can be neglected compared to the overall number of possible subsets. Further, we present some arguments why problem classes relevant in practice are not likely to be closed under permutation.
cs/0108013
Convergent Approximate Solving of First-Order Constraints by Approximate Quantifiers
cs.LO cs.AI
Exactly solving first-order constraints (i.e., first-order formulas over a certain predefined structure) can be a very hard, or even undecidable problem. In continuous structures like the real numbers it is promising to compute approximate solutions instead of exact ones. However, the quantifiers of the first-order predicate language are an obstacle to allowing approximations to arbitrary small error bounds. In this paper we solve the problem by modifying the first-order language and replacing the classical quantifiers with approximate quantifiers. These also have two additional advantages: First, they are tunable, in the sense that they allow the user to decide on the trade-off between precision and efficiency. Second, they introduce additional expressivity into the first-order language by allowing reasoning over the size of solution sets.
cs/0108018
Bipartite graph partitioning and data clustering
cs.IR cs.LG
Many data types arising from data mining applications can be modeled as bipartite graphs, examples include terms and documents in a text corpus, customers and purchasing items in market basket analysis and reviewers and movies in a movie recommender system. In this paper, we propose a new data clustering method based on partitioning the underlying bipartite graph. The partition is constructed by minimizing a normalized sum of edge weights between unmatched pairs of vertices of the bipartite graph. We show that an approximate solution to the minimization problem can be obtained by computing a partial singular value decomposition (SVD) of the associated edge weight matrix of the bipartite graph. We point out the connection of our clustering algorithm to correspondence analysis used in multivariate analysis. We also briefly discuss the issue of assigning data objects to multiple clusters. In the experimental results, we apply our clustering algorithm to the problem of document clustering to illustrate its effectiveness and efficiency.
cs/0108022
Portability of Syntactic Structure for Language Modeling
cs.CL
The paper presents a study on the portability of statistical syntactic knowledge in the framework of the structured language model (SLM). We investigate the impact of porting SLM statistics from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) to the Air Travel Information System (ATIS) domain. We compare this approach to applying the Microsoft rule-based parser (NLPwin) for the ATIS data and to using a small amount of data manually parsed at UPenn for gathering the intial SLM statistics. Surprisingly, despite the fact that it performs modestly in perplexity (PPL), the model initialized on WSJ parses outperforms the other initialization methods based on in-domain annotated data, achieving a significant 0.4% absolute and 7% relative reduction in word error rate (WER) over a baseline system whose word error rate is 5.8%; the improvement measured relative to the minimum WER achievable on the N-best lists we worked with is 12%.
cs/0108023
Information Extraction Using the Structured Language Model
cs.CL cs.IR
The paper presents a data-driven approach to information extraction (viewed as template filling) using the structured language model (SLM) as a statistical parser. The task of template filling is cast as constrained parsing using the SLM. The model is automatically trained from a set of sentences annotated with frame/slot labels and spans. Training proceeds in stages: first a constrained syntactic parser is trained such that the parses on training data meet the specified semantic spans, then the non-terminal labels are enriched to contain semantic information and finally a constrained syntactic+semantic parser is trained on the parse trees resulting from the previous stage. Despite the small amount of training data used, the model is shown to outperform the slot level accuracy of a simple semantic grammar authored manually for the MiPad --- personal information management --- task.
cs/0109006
On Properties of Update Sequences Based on Causal Rejection
cs.AI
We consider an approach to update nonmonotonic knowledge bases represented as extended logic programs under answer set semantics. New information is incorporated into the current knowledge base subject to a causal rejection principle enforcing that, in case of conflicts, more recent rules are preferred and older rules are overridden. Such a rejection principle is also exploited in other approaches to update logic programs, e.g., in dynamic logic programming by Alferes et al. We give a thorough analysis of properties of our approach, to get a better understanding of the causal rejection principle. We review postulates for update and revision operators from the area of theory change and nonmonotonic reasoning, and some new properties are considered as well. We then consider refinements of our semantics which incorporate a notion of minimality of change. As well, we investigate the relationship to other approaches, showing that our approach is semantically equivalent to inheritance programs by Buccafurri et al. and that it coincides with certain classes of dynamic logic programs, for which we provide characterizations in terms of graph conditions. Therefore, most of our results about properties of causal rejection principle apply to these approaches as well. Finally, we deal with computational complexity of our approach, and outline how the update semantics and its refinements can be implemented on top of existing logic programming engines.
cs/0109010
Anaphora and Discourse Structure
cs.CL
We argue in this paper that many common adverbial phrases generally taken to signal a discourse relation between syntactically connected units within discourse structure, instead work anaphorically to contribute relational meaning, with only indirect dependence on discourse structure. This allows a simpler discourse structure to provide scaffolding for compositional semantics, and reveals multiple ways in which the relational meaning conveyed by adverbial connectives can interact with that associated with discourse structure. We conclude by sketching out a lexicalised grammar for discourse that facilitates discourse interpretation as a product of compositional rules, anaphor resolution and inference.
cs/0109013
Conceptual Analysis of Lexical Taxonomies: The Case of WordNet Top-Level
cs.CL cs.IR
In this paper we propose an analysis and an upgrade of WordNet's top-level synset taxonomy. We briefly review WordNet and identify its main semantic limitations. Some principles from a forthcoming OntoClean methodology are applied to the ontological analysis of WordNet. A revised top-level taxonomy is proposed, which is meant to be more conceptually rigorous, cognitively transparent, and efficiently exploitable in several applications.
cs/0109014
Assigning Satisfaction Values to Constraints: An Algorithm to Solve Dynamic Meta-Constraints
cs.PL cs.AI
The model of Dynamic Meta-Constraints has special activity constraints which can activate other constraints. It also has meta-constraints which range over other constraints. An algorithm is presented in which constraints can be assigned one of five different satisfaction values, which leads to the assignment of domain values to the variables in the CSP. An outline of the model and the algorithm is presented, followed by some initial results for two problems: a simple classic CSP and the Car Configuration Problem. The algorithm is shown to perform few backtracks per solution, but to have overheads in the form of historical records required for the implementation of state.
cs/0109015
Boosting Trees for Anti-Spam Email Filtering
cs.CL
This paper describes a set of comparative experiments for the problem of automatically filtering unwanted electronic mail messages. Several variants of the AdaBoost algorithm with confidence-rated predictions [Schapire & Singer, 99] have been applied, which differ in the complexity of the base learners considered. Two main conclusions can be drawn from our experiments: a) The boosting-based methods clearly outperform the baseline learning algorithms (Naive Bayes and Induction of Decision Trees) on the PU1 corpus, achieving very high levels of the F1 measure; b) Increasing the complexity of the base learners allows to obtain better ``high-precision'' classifiers, which is a very important issue when misclassification costs are considered.
cs/0109020
Modelling Semantic Association and Conceptual Inheritance for Semantic Analysis
cs.CL
Allowing users to interact through language borders is an interesting challenge for information technology. For the purpose of a computer assisted language learning system, we have chosen icons for representing meaning on the input interface, since icons do not depend on a particular language. However, a key limitation of this type of communication is the expression of articulated ideas instead of isolated concepts. We propose a method to interpret sequences of icons as complex messages by reconstructing the relations between concepts, so as to build conceptual graphs able to represent meaning and to be used for natural language sentence generation. This method is based on an electronic dictionary containing semantic information.
cs/0109022
Interactive Timetabling
cs.PL cs.AI
Timetabling is a typical application of constraint programming whose task is to allocate activities to slots in available resources respecting various constraints like precedence and capacity. In this paper we present a basic concept, a constraint model, and the solving algorithms for interactive timetabling. Interactive timetabling combines automated timetabling (the machine allocates the activities) with user interaction (the user can interfere with the process of timetabling). Because the user can see how the timetabling proceeds and can intervene this process, we believe that such approach is more convenient than full automated timetabling which behaves like a black-box. The contribution of this paper is twofold: we present a generic model to describe timetabling (and scheduling in general) problems and we propose an interactive algorithm for solving such problems.
