Markov Models
Incremental inference of collective graphical models
Singh, Rahul, Haasler, Isabel, Zhang, Qinsheng, Karlsson, Johan, Chen, Yongxin
We consider incremental inference problems from aggregate data for collective dynamics. In particular, we address the problem of estimating the aggregate marginals of a Markov chain from noisy aggregate observations in an incremental (online) fashion. We propose a sliding window Sinkhorn belief propagation (SW-SBP) algorithm that utilizes a sliding window filter of the most recent noisy aggregate observations along with encoded information from discarded observations. Our algorithm is built upon the recently proposed multi-marginal optimal transport based SBP algorithm that leverages standard belief propagation and Sinkhorn algorithm to solve inference problems from aggregate data. We demonstrate the performance of our algorithm on applications such as inferring population flow from aggregate observations.
On the convergence of the Metropolis algorithm with fixed-order updates for multivariate binary probability distributions
Brรผgge, Kai, Fischer, Asja, Igel, Christian
The Metropolis algorithm is arguably the most fundamental Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. But the algorithm is not guaranteed to converge to the desired distribution in the case of multivariate binary distributions (e.g., Ising models or stochastic neural networks such as Boltzmann machines) if the variables (sites or neurons) are updated in a fixed order, a setting commonly used in practice. The reason is that the corresponding Markov chain may not be irreducible. We propose a modified Metropolis transition operator that behaves almost always identically to the standard Metropolis operator and prove that it ensures irreducibility and convergence to the limiting distribution in the multivariate binary case with fixed-order updates. The result provides an explanation for the behaviour of Metropolis MCMC in that setting and closes a long-standing theoretical gap. We experimentally studied the standard and modified Metropolis operator for models were they actually behave differently. If the standard algorithm also converges, the modified operator exhibits similar (if not better) performance in terms of convergence speed.
Deep Learning Prerequisites: Logistic Regression in Python
Online Courses Udemy Deep Learning Prerequisites: Logistic Regression in Python, Data science techniques for professionals and students - learn the theory behind logistic regression and code in Python Created by Lazy Programmer Inc. English [Auto-generated], Portuguese [Auto-generated], 1 more Students also bought Natural Language Processing with Deep Learning in Python Data Science: Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Python Deep Learning: Advanced Computer Vision (GANs, SSD, More!) Unsupervised Machine Learning Hidden Markov Models in Python Modern Deep Learning in Python Preview this course GET COUPON CODE Description This course is a lead-in to deep learning and neural networks - it covers a popular and fundamental technique used in machine learning, data science and statistics: logistic regression. We cover the theory from the ground up: derivation of the solution, and applications to real-world problems. We show you how one might code their own logistic regression module in Python. This course does not require any external materials. Everything needed (Python, and some Python libraries) can be obtained for free.
A metric on directed graphs and Markov chains based on hitting probabilities
Boyd, Zachary M., Fraiman, Nicolas, Marzuola, Jeremy L., Mucha, Peter J., Osting, Braxton, Weare, Jonathan
The shortest-path, commute time, and diffusion distances on undirected graphs have been widely employed in applications such as dimensionality reduction, link prediction, and trip planning. Increasingly, there is interest in using asymmetric structure of data derived from Markov chains and directed graphs, but few metrics are specifically adapted to this task. We introduce a metric on the state space of any ergodic, finite-state, time-homogeneous Markov chain and, in particular, on any Markov chain derived from a directed graph. Our construction is based on hitting probabilities, with nearness in the metric space related to the transfer of random walkers from one node to another at stationarity. Notably, our metric is insensitive to shortest and average path distances, thus giving new information compared to existing metrics. We use possible degeneracies in the metric to develop an interesting structural theory of directed graphs and explore a related quotienting procedure. Our metric can be computed in $O(n^3)$ time, where $n$ is the number of states, and in examples we scale up to $n=10,000$ nodes and $\approx 38M$ edges on a desktop computer. In several examples, we explore the nature of the metric, compare it to alternative methods, and demonstrate its utility for weak recovery of community structure in dense graphs, visualization, structure recovering, dynamics exploration, and multiscale cluster detection.
