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PAC-Bayesian Analysis of the Exploration-Exploitation Trade-off
Seldin, Yevgeny, Cesa-Bianchi, Nicolò, Laviolette, François, Auer, Peter, Shawe-Taylor, John, Peters, Jan
We develop a coherent framework for integrative simultaneous analysis of the exploration-exploitation and model order selection trade-offs. We improve over our preceding results on the same subject (Seldin et al., 2011) by combining PAC-Bayesian analysis with Bernstein-type inequality for martingales. Such a combination is also of independent interest for studies of multiple simultaneously evolving martingales.
b-Bit Minwise Hashing for Large-Scale Linear SVM
Li, Ping, Moore, Joshua, Konig, Christian
In this paper, we propose to (seamlessly) integrate b-bit minwise hashing with linear SVM to substantially improve the training (and testing) efficiency using much smaller memory, with essentially no loss of accuracy. Theoretically, we prove that the resemblance matrix, the minwise hashing matrix, and the b-bit minwise hashing matrix are all positive definite matrices (kernels). Interestingly, our proof for the positive definiteness of the b-bit minwise hashing kernel naturally suggests a simple strategy to integrate b-bit hashing with linear SVM. Our technique is particularly useful when the data can not fit in memory, which is an increasingly critical issue in large-scale machine learning. Our preliminary experimental results on a publicly available webspam dataset (350K samples and 16 million dimensions) verified the effectiveness of our algorithm. For example, the training time was reduced to merely a few seconds. In addition, our technique can be easily extended to many other linear and nonlinear machine learning applications such as logistic regression.
Correction of Noisy Sentences using a Monolingual Corpus
Correction of Noisy Natural Language Text is an important and well studied problem in Natural Language Processing. It has a number of applications in domains like Statistical Machine Translation, Second Language Learning and Natural Language Generation. In this work, we consider some statistical techniques for Text Correction. We define the classes of errors commonly found in text and describe algorithms to correct them. The data has been taken from a poorly trained Machine Translation system. The algorithms use only a language model in the target language in order to correct the sentences. We use phrase based correction methods in both the algorithms. The phrases are replaced and combined to give us the final corrected sentence. We also present the methods to model different kinds of errors, in addition to results of the working of the algorithms on the test set. We show that one of the approaches fail to achieve the desired goal, whereas the other succeeds well. In the end, we analyze the possible reasons for such a trend in performance.
On A Semi-Automatic Method for Generating Composition Tables
Originating from Allen's Interval Algebra, composition-based reasoning has been widely acknowledged as the most popular reasoning technique in qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning. Given a qualitative calculus (i.e. a relation model), the first thing we should do is to establish its composition table (CT). In the past three decades, such work is usually done manually. This is undesirable and error-prone, given that the calculus may contain tens or hundreds of basic relations. Computing the correct CT has been identified by Tony Cohn as a challenge for computer scientists in 1995. This paper addresses this problem and introduces a semi-automatic method to compute the CT by randomly generating triples of elements. For several important qualitative calculi, our method can establish the correct CT in a reasonable short time. This is illustrated by applications to the Interval Algebra, the Region Connection Calculus RCC-8, the INDU calculus, and the Oriented Point Relation Algebras. Our method can also be used to generate CTs for customised qualitative calculi defined on restricted domains.
Behavior of Graph Laplacians on Manifolds with Boundary
Zhou, Xueyuan, Belkin, Mikhail
In manifold learning, algorithms based on graph Laplacians constructed from data have received considerable attention both in practical applications and theoretical analysis. In particular, the convergence of graph Laplacians obtained from sampled data to certain continuous operators has become an active research topic recently. Most of the existing work has been done under the assumption that the data is sampled from a manifold without boundary or that the functions of interests are evaluated at a point away from the boundary. However, the question of boundary behavior is of considerable practical and theoretical interest. In this paper we provide an analysis of the behavior of graph Laplacians at a point near or on the boundary, discuss their convergence rates and their implications and provide some numerical results. It turns out that while points near the boundary occupy only a small part of the total volume of a manifold, the behavior of graph Laplacian there has different scaling properties from its behavior elsewhere on the manifold, with global effects on the whole manifold, an observation with potentially important implications for the general problem of learning on manifolds.