cs/0109023
Integrating Multiple Knowledge Sources for Robust Semantic Parsing
cs.CL cs.AI
This work explores a new robust approach for Semantic Parsing of unrestricted texts. Our approach considers Semantic Parsing as a Consistent Labelling Problem (CLP), allowing the integration of several knowledge types (syntactic and semantic) obtained from different sources (linguistic and statistic). The current implementation obtains 95% accuracy in model identification and 72% in case-role filling.
cs/0109025
Dynamic Global Constraints: A First View
cs.PL cs.AI
Global constraints proved themselves to be an efficient tool for modelling and solving large-scale real-life combinatorial problems. They encapsulate a set of binary constraints and using global reasoning about this set they filter the domains of involved variables better than arc consistency among the set of binary constraints. Moreover, global constraints exploit semantic information to achieve more efficient filtering than generalised consistency algorithms for n-ary constraints. Continued expansion of constraint programming (CP) to various application areas brings new challenges for design of global constraints. In particular, application of CP to advanced planning and scheduling (APS) requires dynamic additions of new variables and constraints during the process of constraint satisfaction and, thus, it would be helpful if the global constraints could adopt new variables. In the paper, we give a motivation for such dynamic global constraints and we describe a dynamic version of the well-known alldifferent constraint.
cs/0109029
Learning class-to-class selectional preferences
cs.CL
Selectional preference learning methods have usually focused on word-to-class relations, e.g., a verb selects as its subject a given nominal class. This papers extends previous statistical models to class-to-class preferences, and presents a model that learns selectional preferences for classes of verbs. The motivation is twofold: different senses of a verb may have different preferences, and some classes of verbs can share preferences. The model is tested on a word sense disambiguation task which uses subject-verb and object-verb relationships extracted from a small sense-disambiguated corpus.
cs/0109030
Knowledge Sources for Word Sense Disambiguation
cs.CL
Two kinds of systems have been defined during the long history of WSD: principled systems that define which knowledge types are useful for WSD, and robust systems that use the information sources at hand, such as, dictionaries, light-weight ontologies or hand-tagged corpora. This paper tries to systematize the relation between desired knowledge types and actual information sources. We also compare the results for a wide range of algorithms that have been evaluated on a common test setting in our research group. We hope that this analysis will help change the shift from systems based on information sources to systems based on knowledge sources. This study might also shed some light on semi-automatic acquisition of desired knowledge types from existing resources.
cs/0109031
Enriching WordNet concepts with topic signatures
cs.CL
This paper explores the possibility of enriching the content of existing ontologies. The overall goal is to overcome the lack of topical links among concepts in WordNet. Each concept is to be associated to a topic signature, i.e., a set of related words with associated weights. The signatures can be automatically constructed from the WWW or from sense-tagged corpora. Both approaches are compared and evaluated on a word sense disambiguation task. The results show that it is possible to construct clean signatures from the WWW using some filtering techniques.
cs/0109034
Relevant Knowledge First - Reinforcement Learning and Forgetting in Knowledge Based Configuration
cs.AI cs.LG
In order to solve complex configuration tasks in technical domains, various knowledge based methods have been developed. However their applicability is often unsuccessful due to their low efficiency. One of the reasons for this is that (parts of the) problems have to be solved again and again, instead of being "learnt" from preceding processes. However, learning processes bring with them the problem of conservatism, for in technical domains innovation is a deciding factor in competition. On the other hand a certain amount of conservatism is often desired since uncontrolled innovation as a rule is also detrimental. This paper proposes the heuristic RKF (Relevant Knowledge First) for making decisions in configuration processes based on the so-called relevance of objects in a knowledge base. The underlying relevance-function has two components, one based on reinforcement learning and the other based on forgetting (fading). Relevance of an object increases with its successful use and decreases with age when it is not used. RKF has been developed to speed up the configuration process and to improve the quality of the solutions relative to the reward value that is given by users.
cs/0109039
Testing for Mathematical Lineation in Jim Crace's "Quarantine" and T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"
cs.CL
The mathematical distinction between prose and verse may be detected in writings that are not apparently lineated, for example in T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton", and Jim Crace's "Quarantine". In this paper we offer comments on appropriate statistical methods for such work, and also on the nature of formal innovation in these two texts. Additional remarks are made on the roots of lineation as a metrical form, and on the prose-verse continuum.
cs/0109040
The Building of BODHI, a Bio-diversity Database System
cs.DB q-bio.PE
We have recently built a database system called BODHI, intended to store plant bio-diversity information. It is based on an object-oriented modeling approach and is developed completely around public-domain software. The unique feature of BODHI is that it seamlessly integrates diverse types of data, including taxonomic characteristics, spatial distributions, and genetic sequences, thereby spanning the entire range from molecular to organism-level information. A variety of sophisticated indexing strategies are incorporated to efficiently access the various types of data, and a rule-based query processor is employed for optimizing query execution. In this paper, we report on our experiences in building BODHI and on its performance characteristics for a representative set of queries.
cs/0109042
Intelligent Search of Correlated Alarms from Database containing Noise Data
cs.NI cs.AI
Alarm correlation plays an important role in improving the service and reliability in modern telecommunications networks. Most previous research of alarm correlation didn't consider the effect of noise data in Database. This paper focuses on the method of discovering alarm correlation rules from database containing noise data. We firstly define two parameters Win_freq and Win_add as the measure of noise data and then present the Robust_search algorithm to solve the problem. At different size of Win_freq and Win_add, experiments with alarm data containing noise data show that the Robust_search Algorithm can discover the more rules with the bigger size of Win_add. We also experimentally compare two different interestingness measures of confidence and correlation.
cs/0109084
The Internet and Community Networks: Case Studies of Five U.S. Cities
cs.DB
This paper looks at five U.S. cities (Austin, Cleveland, Nashville, Portland, and Washington, DC) and explores strategies being employed by community activists and local governments to create and sustain community networking projects. In some cities, community networking initiatives are relatively mature, while in others they are in early or intermediate stages. The paper looks at several factors that help explain the evolution of community networks in cities: 1) Local government support; 2) Federal support 3) Degree of community activism, often reflected by public-private partnerships that help support community networks. In addition to these (more or less) measurable elements of local support, the case studies enable description of the different objectives of community networks in different cities. Several community networking projects aim to improve the delivery of government services (e.g., Portland and Cleveland), some have a job-training focus (e.g., Austin, Washington, DC), others are oriented very explicitly toward community building (Nashville, DC), and others toward neighborhood entrepreneurship (Portland and Cleveland). The paper ties the case studies together by asking whether community technology initiatives contribute to social capital in the cities studied.
cs/0109116
Digital Color Imaging
cs.CV cs.GR
This paper surveys current technology and research in the area of digital color imaging. In order to establish the background and lay down terminology, fundamental concepts of color perception and measurement are first presented us-ing vector-space notation and terminology. Present-day color recording and reproduction systems are reviewed along with the common mathematical models used for representing these devices. Algorithms for processing color images for display and communication are surveyed, and a forecast of research trends is attempted. An extensive bibliography is provided.
cs/0110003
The temporal calculus of conditional objects and conditional events
cs.AI cs.LO
We consider the problem of defining conditional objects (a|b), which would allow one to regard the conditional probability Pr(a|b) as a probability of a well-defined event rather than as a shorthand for Pr(ab)/Pr(b). The next issue is to define boolean combinations of conditional objects, and possibly also the operator of further conditioning. These questions have been investigated at least since the times of George Boole, leading to a number of formalisms proposed for conditional objects, mostly of syntactical, proof-theoretic vein. We propose a unifying, semantical approach, in which conditional events are (projections of) Markov chains, definable in the three-valued extension of the past tense fragment of propositional linear time logic, or, equivalently, by three-valued counter-free Moore machines. Thus our conditional objects are indeed stochastic processes, one of the central notions of modern probability theory. Our model fulfills early ideas of Bruno de Finetti and, moreover, as we show in a separate paper, all the previously proposed algebras of conditional events can be isomorphically embedded in our model.
