Regression
Approximate Data Deletion from Machine Learning Models: Algorithms and Evaluations
Izzo, Zachary, Smart, Mary Anne, Chaudhuri, Kamalika, Zou, James
Deleting data from a trained machine learning (ML) model is a critical task in many applications. For example, we may want to remove the influence of training points that might be out of date or outliers. Regulations such as EU's General Data Protection Regulation also stipulate that individuals can request to have their data deleted. The naive approach to data deletion is to retrain the ML model on the remaining data, but this is too time consuming. Moreover there is no known efficient algorithm that exactly deletes data from most ML models. In this work, we evaluate several approaches for approximate data deletion from trained models. For the case of linear regression, we propose a new method with linear dependence on the feature dimension $d$, a significant gain over all existing methods which all have superlinear time dependence on the dimension. We also provide a new test for evaluating data deletion from linear models.
Learning From Strategic Agents: Accuracy, Improvement, and Causality
Shavit, Yonadav, Edelman, Benjamin, Axelrod, Brian
In many predictive decision-making scenarios, such as credit scoring and academic testing, a decision-maker must construct a model (predicting some outcome) that accounts for agents' incentives to "game" their features in order to receive better decisions. Whereas the strategic classification literature generally assumes that agents' outcomes are not causally dependent on their features (and thus strategic behavior is a form of lying), we join concurrent work in modeling agents' outcomes as a function of their changeable attributes. Our formulation is the first to incorporate a crucial phenomenon: when agents act to change observable features, they may as a side effect perturb hidden features that causally affect their true outcomes. We consider three distinct desiderata for a decision-maker's model: accurately predicting agents' post-gaming outcomes (accuracy), incentivizing agents to improve these outcomes (improvement), and, in the linear setting, estimating the visible coefficients of the true causal model (causal precision). As our main contribution, we provide the first algorithms for learning accuracy-optimizing, improvement-optimizing, and causal-precision-optimizing linear regression models directly from data, without prior knowledge of agents' possible actions. These algorithms circumvent the hardness result of Miller et al. (2019) by allowing the decision maker to observe agents' responses to a sequence of decision rules, in effect inducing agents to perform causal interventions for free.
How to Develop an Imbalanced Classification Model to Detect Oil Spills
Many imbalanced classification tasks require a skillful model that predicts a crisp class label, where both classes are equally important. An example of an imbalanced classification problem where a class label is required and both classes are equally important is the detection of oil spills or slicks in satellite images. The detection of a spill requires mobilizing an expensive response, and missing an event is equally expensive, causing damage to the environment. One way to evaluate imbalanced classification models that predict crisp labels is to calculate the separate accuracy on the positive class and the negative class, referred to as sensitivity and specificity. These two measures can then be averaged using the geometric mean, referred to as the G-mean, that is insensitive to the skewed class distribution and correctly reports on the skill of the model on both classes. In this tutorial, you will discover how to develop a model to predict the presence of an oil spill in satellite images and evaluate it using the G-mean metric. Develop an Imbalanced Classification Model to Detect Oil Spills Photo by Lenny K Photography, some rights reserved. In this project, we will use a standard imbalanced machine learning dataset referred to as the "oil spill" dataset, "oil slicks" dataset or simply "oil."
Regression with Deep Learning for Sensor Performance Optimization
Vaila, Ruthvik, Lloyd, Denver, Tetz, Kevin
Neural networks with at least two hidden layers are called deep networks. Recent developments in AI and computer programming in general has led to development of tools such as Tensorflow, Keras, NumPy etc. making it easier to model and draw conclusions from data. In this work we re-approach non-linear regression with deep learning enabled by Keras and Tensorflow. In particular, we use deep learning to parametrize a non-linear multivariate relationship between inputs and outputs of an industrial sensor with an intent to optimize the sensor performance based on selected key metrics.
Partially Observed Dynamic Tensor Response Regression
Zhou, Jie, Sun, Will Wei, Zhang, Jingfei, Li, Lexin
In modern data science, dynamic tensor data is prevailing in numerous applications. An important task is to characterize the relationship between such dynamic tensor and external covariates. However, the tensor data is often only partially observed, rendering many existing methods inapplicable. In this article, we develop a regression model with partially observed dynamic tensor as the response and external covariates as the predictor. We introduce the low-rank, sparsity and fusion structures on the regression coefficient tensor, and consider a loss function projected over the observed entries. We develop an efficient non-convex alternating updating algorithm, and derive the finite-sample error bound of the actual estimator from each step of our optimization algorithm. Unobserved entries in tensor response have imposed serious challenges. As a result, our proposal differs considerably in terms of estimation algorithm, regularity conditions, as well as theoretical properties, compared to the existing tensor completion or tensor response regression solutions. We illustrate the efficacy of our proposed method using simulations, and two real applications, a neuroimaging dementia study and a digital advertising study.