Gamma Boltzmann Machine for Simultaneously Modeling Linear- and Log-amplitude Spectra
Nakashika, Toru, Yatabe, Kohei
In audio applications, one of the most important representations of audio signals is the amplitude spectrogram. It is utilized in many machine-learning-based information processing methods including the ones using the restricted Boltzmann machines (RBM). However, the ordinary Gaussian-Bernoulli RBM (the most popular RBM among its variations) cannot directly handle amplitude spectra because the Gaussian distribution is a symmetric model allowing negative values which never appear in the amplitude. In this paper, after proposing a general gamma Boltzmann machine, we propose a practical model called the gamma-Bernoulli RBM that simultaneously handles both linear- and log-amplitude spectrograms. Its conditional distribution of the observable data is given by the gamma distribution, and thus the proposed RBM can naturally handle the data represented by positive numbers as the amplitude spectra. It can also treat amplitude in the logarithmic scale which is important for audio signals from the perceptual point of view. The advantage of the proposed model compared to the ordinary Gaussian-Bernoulli RBM was confirmed by PESQ and MSE in the experiment of representing the amplitude spectrograms of speech signals.
Reinforcement Learning for Non-Stationary Markov Decision Processes: The Blessing of (More) Optimism
Cheung, Wang Chi, Simchi-Levi, David, Zhu, Ruihao
We consider un-discounted reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) under drifting non-stationarity, i.e., both the reward and state transition distributions are allowed to evolve over time, as long as their respective total variations, quantified by suitable metrics, do not exceed certain variation budgets. We first develop the Sliding Window Upper-Confidence bound for Reinforcement Learning with Confidence Widening (SWUCRL2-CW) algorithm, and establish its dynamic regret bound when the variation budgets are known. In addition, we propose the Bandit-over-Reinforcement Learning (BORL) algorithm to adaptively tune the SWUCRL2-CW algorithm to achieve the same dynamic regret bound, but in a parameter-free manner, i.e., without knowing the variation budgets. Notably, learning non-stationary MDPs via the conventional optimistic exploration technique presents a unique challenge absent in existing (non-stationary) bandit learning settings. We overcome the challenge by a novel confidence widening technique that incorporates additional optimism.
Inference in Stochastic Epidemic Models via Multinomial Approximations
Whiteley, Nick, Rimella, Lorenzo
Compartmental models are used for predicting the scale and duration of epidemics, estimating epidemiological parameters such as reproduction numbers, and guiding outbreak control measures [Brauer, 2008, O'Neill, 2010, Kucharski et al., 2020]. They are increasingly important because they allow joint modelling of disease dynamics and multimodal data, such as medical test results, cell phone and transport flow data [Rubrichi et al., 2018, Wu et al., 2020], census and demographic information [Prem et al., 2020]. However, statistical inference in stochastic variants of compartmental models is a major computational challenge [Bretรณ, 2018]. The likelihood function for model parameters is usually intractable because it involves summation over a prohibitively large number of configurations of latent variables representing counts of subpopulations in disease states which cannot be observed directly. This has lead to the recent development of sophisticated computational methods for approximate inference involving various forms of stochastic simulation [Funk and King, 2020].
Local Stochastic Approximation: A Unified View of Federated Learning and Distributed Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning Algorithms
Motivated by broad applications in reinforcement learning and federated learning, we study local stochastic approximation over a network of agents, where their goal is to find the root of an operator composed of the local operators at the agents. Our focus is to characterize the finite-time performance of this method when the data at each agent are generated from Markov processes, and hence they are dependent. In particular, we provide the convergence rates of local stochastic approximation for both constant and time-varying step sizes. Our results show that these rates are within a logarithmic factor of the ones under independent data. We then illustrate the applications of these results to different interesting problems in multi-task reinforcement learning and federated learning.
Dynamic Bayesian Neural Networks
Rimella, Lorenzo, Whiteley, Nick
We define an evolving in time Bayesian neural network called a Hidden Markov neural network. The weights of a feed-forward neural network are modelled with the hidden states of a Hidden Markov model, whose observed process is given by the available data. A filtering algorithm is used to learn a variational approximation to the evolving in time posterior over the weights. Training is pursued through a sequential version of Bayes by Backprop Blundell et al. 2015, which is enriched with a stronger regularization technique called variational DropConnect. The experiments test variational DropConnect on MNIST and display the performance of Hidden Markov neural networks on time series.
Towards Minimax Optimal Reinforcement Learning in Factored Markov Decision Processes
Tian, Yi, Qian, Jian, Sra, Suvrit
We study minimax optimal reinforcement learning in episodic factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs), which are MDPs with conditionally independent transition components. Assuming the factorization is known, we propose two model-based algorithms. The first one achieves minimax optimal regret guarantees for a rich class of factored structures, while the second one enjoys better computational complexity with a slightly worse regret. A key new ingredient of our algorithms is the design of a bonus term to guide exploration. We complement our algorithms by presenting several structure-dependent lower bounds on regret for FMDPs that reveal the difficulty hiding in the intricacy of the structures.