cs/0110004
Embedding conditional event algebras into temporal calculus of conditionals
cs.AI cs.LO
In this paper we prove that all the existing conditional event algebras embed into a three-valued extension of temporal logic of discrete past time, which the authors of this paper have proposed in anothe paper as a general model of conditional events. First of all, we discuss the descriptive incompleteness of the cea's. In this direction, we show that some important notions, like independence of conditional events, cannot be properly addressed in the framework of conditional event algebras, while they can be precisely formulated and analyzed in the temporal setting. We also demonstrate that the embeddings allow one to use Markov chain algorithms (suitable for the temporal calculus) for computing probabilities of complex conditional expressions of the embedded conditional event algebras, and that these algorithms can outperform those previously known.
cs/0110014
The Open Language Archives Community and Asian Language Resources
cs.CL cs.DL
The Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) is a new project to build a worldwide system of federated language archives based on the Open Archives Initiative and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. This paper aims to disseminate the OLAC vision to the language resources community in Asia, and to show language technologists and linguists how they can document their tools and data in such a way that others can easily discover them. We describe OLAC and the OLAC Metadata Set, then discuss two key issues in the Asian context: language classification and multilingual resource classification.
cs/0110015
Richer Syntactic Dependencies for Structured Language Modeling
cs.CL
The paper investigates the use of richer syntactic dependencies in the structured language model (SLM). We present two simple methods of enriching the dependencies in the syntactic parse trees used for intializing the SLM. We evaluate the impact of both methods on the perplexity (PPL) and word-error-rate(WER, N-best rescoring) performance of the SLM. We show that the new model achieves an improvement in PPL and WER over the baseline results reported using the SLM on the UPenn Treebank and Wall Street Journal (WSJ) corpora, respectively.
cs/0110020
Structuring Business Metadata in Data Warehouse Systems for Effective Business Support
cs.DB
Large organizations today are being served by different types of data processing and informations systems, ranging from the operational (OLTP) systems, data warehouse systems, to data mining and business intelligence applications. It is important to create an integrated repository of what these systems contain and do in order to use them collectively and effectively. The repository contains metadata of source systems, data warehouse, and also the business metadata. Decision support and business analysis require extensive and in-depth understanding of business entities, tasks, rules and the environment. The purpose of business metadata is to provide this understanding. Realizing the importance of metadata, many standardization efforts has been initiated to define metadata models. In trying to define an integrated metadata and information systems for a banking application, we discover some important limitations or inadequacies of the business metadata proposals. They relate to providing an integrated and flexible inter-operability and navigation between metadata and data, and to the important issue of systematically handling temporal characteristics and evolution of the metadata itself. In this paper, we study the issue of structuring business metadata so that it can provide a context for business management and decision support when integrated with data warehousing. We define temporal object-oriented business metadata model, and relate it both to the technical metadata and the data warehouse. We also define ways of accessing and navigating metadata in conjunction with data.
cs/0110021
Alife Model of Evolutionary Emergence of Purposeful Adaptive Behavior
cs.NE
The process of evolutionary emergence of purposeful adaptive behavior is investigated by means of computer simulations. The model proposed implies that there is an evolving population of simple agents, which have two natural needs: energy and reproduction. Any need is characterized quantitatively by a corresponding motivation. Motivations determine goal-directed behavior of agents. The model demonstrates that purposeful behavior does emerge in the simulated evolutionary processes. Emergence of purposefulness is accompanied by origin of a simple hierarchy in the control system of agents.
cs/0110023
Set Unification
cs.LO cs.AI cs.SC
The unification problem in algebras capable of describing sets has been tackled, directly or indirectly, by many researchers and it finds important applications in various research areas--e.g., deductive databases, theorem proving, static analysis, rapid software prototyping. The various solutions proposed are spread across a large literature. In this paper we provide a uniform presentation of unification of sets, formalizing it at the level of set theory. We address the problem of deciding existence of solutions at an abstract level. This provides also the ability to classify different types of set unification problems. Unification algorithms are uniformly proposed to solve the unification problem in each of such classes. The algorithms presented are partly drawn from the literature--and properly revisited and analyzed--and partly novel proposals. In particular, we present a new goal-driven algorithm for general ACI1 unification and a new simpler algorithm for general (Ab)(Cl) unification.
cs/0110026
Information retrieval in Current Research Information Systems
cs.IR cs.DL
In this paper we describe the requirements for research information systems and problems which arise in the development of such system. Here is shown which problems could be solved by using of knowledge markup technologies. Ontology for Research Information System offered. Architecture for collecting research data and providing access to it is described.
cs/0110027
Part-of-Speech Tagging with Two Sequential Transducers
cs.CL
We present a method of constructing and using a cascade consisting of a left- and a right-sequential finite-state transducer (FST), T1 and T2, for part-of-speech (POS) disambiguation. Compared to an HMM, this FST cascade has the advantage of significantly higher processing speed, but at the cost of slightly lower accuracy. Applications such as Information Retrieval, where the speed can be more important than accuracy, could benefit from this approach. In the process of tagging, we first assign every word a unique ambiguity class c_i that can be looked up in a lexicon encoded by a sequential FST. Every c_i is denoted by a single symbol, e.g. [ADJ_NOUN], although it represents a set of alternative tags that a given word can occur with. The sequence of the c_i of all words of one sentence is the input to our FST cascade. It is mapped by T1, from left to right, to a sequence of reduced ambiguity classes r_i. Every r_i is denoted by a single symbol, although it represents a set of alternative tags. Intuitively, T1 eliminates the less likely tags from c_i, thus creating r_i. Finally, T2 maps the sequence of r_i, from right to left, to a sequence of single POS tags t_i. Intuitively, T2 selects the most likely t_i from every r_i. The probabilities of all t_i, r_i, and c_i are used only at compile time, not at run time. They do not (directly) occur in the FSTs, but are "implicitly contained" in their structure.
cs/0110032
A logic-based approach to data integration
cs.DB cs.AI
An important aspect of data integration involves answering queries using various resources rather than by accessing database relations. The process of transforming a query from the database relations to the resources is often referred to as query folding or answering queries using views, where the views are the resources. We present a uniform approach that includes as special cases much of the previous work on this subject. Our approach is logic-based using resolution. We deal with integrity constraints, negation, and recursion also within this framework.
cs/0110036
Efficient algorithms for decision tree cross-validation
cs.LG
Cross-validation is a useful and generally applicable technique often employed in machine learning, including decision tree induction. An important disadvantage of straightforward implementation of the technique is its computational overhead. In this paper we show that, for decision trees, the computational overhead of cross-validation can be reduced significantly by integrating the cross-validation with the normal decision tree induction process. We discuss how existing decision tree algorithms can be adapted to this aim, and provide an analysis of the speedups these adaptations may yield. The analysis is supported by experimental results.
cs/0110041
Towards Solving the Interdisciplinary Language Barrier Problem
cs.CY cs.CL cs.IR
This work aims to make it easier for a specialist in one field to find and explore ideas from another field which may be useful in solving a new problem arising in his practice. It presents a methodology which serves to represent the relationships that exist between concepts, problems, and solution patterns from different fields of human activity in the form of a graph. Our approach is based upon generalization and specialization relationships and problem solving. It is simple enough to be understood quite easily, and general enough to enable coherent integration of concepts and problems from virtually any field. We have built an implementation which uses the World Wide Web as a support to allow navigation between graph nodes and collaborative development of the graph.
cs/0110044
EquiX--A Search and Query Language for XML
cs.DB
EquiX is a search language for XML that combines the power of querying with the simplicity of searching. Requirements for such languages are discussed and it is shown that EquiX meets the necessary criteria. Both a graph-based abstract syntax and a formal concrete syntax are presented for EquiX queries. In addition, the semantics is defined and an evaluation algorithm is presented. The evaluation algorithm is polynomial under combined complexity. EquiX combines pattern matching, quantification and logical expressions to query both the data and meta-data of XML documents. The result of a query in EquiX is a set of XML documents. A DTD describing the result documents is derived automatically from the query.