Fast local linear regression with anchor regularization
Petrovich, Mathis, Yamada, Makoto
The regression problem is an important problem in machine learning, data mining, and statistics, and several research works have investigated it in the past decades. Examples include stock price prediction [12, 25], age prediction from RNA-seq [6] or images [11], sentimental analysis [15, 18], or house prediction [7] to name a few. The most widely used regression approach is based on a linear model including the ordinary least squares (OLS), Ridge regression, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso) [19], and elastic net [26]. Because these linear models are extremely simple and can be interpreted by simply checking the linear coefficients of the variables; these approaches are in particular used in practice. However, one of the limitations of linear models is that they cannot handle complex nonlinear data; the performance can be significantly degraded if we apply these linear methods to process complex data such as the gene expression data used heavily in biology and healthcare. To handle complex data, researchers tend to use kernel methods such as kernel ridge regression (KRR) and support vector regression (SVR) [16].
The Sample Complexity of Meta Sparse Regression
This paper addresses the meta-learning problem in sparse linear regression with infinite tasks. We assume that the learner can access several similar tasks. The goal of the learner is to transfer knowledge from the prior tasks to a similar but novel task. For p parameters, size of the support set k , and l samples per task, we show that T \in O (( k log(p) ) /l ) tasks are sufficient in order to recover the common support of all tasks. With the recovered support, we can greatly reduce the sample complexity for estimating the parameter of the novel task, i.e., l \in O (1) with respect to T and p . We also prove that our rates are minimax optimal. A key difference between meta-learning and the classical multi-task learning, is that meta-learning focuses only on the recovery of the parameters of the novel task, while multi-task learning estimates the parameter of all tasks, which requires l to grow with T . Instead, our efficient meta-learning estimator allows for l to be constant with respect to T (i.e., few-shot learning).
Causal structure learning from time series: Large regression coefficients may predict causal links better in practice than small p-values
Weichwald, Sebastian, Jakobsen, Martin E, Mogensen, Phillip B, Petersen, Lasse, Thams, Nikolaj, Varando, Gherardo
In this article, we describe the algorithms for causal structure learning from time series data that won the Causality 4 Climate competition at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems 2019 (NeurIPS). We examine how our combination of established ideas achieves competitive performance on semi-realistic and realistic time series data exhibiting common challenges in real-world Earth sciences data. In particular, we discuss a) a rationale for leveraging linear methods to identify causal links in non-linear systems, b) a simulation-backed explanation as to why large regression coefficients may predict causal links better in practice than small p-values and thus why normalising the data may sometimes hinder causal structure learning. For benchmark usage, we provide implementations at https://github.com/sweichwald/tidybench and detail the algorithms here. We propose the presented competition-proven methods for baseline benchmark comparisons to guide the development of novel algorithms for structure learning from time series.
Generalisation error in learning with random features and the hidden manifold model
Gerace, Federica, Loureiro, Bruno, Krzakala, Florent, Mézard, Marc, Zdeborová, Lenka
We study generalised linear regression and classification for a synthetically generated dataset encompassing different problems of interest, such as learning with random features, neural networks in the lazy training regime, and the hidden manifold model. We consider the high-dimensional regime and using the replica method from statistical physics, we provide a closed-form expression for the asymptotic generalisation performance in these problems, valid in both the under- and over-parametrised regimes and for a broad choice of generalised linear model loss functions. In particular, we show how to obtain analytically the so-called double descent behaviour for logistic regression with a peak at the interpolation threshold, we illustrate the superiority of orthogonal against random Gaussian projections in learning with random features, and discuss the role played by correlations in the data generated by the hidden manifold model. Beyond the interest in these particular problems, the theoretical formalism introduced in this manuscript provides a path to further extensions to more complex tasks.
Efficient Learning of Model Weights via Changing Features During Training
Beregi-Kovács, Marcell, Baran, Ágnes, Hajdu, András
In this paper, we propose a machine learning model, which dynamically changes the features during training. Our main motivation is to update the model in a small content during the training process with replacing less descriptive features to new ones from a large pool. The main benefit is coming from the fact that opposite to the common practice we do not start training a new model from the scratch, but can keep the already learned weights. This procedure allows the scan of a large feature pool which together with keeping the complexity of the model leads to an increase of the model accuracy within the same training time. The efficiency of our approach is demonstrated in several classic machine learning scenarios including linear regression and neural network-based training. As a specific analysis towards signal processing, we have successfully tested our approach on the database MNIST for digit classification considering single pixel and pixel-pairs intensities as possible features.