We examine the use of hidden Markov and hidden semi-Markov models forautomatically segmenting an electrocardiogram waveform into its constituent waveform features. An undecimated wavelet transform is used to generate an overcomplete representation of the signal that is more appropriate for subsequent modelling. We show that the state durations implicitin a standard hidden Markov model are ill-suited to those of real ECG features, and we investigate the use of hidden semi-Markov models for improved state duration modelling.

Online mechanism design (MD) considers the problem of providing incentivesto implement desired system-wide outcomes in systems withself-interested agents that arrive and depart dynamically. Agentscan choose to misrepresent their arrival and departure times, in addition to information about their value for different outcomes. We consider the problem of maximizing the total longterm valueof the system despite the self-interest of agents. The online MD problem induces a Markov Decision Process (MDP), which when solved can be used to implement optimal policies in a truth-revealing Bayesian-Nash equilibrium.

The detection and pose estimation of people in images and video is made challenging by the variability of human appearance, the complexity of natural scenes, and the high dimensionality of articulated body models. Tocope with these problems we represent the 3D human body as a graphical model in which the relationships between the body parts are represented by conditional probability distributions. We formulate the pose estimation problem as one of probabilistic inference over a graphical modelwhere the random variables correspond to the individual limb parameters (position and orientation). Because the limbs are described by 6-dimensional vectors encoding pose in 3-space, discretization is impractical andthe random variables in our model must be continuousvalued. To approximate belief propagation in such a graph we exploit a recently introduced generalization of the particle filter. This framework facilitates the automatic initialization of the body-model from low level cues and is robust to occlusion of body parts and scene clutter.

Approximate linear programming (ALP) has emerged recently as one of the most promising methods for solving complex factored MDPs with finite state spaces. In this work we show that ALP solutions are not limited only to MDPs with finite state spaces, but that they can also be applied successfully to factored continuous-state MDPs (CMDPs). We show how one can build an ALPbased approximation for such a model and contrast it to existing solution methods. We argue that this approach offers a robust alternative for solving high dimensional continuous-state space problems. The point is supported by experiments on three CMDP problems with 24-25 continuous state factors.

Knowledge about possible state transitions is encoded in the lateral connectivity.

We present a Bayesian approach to color constancy which utilizes a non-Gaussian probabilistic model of the image formation process.

Most often, such recordings take the form of streams of discrete symbols ordered in time.

We consider the question of how well a given distribution can be approximated withprobabilistic graphical models. We introduce a new parameter, effective treewidth, that captures the degree of approximability as a tradeoff between the accuracy and the complexity of approximation. We present a simple approach to analyzing achievable tradeoffs that exploits thethreshold behavior of monotone graph properties, and provide experimental results that support the approach.

We present a novel method for approximate inference in Bayesian models andregularized risk functionals. It is based on the propagation of mean and variance derived from the Laplace approximation of conditional probabilitiesin factorizing distributions, much akin to Minka's Expectation Propagation. In the jointly normal case, it coincides with the latter and belief propagation, whereas in the general case, it provides an optimization strategy containing Support Vector chunking, the Bayes Committee Machine, and Gaussian Process chunking as special cases.

Wagner [7], are wholly concerned with parameter learning.