cs/0110047
The Expresso Microarray Experiment Management System: The Functional Genomics of Stress Responses in Loblolly Pine
cs.OH cs.CE q-bio.GN
Conception, design, and implementation of cDNA microarray experiments present a variety of bioinformatics challenges for biologists and computational scientists. The multiple stages of data acquisition and analysis have motivated the design of Expresso, a system for microarray experiment management. Salient aspects of Expresso include support for clone replication and randomized placement; automatic gridding, extraction of expression data from each spot, and quality monitoring; flexible methods of combining data from individual spots into information about clones and functional categories; and the use of inductive logic programming for higher-level data analysis and mining. The development of Expresso is occurring in parallel with several generations of microarray experiments aimed at elucidating genomic responses to drought stress in loblolly pine seedlings. The current experimental design incorporates 384 pine cDNAs replicated and randomly placed in two specific microarray layouts. We describe the design of Expresso as well as results of analysis with Expresso that suggest the importance of molecular chaperones and membrane transport proteins in mechanisms conferring successful adaptation to long-term drought stress.
cs/0110048
Multivariant Branching Prediction, Reflection, and Retrospection
cs.CE cs.DC
In branching simulation, a novel approach to simulation presented in this paper, a multiplicity of plausible scenarios are concurrently developed and implemented. In conventional simulations of complex systems, there arise from time to time uncertainties as to which of two or more alternatives are more likely to be pursued by the system being simulated. Under these conditions the simulationist makes a judicious choice of one of these alternatives and embeds this choice in the simulation model. By contrast, in the branching approach, two or more of such alternatives (or branches) are included in the model and implemented for concurrent computer solution. The theoretical foundations for branching simulation as a computational process are in the domains of alternating Turing machines, molecular computing, and E-machines. Branching simulations constitute the development of diagrams of scenarios representing significant, alternative flows of events. Logical means for interpretation and investigation of the branching simulation and prediction are provided by the logical theories of possible worlds, which have been formalized by the construction of logical varieties. Under certain conditions, the branching approach can considerably enhance the efficiency of computer simulations and provide more complete insights into the interpretation of predictions based on simulations. As an example, the concepts developed in this paper have been applied to a simulation task that plays an important role in radiology - the noninvasive treatment of brain aneurysms.
cs/0110050
What is the minimal set of fragments that achieves maximal parse accuracy?
cs.CL
We aim at finding the minimal set of fragments which achieves maximal parse accuracy in Data Oriented Parsing. Experiments with the Penn Wall Street Journal treebank show that counts of almost arbitrary fragments within parse trees are important, leading to improved parse accuracy over previous models tested on this treebank (a precision of 90.8% and a recall of 90.6%). We isolate some dependency relations which previous models neglect but which contribute to higher parse accuracy.
cs/0110051
Combining semantic and syntactic structure for language modeling
cs.CL
Structured language models for speech recognition have been shown to remedy the weaknesses of n-gram models. All current structured language models are, however, limited in that they do not take into account dependencies between non-headwords. We show that non-headword dependencies contribute to significantly improved word error rate, and that a data-oriented parsing model trained on semantically and syntactically annotated data can exploit these dependencies. This paper also contains the first DOP model trained by means of a maximum likelihood reestimation procedure, which solves some of the theoretical shortcomings of previous DOP models.
cs/0110052
Mragyati : A System for Keyword-based Searching in Databases
cs.DB
The web, through many search engine sites, has popularized the keyword-based search paradigm, where a user can specify a string of keywords and expect to retrieve relevant documents, possibly ranked by their relevance to the query. Since a lot of information is stored in databases (and not as HTML documents), it is important to provide a similar search paradigm for databases, where users can query a database without knowing the database schema and database query languages such as SQL. In this paper, we propose such a database search system, which accepts a free-form query as a collection of keywords, translates it into queries on the database using the database metadata, and presents query results in a well-structured and browsable form. Th eysytem maps keywords onto the database schema and uses inter-relationships (i.e., data semantics) among the referred tables to generate meaningful query results. We also describe our prototype for database search, called Mragyati. Th eapproach proposed here is scalable, as it does not build an in-memory graph of the entire database for searching for relationships among the objects selected by the user's query.
cs/0110053
Machine Learning in Automated Text Categorization
cs.IR cs.LG
The automated categorization (or classification) of texts into predefined categories has witnessed a booming interest in the last ten years, due to the increased availability of documents in digital form and the ensuing need to organize them. In the research community the dominant approach to this problem is based on machine learning techniques: a general inductive process automatically builds a classifier by learning, from a set of preclassified documents, the characteristics of the categories. The advantages of this approach over the knowledge engineering approach (consisting in the manual definition of a classifier by domain experts) are a very good effectiveness, considerable savings in terms of expert manpower, and straightforward portability to different domains. This survey discusses the main approaches to text categorization that fall within the machine learning paradigm. We will discuss in detail issues pertaining to three different problems, namely document representation, classifier construction, and classifier evaluation.
cs/0110055
Analytical solution of transient scalar wave and diffusion problems of arbitrary dimensionality and geometry by RBF wavelet series
cs.NA cs.CE
This study applies the RBF wavelet series to the evaluation of analytical solutions of linear time-dependent wave and diffusion problems of any dimensionality and geometry. To the best of the author's knowledge, such analytical solutions have never been achieved before. The RBF wavelets can be understood an alternative for multidimensional problems to the standard Fourier series via fundamental and general solutions of partial differential equation. The present RBF wavelets are infinitely differential, compactly supported, orthogonal over different scales and very simple. The rigorous mathematical proof of completeness and convergence is still missing in this study. The present work may open a new window to numerical solution and theoretical analysis of many other high-dimensional time-dependent PDE problems under arbitrary geometry.
cs/0110057
Generating Multilingual Personalized Descriptions of Museum Exhibits - The M-PIRO Project
cs.CL cs.AI
This paper provides an overall presentation of the M-PIRO project. M-PIRO is developing technology that will allow museums to generate automatically textual or spoken descriptions of exhibits for collections available over the Web or in virtual reality environments. The descriptions are generated in several languages from information in a language-independent database and small fragments of text, and they can be tailored according to the backgrounds of the users, their ages, and their previous interaction with the system. An authoring tool allows museum curators to update the system's database and to control the language and content of the resulting descriptions. Although the project is still in progress, a Web-based demonstrator that supports English, Greek and Italian is already available, and it is used throughout the paper to highlight the capabilities of the emerging technology.
cs/0110067
Analysis of Investment Policy in Belarus
cs.CE
The optimal planning trajectory is analyzed on the basis of the growth model with effectiveness. The saving per capital value has to be rather high initially with smooth decrement in the future years.
cs/0111003
The Use of Classifiers in Sequential Inference
cs.LG cs.CL
We study the problem of combining the outcomes of several different classifiers in a way that provides a coherent inference that satisfies some constraints. In particular, we develop two general approaches for an important subproblem-identifying phrase structure. The first is a Markovian approach that extends standard HMMs to allow the use of a rich observation structure and of general classifiers to model state-observation dependencies. The second is an extension of constraint satisfaction formalisms. We develop efficient combination algorithms under both models and study them experimentally in the context of shallow parsing.
cs/0111004
The Relational Database Aspects of Argonne's ATLAS Control System
cs.DB
The Relational Database Aspects of Argonnes ATLAS Control System Argonnes ATLAS (Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System) control system comprises two separate database concepts. The first is the distributed real-time database structure provided by the commercial product Vsystem [1]. The second is a more static relational database archiving system designed by ATLAS personnel using Oracle Rdb [2] and Paradox [3] software. The configuration of the ATLAS facility has presented a unique opportunity to construct a control system relational database that is capable of storing and retrieving complete archived tune-up configurations for the entire accelerator. This capability has been a major factor in allowing the facility to adhere to a rigorous operating schedule. Most recently, a Web-based operator interface to the control systems Oracle Rdb database has been installed. This paper explains the history of the ATLAS database systems, how they interact with each other, the design of the new Web-based operator interface, and future plans.
cs/0111006
Proliferation of SDDS Support for Various Platforms and Languages
cs.DB
Since Self-Describing Data Sets (SDDS) were first introduced, the source code has been ported to many different operating systems and various languages. SDDS is now available in C, Tcl, Java, Fortran, and Python. All of these versions are supported on Solaris, Linux, and Windows. The C version of SDDS is also supported on VxWorks. With the recent addition of the Java port, SDDS can now be deployed on virtually any operating system. Due to this proliferation, SDDS files serve to link not only a collection of C programs, but programs and scripts in many languages on different operating systems. The platform independent binary feature of SDDS also facilitates portability among operating systems. This paper presents an overview of various benefits of SDDS platform interoperability.