PAC-Bayesian Analysis of Martingales and Multiarmed Bandits
Seldin, Yevgeny, Laviolette, François, Shawe-Taylor, John, Peters, Jan, Auer, Peter
We present two alternative ways to apply PAC-Bayesian analysis to sequences of dependent random variables. The first is based on a new lemma that enables to bound expectations of convex functions of certain dependent random variables by expectations of the same functions of independent Bernoulli random variables. This lemma provides an alternative tool to Hoeffding-Azuma inequality to bound concentration of martingale values. Our second approach is based on integration of Hoeffding-Azuma inequality with PAC-Bayesian analysis. We also introduce a way to apply PAC-Bayesian analysis in situation of limited feedback. We combine the new tools to derive PAC-Bayesian generalization and regret bounds for the multiarmed bandit problem. Although our regret bound is not yet as tight as state-of-the-art regret bounds based on other well-established techniques, our results significantly expand the range of potential applications of PAC-Bayesian analysis and introduce a new analysis tool to reinforcement learning and many other fields, where martingales and limited feedback are encountered.
Mean field for Markov Decision Processes: from Discrete to Continuous Optimization
Gast, Nicolas, Gaujal, Bruno, Boudec, Jean-Yves Le
We study the convergence of Markov Decision Processes made of a large number of objects to optimization problems on ordinary differential equations (ODE). We show that the optimal reward of such a Markov Decision Process, satisfying a Bellman equation, converges to the solution of a continuous Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation based on the mean field approximation of the Markov Decision Process. We give bounds on the difference of the rewards, and a constructive algorithm for deriving an approximating solution to the Markov Decision Process from a solution of the HJB equations. We illustrate the method on three examples pertaining respectively to investment strategies, population dynamics control and scheduling in queues are developed. They are used to illustrate and justify the construction of the controlled ODE and to show the gain obtained by solving a continuous HJB equation rather than a large discrete Bellman equation.
Typical models: minimizing false beliefs
A knowledge system S describing a part of real world does in general not contain complete information. Reasoning with incomplete information is prone to errors since any belief derived from S may be false in the present state of the world. A false belief may suggest wrong decisions and lead to harmful actions. So an important goal is to make false beliefs as unlikely as possible. This work introduces the notions of "typical atoms" and "typical models", and shows that reasoning with typical models minimizes the expected number of false beliefs over all ways of using incomplete information. Various properties of typical models are studied, in particular, correctness and stability of beliefs suggested by typical models, and their connection to oblivious reasoning.
Balancing Exploration and Exploitation in Agent Learning
Ozcan, Ozkan (Naval Post Graduate School) | Alt, Jonathan (Naval Post Graduate School) | Darken, Christian J. (Naval Post Graduate School)
The Cultural Geography (CG) model is a governmentowned, open-source agent-based model designed to Balancing the ratio of exploration and exploitation is an address the behavioral response of civilian populations in important problem in reinforcement learning [1]. If you conflict environments [3]. Agents within the CG Model examine the relationship between agent and the select their action according to a constant temperature environment in reinforcement learning, agent has two setting over the course of a model run. To enhance the action selections in its environment: exploration and functionality of agents in selecting their actions and to get exploitation. The agent can choose to explore its more realistic results with better utilities we changed this environment and try new actions in search for better ones constant to a dynamic parameter which depends on time in to be adopted in the future, or exploit already tested actions Time Based Selection and on utility in Aggregate Utility and adopt them.
Studying Properties of Czech Complex Sentences from an Annotated Corpus
Kubon, Vladislav (Charles University in Prague) | Lopatkova, Marketa (Charles University in Prague)
The paper deals with the problem of an analysis of complex sentences in Czech on the basis of manually annotated data. The availability of a specialized corpus explicitly describing mutual relationships between segments and clauses in Czech complex sentences, together with the availability of a thoroughly syntactically annotated corpus, the Prague Dependency Treebank, provide a solid background for linguistic investigation. The paper presents quantitative, linguistic and structural observations which provide a number of clues for building an algorithm for analyzing a structure of complex sentences in the future.