Often the parameters used in these networks needto be learned from examples. Unfortunately, estimating the parameters via exact probabilistic calculations (i.e, the EMalgorithm) is intractable even for networks with fairly small numbers of hidden units. We propose to avoid the infeasibility of the E step by bounding likelihoods instead of computing them exactly. Weintroduce extended and complementary representations for these networks and show that the estimation of the network parameters can be made fast (reduced to quadratic optimization) by performing the estimation in either of the alternative domains. The complementary networks can be used for continuous density estimation as well. 1 Introduction The appeal of probabilistic networks for knowledge representation, inference, and learning (Pearl, 1988) derives both from the sound Bayesian framework and from the explicit representation of dependencies among the network variables which allows readyincorporation of prior information into the design of the network.

The Bayesian analysis of neural networks is difficult because a simple priorover weights implies a complex prior distribution over functions. In this paper we investigate the use of Gaussian process priors over functions, which permit the predictive Bayesian analysis forfixed values of hyperparameters to be carried out exactly using matrix operations. Two methods, using optimization and averaging (viaHybrid Monte Carlo) over hyperparameters have been tested on a number of challenging problems and have produced excellent results. 1 INTRODUCTION In the Bayesian approach to neural networks a prior distribution over the weights induces a prior distribution over functions. This prior is combined with a noise model, which specifies the probability of observing the targets t given function values y, to yield a posterior over functions which can then be used for predictions. For neural networks the prior over functions has a complex form which means that implementations must either make approximations (e.g.

Due to the simplicity and efficiency of its parameter estimation algorithm, the hidden Markov model (HMM) has emerged as one of the basic statistical tools for modeling discrete time series, finding widespread application in the areas of speech recognition (Rabinerand Juang, 1986) and computational molecular biology (Baldi et al., 1994). An HMM is essentially a mixture model, encoding information about the history of a time series in the value of a single multinomial variable (the hidden state). This multinomial assumption allows an efficient parameter estimation algorithm tobe derived (the Baum-Welch algorithm). However, it also severely limits the representational capacity of HMMs.

The additive clustering (ADCL US) model (Shepard & Arabie, 1979) treats the similarity of two stimuli as a weighted additive measure of their common features. Inspired by recent work in unsupervised learning with multiple cause models, we propose anew, statistically well-motivated algorithm for discovering the structure of natural stimulus classes using the ADCLUS model, which promises substantial gainsin conceptual simplicity, practical efficiency, and solution quality over earlier efforts.

Learning long-term dependencies is not as difficult with NARX recurrent neural networks.

A practical method for Bayesian training of feed-forward neural networks using sophisticated Monte Carlo methods is presented and evaluated. In reasonably small amounts of computer time this approach outperforms other state-of-the-art methods on 5 datalimited tasksfrom real world domains. 1 INTRODUCTION Bayesian learning uses a prior on model parameters, combines this with information from a training set, and then integrates over the resulting posterior to make predictions. Withthis approach, we can use large networks without fear of overfitting, allowing us to capture more structure in the data, thus improving prediction accuracy andeliminating the tedious search (often performed using cross validation) for the model complexity that optimises the bias/variance tradeoff. In this approach the size of the model is limited only by computational considerations. The application of Bayesian learning to neural networks has been pioneered by MacKay (1992), who uses a Gaussian approximation to the posterior weight distribution.

In this setting, each pattern, represented as an n-dimensional feature vector, is associated with a discrete pattern class, or state of nature (Duda and Hart, 1973). Using available information, (e.g., a statistically representative set of labeled feature vectors

We describe the reinforcement learning problem, motivate algorithms whichseek an approximation to the Q function, and present new convergence results for two such algorithms. 1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Imagine an agent acting in some environment. At time t, the environment is in some state Xt chosen from a finite set of states. The agent perceives Xt, and is allowed to choose an action at from some finite set of actions. Meanwhile, the agent experiences a real-valued cost Ct, chosen from a distribution which also depends only on Xt and at and which has finite mean and variance. Such an environment is called a Markov decision process, or MDP.

Eng. and Computer Sci. Massachussetts Inst. of Technology Cambridge, MA 02139 mmp@ai.mit.edu Abstract Compliant control is a standard method for performing fine manipulation tasks,like grasping and assembly, but it requires estimation of the state of contact (s.o.c.) between the robot arm and the objects involved.Here we present a method to learn a model of the movement from measured data. The method requires little or no prior knowledge and the resulting model explicitly estimates the s.o.c. The current s.o.c. is viewed as the hidden state variable of a discrete HMM. The control dependent transition probabilities between states are modeled as parametrized functions of the measurement.

Therefore, we want c to be less than 0.5. In order to get a 2:1 margin, we choose c 0.25. The classifier is trained only on individual partial characters instead of all possible combinations of partial characters. Therefore, we can specify the classifier using only 1523 constraints, instead of creating a training set of approximately 128,000 possible combinations of partial characters. Applying these constraints is therefore much faster than back-propagation on the entire data set.