cs/0111007
Explaining Scenarios for Information Personalization
cs.HC cs.IR
Personalization customizes information access. The PIPE ("Personalization is Partial Evaluation") modeling methodology represents interaction with an information space as a program. The program is then specialized to a user's known interests or information seeking activity by the technique of partial evaluation. In this paper, we elaborate PIPE by considering requirements analysis in the personalization lifecycle. We investigate the use of scenarios as a means of identifying and analyzing personalization requirements. As our first result, we show how designing a PIPE representation can be cast as a search within a space of PIPE models, organized along a partial order. This allows us to view the design of a personalization system, itself, as specialized interpretation of an information space. We then exploit the underlying equivalence of explanation-based generalization (EBG) and partial evaluation to realize high-level goals and needs identified in scenarios; in particular, we specialize (personalize) an information space based on the explanation of a user scenario in that information space, just as EBG specializes a theory based on the explanation of an example in that theory. In this approach, personalization becomes the transformation of information spaces to support the explanation of usage scenarios. An example application is described.
cs/0111012
Intelligent Anticipated Exploration of Web Sites
cs.AI cs.IR
In this paper we describe a web search agent, called Global Search Agent (hereafter GSA for short). GSA integrates and enhances several search techniques in order to achieve significant improvements in the user-perceived quality of delivered information as compared to usual web search engines. GSA features intelligent merging of relevant documents from different search engines, anticipated selective exploration and evaluation of links from the current result set, automated derivation of refined queries based on user relevance feedback. System architecture as well as experimental accounts are also illustrated.
cs/0111015
The SDSS SkyServer, Public Access to the Sloan Digital Sky Server Data
cs.DL cs.DB
The SkyServer provides Internet access to the public Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data for both astronomers and for science education. This paper describes the SkyServer goals and architecture. It also describes our experience operating the SkyServer on the Internet. The SDSS data is public and well-documented so it makes a good test platform for research on database algorithms and performance.
cs/0111018
Data Acquisition and Database Management System for Samsung Superconductor Test Facility
cs.DB cs.AI
In order to fulfill the test requirement of KSTAR (Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research) superconducting magnet system, a large scale superconducting magnet and conductor test facility, SSTF (Samsung Superconductor Test Facility), has been constructed at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. The computer system for SSTF DAC (Data Acquisition and Control) is based on UNIX system and VxWorks is used for the real-time OS of the VME system. EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System) is used for the communication between IOC server and client. A database program has been developed for the efficient management of measured data and a Linux workstation with PENTIUM-4 CPU is used for the database server. In this paper, the current status of SSTF DAC system, the database management system and recent test results are presented.
cs/0111038
Arc consistency for soft constraints
cs.AI cs.CC cs.DS
The notion of arc consistency plays a central role in constraint satisfaction. It is known that the notion of local consistency can be extended to constraint optimisation problems defined by soft constraint frameworks based on an idempotent cost combination operator. This excludes non idempotent operators such as + which define problems which are very important in practical applications such as Max-CSP, where the aim is to minimize the number of violated constraints. In this paper, we show that using a weak additional axiom satisfied by most existing soft constraints proposals, it is possible to define a notion of soft arc consistency that extends the classical notion of arc consistency and this even in the case of non idempotent cost combination operators. A polynomial time algorithm for enforcing this soft arc consistency exists and its space and time complexities are identical to that of enforcing arc consistency in CSPs when the cost combination operator is strictly monotonic (for example Max-CSP). A directional version of arc consistency is potentially even stronger than the non-directional version, since it allows non local propagation of penalties. We demonstrate the utility of directional arc consistency by showing that it not only solves soft constraint problems on trees, but that it also implies a form of local optimality, which we call arc irreducibility.
cs/0111051
Predicting RNA Secondary Structures with Arbitrary Pseudoknots by Maximizing the Number of Stacking Pairs
cs.CE cs.DS q-bio
The paper investigates the computational problem of predicting RNA secondary structures. The general belief is that allowing pseudoknots makes the problem hard. Existing polynomial-time algorithms are heuristic algorithms with no performance guarantee and can only handle limited types of pseudoknots. In this paper we initiate the study of predicting RNA secondary structures with a maximum number of stacking pairs while allowing arbitrary pseudoknots. We obtain two approximation algorithms with worst-case approximation ratios of 1/2 and 1/3 for planar and general secondary structures,respectively. For an RNA sequence of $n$ bases, the approximation algorithm for planar secondary structures runs in $O(n^3)$ time while that for the general case runs in linear time. Furthermore, we prove that allowing pseudoknots makes it NP-hard to maximize the number of stacking pairs in a planar secondary structure. This result is in contrast with the recent NP-hard results on psuedoknots which are based on optimizing some general and complicated energy functions.
cs/0111054
The similarity metric
cs.CC cond-mat.stat-mech cs.CE cs.CV math.CO math.MG math.ST physics.data-an q-bio.GN stat.TH
A new class of distances appropriate for measuring similarity relations between sequences, say one type of similarity per distance, is studied. We propose a new ``normalized information distance'', based on the noncomputable notion of Kolmogorov complexity, and show that it is in this class and it minorizes every computable distance in the class (that is, it is universal in that it discovers all computable similarities). We demonstrate that it is a metric and call it the {\em similarity metric}. This theory forms the foundation for a new practical tool. To evidence generality and robustness we give two distinctive applications in widely divergent areas using standard compression programs like gzip and GenCompress. First, we compare whole mitochondrial genomes and infer their evolutionary history. This results in a first completely automatic computed whole mitochondrial phylogeny tree. Secondly, we fully automatically compute the language tree of 52 different languages.
cs/0111058
Bayesian Logic Programs
cs.AI cs.LO
Bayesian networks provide an elegant formalism for representing and reasoning about uncertainty using probability theory. Theyare a probabilistic extension of propositional logic and, hence, inherit some of the limitations of propositional logic, such as the difficulties to represent objects and relations. We introduce a generalization of Bayesian networks, called Bayesian logic programs, to overcome these limitations. In order to represent objects and relations it combines Bayesian networks with definite clause logic by establishing a one-to-one mapping between ground atoms and random variables. We show that Bayesian logic programs combine the advantages of both definite clause logic and Bayesian networks. This includes the separation of quantitative and qualitative aspects of the model. Furthermore, Bayesian logic programs generalize both Bayesian networks as well as logic programs. So, many ideas developed
cs/0111060
Gradient-based Reinforcement Planning in Policy-Search Methods
cs.AI
We introduce a learning method called ``gradient-based reinforcement planning'' (GREP). Unlike traditional DP methods that improve their policy backwards in time, GREP is a gradient-based method that plans ahead and improves its policy before it actually acts in the environment. We derive formulas for the exact policy gradient that maximizes the expected future reward and confirm our ideas with numerical experiments.
cs/0111063
New RBF collocation methods and kernel RBF with applications
cs.NA cs.CE
A few novel radial basis function (RBF) discretization schemes for partial differential equations are developed in this study. For boundary-type methods, we derive the indirect and direct symmetric boundary knot methods. Based on the multiple reciprocity principle, the boundary particle method is introduced for general inhomogeneous problems without using inner nodes. For domain-type schemes, by using the Green integral we develop a novel Hermite RBF scheme called the modified Kansa method, which significantly reduces calculation errors at close-to-boundary nodes. To avoid Gibbs phenomenon, we present the least square RBF collocation scheme. Finally, five types of the kernel RBF are also briefly presented.
cs/0111064
A procedure for unsupervised lexicon learning
cs.CL
We describe an incremental unsupervised procedure to learn words from transcribed continuous speech. The algorithm is based on a conservative and traditional statistical model, and results of empirical tests show that it is competitive with other algorithms that have been proposed recently for this task.
cs/0111065
A Statistical Model for Word Discovery in Transcribed Speech
cs.CL
A statistical model for segmentation and word discovery in continuous speech is presented. An incremental unsupervised learning algorithm to infer word boundaries based on this model is described. Results of empirical tests showing that the algorithm is competitive with other models that have been used for similar tasks are also presented.
cs/0112003
Using a Support-Vector Machine for Japanese-to-English Translation of Tense, Aspect, and Modality
cs.CL
This paper describes experiments carried out using a variety of machine-learning methods, including the k-nearest neighborhood method that was used in a previous study, for the translation of tense, aspect, and modality. It was found that the support-vector machine method was the most precise of all the methods tested.
cs/0112004
Part of Speech Tagging in Thai Language Using Support Vector Machine
cs.CL
The elastic-input neuro tagger and hybrid tagger, combined with a neural network and Brill's error-driven learning, have already been proposed for the purpose of constructing a practical tagger using as little training data as possible. When a small Thai corpus is used for training, these taggers have tagging accuracies of 94.4% and 95.5% (accounting only for the ambiguous words in terms of the part of speech), respectively. In this study, in order to construct more accurate taggers we developed new tagging methods using three machine learning methods: the decision-list, maximum entropy, and support vector machine methods. We then performed tagging experiments by using these methods. Our results showed that the support vector machine method has the best precision (96.1%), and that it is capable of improving the accuracy of tagging in the Thai language. Finally, we theoretically examined all these methods and discussed how the improvements were achived.
cs/0112005
Universal Model for Paraphrasing -- Using Transformation Based on a Defined Criteria --
cs.CL
This paper describes a universal model for paraphrasing that transforms according to defined criteria. We showed that by using different criteria we could construct different kinds of paraphrasing systems including one for answering questions, one for compressing sentences, one for polishing up, and one for transforming written language to spoken language.
cs/0112006
A Logic Programming Approach to Knowledge-State Planning: Semantics and Complexity
cs.AI cs.LO
We propose a new declarative planning language, called K, which is based on principles and methods of logic programming. In this language, transitions between states of knowledge can be described, rather than transitions between completely described states of the world, which makes the language well-suited for planning under incomplete knowledge. Furthermore, it enables the use of default principles in the planning process by supporting negation as failure. Nonetheless, K also supports the representation of transitions between states of the world (i.e., states of complete knowledge) as a special case, which shows that the language is very flexible. As we demonstrate on particular examples, the use of knowledge states may allow for a natural and compact problem representation. We then provide a thorough analysis of the computational complexity of K, and consider different planning problems, including standard planning and secure planning (also known as conformant planning) problems. We show that these problems have different complexities under various restrictions, ranging from NP to NEXPTIME in the propositional case. Our results form the theoretical basis for the DLV^K system, which implements the language K on top of the DLV logic programming system.
cs/0112007
A Tight Upper Bound on the Number of Candidate Patterns
cs.DB cs.AI
In the context of mining for frequent patterns using the standard levelwise algorithm, the following question arises: given the current level and the current set of frequent patterns, what is the maximal number of candidate patterns that can be generated on the next level? We answer this question by providing a tight upper bound, derived from a combinatorial result from the sixties by Kruskal and Katona. Our result is useful to reduce the number of database scans.
cs/0112008
Representation of Uncertainty for Limit Processes
cs.AI cs.NA
Many mathematical models utilize limit processes. Continuous functions and the calculus, differential equations and topology, all are based on limits and continuity. However, when we perform measurements and computations, we can achieve only approximate results. In some cases, this discrepancy between theoretical schemes and practical actions changes drastically outcomes of a research and decision-making resulting in uncertainty of knowledge. In the paper, a mathematical approach to such kind of uncertainty, which emerges in computation and measurement, is suggested on the base of the concept of a fuzzy limit. A mathematical technique is developed for differential models with uncertainty. To take into account the intrinsic uncertainty of a model, it is suggested to use fuzzy derivatives instead of conventional derivatives of functions in this model.
cs/0112009
DNA Self-Assembly For Constructing 3D Boxes
cs.CC cs.CE
We propose a mathematical model of DNA self-assembly using 2D tiles to form 3D nanostructures. This is the first work to combine studies in self-assembly and nanotechnology in 3D, just as Rothemund and Winfree did in the 2D case. Our model is a more precise superset of their Tile Assembly Model that facilitates building scalable 3D molecules. Under our model, we present algorithms to build a hollow cube, which is intuitively one of the simplest 3D structures to construct. We also introduce five basic measures of complexity to analyze these algorithms. Our model and algorithmic techniques are applicable to more complex 2D and 3D nanostructures.
cs/0112010
A Straightforward Approach to Morphological Analysis and Synthesis
cs.CL cs.DS
In this paper we present a lexicon-based approach to the problem of morphological processing. Full-form words, lemmas and grammatical tags are interconnected in a DAWG. Thus, the process of analysis/synthesis is reduced to a search in the graph, which is very fast and can be performed even if several pieces of information are missing from the input. The contents of the DAWG are updated using an on-line incremental process. The proposed approach is language independent and it does not utilize any morphophonetic rules or any other special linguistic information.
cs/0112011
Interactive Constrained Association Rule Mining
cs.DB cs.AI
We investigate ways to support interactive mining sessions, in the setting of association rule mining. In such sessions, users specify conditions (queries) on the associations to be generated. Our approach is a combination of the integration of querying conditions inside the mining phase, and the incremental querying of already generated associations. We present several concrete algorithms and compare their performance.
cs/0112013
A Data Mining Framework for Optimal Product Selection in Retail Supermarket Data: The Generalized PROFSET Model
cs.DB cs.AI
In recent years, data mining researchers have developed efficient association rule algorithms for retail market basket analysis. Still, retailers often complain about how to adopt association rules to optimize concrete retail marketing-mix decisions. It is in this context that, in a previous paper, the authors have introduced a product selection model called PROFSET. This model selects the most interesting products from a product assortment based on their cross-selling potential given some retailer defined constraints. However this model suffered from an important deficiency: it could not deal effectively with supermarket data, and no provisions were taken to include retail category management principles. Therefore, in this paper, the authors present an important generalization of the existing model in order to make it suitable for supermarket data as well, and to enable retailers to add category restrictions to the model. Experiments on real world data obtained from a Belgian supermarket chain produce very promising results and demonstrate the effectiveness of the generalized PROFSET model.
cs/0112015
Rational Competitive Analysis
cs.AI
Much work in computer science has adopted competitive analysis as a tool for decision making under uncertainty. In this work we extend competitive analysis to the context of multi-agent systems. Unlike classical competitive analysis where the behavior of an agent's environment is taken to be arbitrary, we consider the case where an agent's environment consists of other agents. These agents will usually obey some (minimal) rationality constraints. This leads to the definition of rational competitive analysis. We introduce the concept of rational competitive analysis, and initiate the study of competitive analysis for multi-agent systems. We also discuss the application of rational competitive analysis to the context of bidding games, as well as to the classical one-way trading problem.
cs/0112018
Fast Context-Free Grammar Parsing Requires Fast Boolean Matrix Multiplication
cs.CL cs.DS
In 1975, Valiant showed that Boolean matrix multiplication can be used for parsing context-free grammars (CFGs), yielding the asympotically fastest (although not practical) CFG parsing algorithm known. We prove a dual result: any CFG parser with time complexity $O(g n^{3 - \epsilson})$, where $g$ is the size of the grammar and $n$ is the length of the input string, can be efficiently converted into an algorithm to multiply $m \times m$ Boolean matrices in time $O(m^{3 - \epsilon/3})$. Given that practical, substantially sub-cubic Boolean matrix multiplication algorithms have been quite difficult to find, we thus explain why there has been little progress in developing practical, substantially sub-cubic general CFG parsers. In proving this result, we also develop a formalization of the notion of parsing.
cs/0112019
Distribution of Mutual Information
cs.AI cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.TH
The mutual information of two random variables i and j with joint probabilities t_ij is commonly used in learning Bayesian nets as well as in many other fields. The chances t_ij are usually estimated by the empirical sampling frequency n_ij/n leading to a point estimate I(n_ij/n) for the mutual information. To answer questions like "is I(n_ij/n) consistent with zero?" or "what is the probability that the true mutual information is much larger than the point estimate?" one has to go beyond the point estimate. In the Bayesian framework one can answer these questions by utilizing a (second order) prior distribution p(t) comprising prior information about t. From the prior p(t) one can compute the posterior p(t|n), from which the distribution p(I|n) of the mutual information can be calculated. We derive reliable and quickly computable approximations for p(I|n). We concentrate on the mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis, and non-informative priors. For the mean we also give an exact expression. Numerical issues and the range of validity are discussed.
cs/0201002
Incremental Construction of Compact Acyclic NFAs
cs.DS cs.CL
This paper presents and analyzes an incremental algorithm for the construction of Acyclic Non-deterministic Finite-state Automata (NFA). Automata of this type are quite useful in computational linguistics, especially for storing lexicons. The proposed algorithm produces compact NFAs, i.e. NFAs that do not contain equivalent states. Unlike Deterministic Finite-state Automata (DFA), this property is not sufficient to ensure minimality, but still the resulting NFAs are considerably smaller than the minimal DFAs for the same languages.
cs/0201005
Sharpening Occam's Razor
cs.LG cond-mat.dis-nn cs.AI cs.CC math.PR physics.data-an
We provide a new representation-independent formulation of Occam's razor theorem, based on Kolmogorov complexity. This new formulation allows us to: (i) Obtain better sample complexity than both length-based and VC-based versions of Occam's razor theorem, in many applications. (ii) Achieve a sharper reverse of Occam's razor theorem than previous work. Specifically, we weaken the assumptions made in an earlier publication, and extend the reverse to superpolynomial running times.
cs/0201008
Using Tree Automata and Regular Expressions to Manipulate Hierarchically Structured Data
cs.CL cs.DS
Information, stored or transmitted in digital form, is often structured. Individual data records are usually represented as hierarchies of their elements. Together, records form larger structures. Information processing applications have to take account of this structuring, which assigns different semantics to different data elements or records. Big variety of structural schemata in use today often requires much flexibility from applications--for example, to process information coming from different sources. To ensure application interoperability, translators are needed that can convert one structure into another. This paper puts forward a formal data model aimed at supporting hierarchical data processing in a simple and flexible way. The model is based on and extends results of two classical theories, studying finite string and tree automata. The concept of finite automata and regular languages is applied to the case of arbitrarily structured tree-like hierarchical data records, represented as "structured strings." These automata are compared with classical string and tree automata; the model is shown to be a superset of the classical models. Regular grammars and expressions over structured strings are introduced. Regular expression matching and substitution has been widely used for efficient unstructured text processing; the model described here brings the power of this proven technique to applications that deal with information trees. A simple generic alternative is offered to replace today's specialised ad-hoc approaches. The model unifies structural and content transformations, providing applications with a single data type. An example scenario of how to build applications based on this theory is discussed. Further research directions are outlined.
cs/0201009
The performance of the batch learner algorithm
cs.LG cs.DM
We analyze completely the convergence speed of the \emph{batch learning algorithm}, and compare its speed to that of the memoryless learning algorithm and of learning with memory. We show that the batch learning algorithm is never worse than the memoryless learning algorithm (at least asymptotically). Its performance \emph{vis-a-vis} learning with full memory is less clearcut, and depends on certain probabilistic assumptions.
cs/0201013
Computing Preferred Answer Sets by Meta-Interpretation in Answer Set Programming
cs.LO cs.AI
Most recently, Answer Set Programming (ASP) is attracting interest as a new paradigm for problem solving. An important aspect which needs to be supported is the handling of preferences between rules, for which several approaches have been presented. In this paper, we consider the problem of implementing preference handling approaches by means of meta-interpreters in Answer Set Programming. In particular, we consider the preferred answer set approaches by Brewka and Eiter, by Delgrande, Schaub and Tompits, and by Wang, Zhou and Lin. We present suitable meta-interpreters for these semantics using DLV, which is an efficient engine for ASP. Moreover, we also present a meta-interpreter for the weakly preferred answer set approach by Brewka and Eiter, which uses the weak constraint feature of DLV as a tool for expressing and solving an underlying optimization problem. We also consider advanced meta-interpreters, which make use of graph-based characterizations and often allow for more efficient computations. Our approach shows the suitability of ASP in general and of DLV in particular for fast prototyping. This can be fruitfully exploited for experimenting with new languages and knowledge-representation formalisms.
cs/0201014
The Dynamics of AdaBoost Weights Tells You What's Hard to Classify
cs.LG cs.DS
The dynamical evolution of weights in the Adaboost algorithm contains useful information about the role that the associated data points play in the built of the Adaboost model. In particular, the dynamics induces a bipartition of the data set into two (easy/hard) classes. Easy points are ininfluential in the making of the model, while the varying relevance of hard points can be gauged in terms of an entropy value associated to their evolution. Smooth approximations of entropy highlight regions where classification is most uncertain. Promising results are obtained when methods proposed are applied in the Optimal Sampling framework.
cs/0201016
A computer scientist looks at game theory
cs.GT cs.DC cs.MA
I consider issues in distributed computation that should be of relevance to game theory. In particular, I focus on (a) representing knowledge and uncertainty, (b) dealing with failures, and (c) specification of mechanisms.
cs/0201017
Collusion in Unrepeated, First-Price Auctions with an Uncertain Number of Participants
cs.GT cs.AI
We consider the question of whether collusion among bidders (a "bidding ring") can be supported in equilibrium of unrepeated first-price auctions. Unlike previous work on the topic such as that by McAfee and McMillan [1992] and Marshall and Marx [2007], we do not assume that non-colluding agents have perfect knowledge about the number of colluding agents whose bids are suppressed by the bidding ring, and indeed even allow for the existence of multiple cartels. Furthermore, while we treat the association of bidders with bidding rings as exogenous, we allow bidders to make strategic decisions about whether to join bidding rings when invited. We identify a bidding ring protocol that results in an efficient allocation in Bayes{Nash equilibrium, under which non-colluding agents bid straightforwardly, and colluding agents join bidding rings when invited and truthfully declare their valuations to the ring center. We show that bidding rings benefit ring centers and all agents, both members and non-members of bidding rings, at the auctioneer's expense. The techniques we introduce in this paper may also be useful for reasoning about other problems in which agents have asymmetric information about a setting.
cs/0201019
Structure from Motion: Theoretical Foundations of a Novel Approach Using Custom Built Invariants
cs.CV math.DG
We rephrase the problem of 3D reconstruction from images in terms of intersections of projections of orbits of custom built Lie groups actions. We then use an algorithmic method based on moving frames "a la Fels-Olver" to obtain a fundamental set of invariants of these groups actions. The invariants are used to define a set of equations to be solved by the points of the 3D object, providing a new technique for recovering 3D structure from motion.
cs/0201020
A Modal Logic Framework for Multi-agent Belief Fusion
cs.AI cs.LO
This paper is aimed at providing a uniform framework for reasoning about beliefs of multiple agents and their fusion. In the first part of the paper, we develop logics for reasoning about cautiously merged beliefs of agents with different degrees of reliability. The logics are obtained by combining the multi-agent epistemic logic and multi-sources reasoning systems. Every ordering for the reliability of the agents is represented by a modal operator, so we can reason with the merged results under different situations. The fusion is cautious in the sense that if an agent's belief is in conflict with those of higher priorities, then his belief is completely discarded from the merged result. We consider two strategies for the cautious merging of beliefs. In the first one, if inconsistency occurs at some level, then all beliefs at the lower levels are discarded simultaneously, so it is called level cutting strategy. For the second one, only the level at which the inconsistency occurs is skipped, so it is called level skipping strategy. The formal semantics and axiomatic systems for these two strategies are presented. In the second part, we extend the logics both syntactically and semantically to cover some more sophisticated belief fusion and revision operators. While most existing approaches treat belief fusion operators as meta-level constructs, these operators are directly incorporated into our object logic language. Thus it is possible to reason not only with the merged results but also about the fusion process in our logics. The relationship of our extended logics with the conditional logics of belief revision is also discussed.
cs/0201021
Learning to Play Games in Extensive Form by Valuation
cs.LG cs.GT
A valuation for a player in a game in extensive form is an assignment of numeric values to the players moves. The valuation reflects the desirability moves. We assume a myopic player, who chooses a move with the highest valuation. Valuations can also be revised, and hopefully improved, after each play of the game. Here, a very simple valuation revision is considered, in which the moves made in a play are assigned the payoff obtained in the play. We show that by adopting such a learning process a player who has a winning strategy in a win-lose game can almost surely guarantee a win in a repeated game. When a player has more than two payoffs, a more elaborate learning procedure is required. We consider one that associates with each move the average payoff in the rounds in which this move was made. When all players adopt this learning procedure, with some perturbations, then, with probability 1, strategies that are close to subgame perfect equilibrium are played after some time. A single player who adopts this procedure can guarantee only her individually rational payoff.
cs/0201022
A theory of experiment
cs.AI
This article aims at clarifying the language and practice of scientific experiment, mainly by hooking observability on calculability.
cs/0201024
Design of statistical quality control procedures using genetic algorithms
cs.NE
In general, we can not use algebraic or enumerative methods to optimize a quality control (QC) procedure so as to detect the critical random and systematic analytical errors with stated probabilities, while the probability for false rejection is minimum. Genetic algorithms (GAs) offer an alternative, as they do not require knowledge of the objective function to be optimized and search through large parameter spaces quickly. To explore the application of GAs in statistical QC, we have developed an interactive GAs based computer program that designs a novel near optimal QC procedure, given an analytical process. The program uses the deterministic crowding algorithm. An illustrative application of the program suggests that it has the potential to design QC procedures that are significantly better than 45 alternative ones that are used in the clinical laboratories.
cs/0201026
An Empirical Model for Volatility of Returns and Option Pricing
cs.CE
In a seminal paper in 1973, Black and Scholes argued how expected distributions of stock prices can be used to price options. Their model assumed a directed random motion for the returns and consequently a lognormal distribution of asset prices after a finite time. We point out two problems with their formulation. First, we show that the option valuation is not uniquely determined; in particular, stratergies based on the delta-hedge and CAMP (Capital Asset Pricing Model) are shown to provide different valuations of an option. Second, asset returns are known not to be Gaussian distributed. Empirically, distributions of returns are seen to be much better approximated by an exponential distribution. This exponential distribution of asset prices can be used to develop a new pricing model for options that is shown to provide valuations that agree very well with those used by traders. We show how the Fokker-Planck formulation of fluctuations (i.e., the dynamics of the distribution) can be modified to provide an exponential distribution for returns. We also show how a singular volatility can be used to go smoothly from exponential to Gaussian returns and thereby illustrate why exponential returns cannot be reached perturbatively starting from Gaussian ones, and explain how the theory of 'stochastic volatility' can be obtained from our model by making a bad approximation. Finally, we show how to calculate put and call prices for a stretched exponential density.
cs/0202001
The Deductive Database System LDL++
cs.DB cs.AI
This paper describes the LDL++ system and the research advances that have enabled its design and development. We begin by discussing the new nonmonotonic and nondeterministic constructs that extend the functionality of the LDL++ language, while preserving its model-theoretic and fixpoint semantics. Then, we describe the execution model and the open architecture designed to support these new constructs and to facilitate the integration with existing DBMSs and applications. Finally, we describe the lessons learned by using LDL++ on various tested applications, such as middleware and datamining.
cs/0202004
A Qualitative Dynamical Modelling Approach to Capital Accumulation in Unregulated Fisheries
cs.AI cs.CE
Capital accumulation has been a major issue in fisheries economics over the last two decades, whereby the interaction of the fish and capital stocks were of particular interest. Because bio-economic systems are intrinsically complex, previous efforts in this field have relied on a variety of simplifying assumptions. The model presented here relaxes some of these simplifications. Problems of tractability are surmounted by using the methodology of qualitative differential equations (QDE). The theory of QDEs takes into account that scientific knowledge about particular fisheries is usually limited, and facilitates an analysis of the global dynamics of systems with more than two ordinary differential equations. The model is able to trace the evolution of capital and fish stock in good agreement with observed patterns, and shows that over-capitalization is unavoidable in unregulated fisheries.
cs/0202005
Secure History Preservation Through Timeline Entanglement
cs.DC cs.CR cs.DB cs.DS
A secure timeline is a tamper-evident historic record of the states through which a system goes throughout its operational history. Secure timelines can help us reason about the temporal ordering of system states in a provable manner. We extend secure timelines to encompass multiple, mutually distrustful services, using timeline entanglement. Timeline entanglement associates disparate timelines maintained at independent systems, by linking undeniably the past of one timeline to the future of another. Timeline entanglement is a sound method to map a time step in the history of one service onto the timeline of another, and helps clients of entangled services to get persistent temporal proofs for services rendered that survive the demise or non-cooperation of the originating service. In this paper we present the design and implementation of Timeweave, our service development framework for timeline entanglement based on two novel disk-based authenticated data structures. We evaluate Timeweave's performance characteristics and show that it can be efficiently deployed in a loosely-coupled distributed system of a few hundred services with overhead of roughly 2-8% of the processing resources of a PC-grade system.
cs/0202007
Steady State Resource Allocation Analysis of the Stochastic Diffusion Search
cs.AI cs.NE
This article presents the long-term behaviour analysis of Stochastic Diffusion Search (SDS), a distributed agent-based system for best-fit pattern matching. SDS operates by allocating simple agents into different regions of the search space. Agents independently pose hypotheses about the presence of the pattern in the search space and its potential distortion. Assuming a compositional structure of hypotheses about pattern matching agents perform an inference on the basis of partial evidence from the hypothesised solution. Agents posing mutually consistent hypotheses about the pattern support each other and inhibit agents with inconsistent hypotheses. This results in the emergence of a stable agent population identifying the desired solution. Positive feedback via diffusion of information between the agents significantly contributes to the speed with which the solution population is formed. The formulation of the SDS model in terms of interacting Markov Chains enables its characterisation in terms of the allocation of agents, or computational resources. The analysis characterises the stationary probability distribution of the activity of agents, which leads to the characterisation of the solution population in terms of its similarity to the target pattern.
cs/0202009
Non-negative sparse coding
cs.NE cs.CV
Non-negative sparse coding is a method for decomposing multivariate data into non-negative sparse components. In this paper we briefly describe the motivation behind this type of data representation and its relation to standard sparse coding and non-negative matrix factorization. We then give a simple yet efficient multiplicative algorithm for finding the optimal values of the hidden components. In addition, we show how the basis vectors can be learned from the observed data. Simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
cs/0202012
Logic program specialisation through partial deduction: Control issues
cs.PL cs.AI
Program specialisation aims at improving the overall performance of programs by performing source to source transformations. A common approach within functional and logic programming, known respectively as partial evaluation and partial deduction, is to exploit partial knowledge about the input. It is achieved through a well-automated application of parts of the Burstall-Darlington unfold/fold transformation framework. The main challenge in developing systems is to design automatic control that ensures correctness, efficiency, and termination. This survey and tutorial presents the main developments in controlling partial deduction over the past 10 years and analyses their respective merits and shortcomings. It ends with an assessment of current achievements and sketches some remaining research challenges.
cs/0202013
The SDSS SkyServer: Public Access to the Sloan Digital Sky Server Data
cs.DL cs.DB
The SkyServer provides Internet access to the public Sloan Digi-tal Sky Survey (SDSS) data for both astronomers and for science education. This paper describes the SkyServer goals and archi-tecture. It also describes our experience operating the SkyServer on the Internet. The SDSS data is public and well-documented so it makes a good test platform for research on database algorithms and performance.
cs/0202014
Data Mining the SDSS SkyServer Database
cs.DB cs.DL
An earlier paper (Szalay et. al. "Designing and Mining MultiTerabyte Astronomy Archives: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey," ACM SIGMOD 2000) described the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's (SDSS) data management needs by defining twenty database queries and twelve data visualization tasks that a good data management system should support. We built a database and interfaces to support both the query load and also a website for ad-hoc access. This paper reports on the database design, describes the data loading pipeline, and reports on the query implementation and performance. The queries typically translated to a single SQL statement. Most queries run in less than 20 seconds, allowing scientists to interactively explore the database. This paper is an in-depth tour of those queries. Readers should first have studied the companion overview paper Szalay et. al. "The SDSS SkyServer, Public Access to the Sloan Digital Sky Server Data" ACM SIGMOND 2002.