In this paper, we describe our submission to SemEval-2019 Task 4 on Hyperpartisan News Detection. Our system relies on a variety of engineered features originally used to detect propaganda. This is based on the assumption that biased messages are propagandistic in the sense that they promote a particular political cause or viewpoint. We trained a logistic regression model with features ranging from simple bag-of-words to vocabulary richness and text readability features. Our system achieved 72.9% accuracy on the test data that is annotated manually and 60.8% on the test data that is annotated with distant supervision. Additional experiments showed that significant performance improvements can be achieved with better feature pre-processing.

As data becomes the fuel driving technological and economic growth, a fundamental challenge is how to quantify the value of data in algorithmic predictions and decisions. For example, in healthcare and consumer markets, it has been suggested that individuals should be compensated for the data that they generate, but it is not clear what is an equitable valuation for individual data. In this work, we develop a principled framework to address data valuation in the context of supervised machine learning. Given a learning algorithm trained on $n$ data points to produce a predictor, we propose data Shapley as a metric to quantify the value of each training datum to the predictor performance. Data Shapley uniquely satisfies several natural properties of equitable data valuation. We develop Monte Carlo and gradient-based methods to efficiently estimate data Shapley values in practical settings where complex learning algorithms, including neural networks, are trained on large datasets. In addition to being equitable, extensive experiments across biomedical, image and synthetic data demonstrate that data Shapley has several other benefits: 1) it is more powerful than the popular leave-one-out or leverage score in providing insight on what data is more valuable for a given learning task; 2) low Shapley value data effectively capture outliers and corruptions; 3) high Shapley value data inform what type of new data to acquire to improve the predictor.

Classification is the most important process in data analysis. However, due to the inherent non-convex and non-smooth structure of the zero-one loss function of the classification model, various convex surrogate loss functions such as hinge loss, squared hinge loss, logistic loss, and exponential loss are introduced. These loss functions have been used for decades in diverse classification models, such as SVM (support vector machine) with hinge loss, logistic regression with logistic loss, and Adaboost with exponential loss and so on. In this work, we present a Perceptron-augmented convex classification framework, {\it Logitron}. The loss function of it is a smoothly stitched function of the extended logistic loss with the famous Perceptron loss function. The extended logistic loss function is a parameterized function established based on the extended logarithmic function and the extended exponential function. The main advantage of the proposed Logitron classification model is that it shows the connection between SVM and logistic regression via polynomial parameterization of the loss function. In more details, depending on the choice of parameters, we have the Hinge-Logitron which has the generalized $k$-th order hinge-loss with an additional $k$-th root stabilization function and the Logistic-Logitron which has a logistic-like loss function with relatively large $|k|$. Interestingly, even $k=-1$, Hinge-Logitron satisfies the classification-calibration condition and shows reasonable classification performance with low computational cost. The numerical experiment in the linear classifier framework demonstrates that Hinge-Logitron with $k=4$ (the fourth-order SVM with the fourth root stabilization function) outperforms logistic regression, SVM, and other Logitron models in terms of classification accuracy.

Although various linear log-distance path loss models have been developed, advanced models are requiring to more accurately and flexibly represent the path loss for complex environments such as the urban area. This letter proposes an artificial neural network (ANN) based multi-dimensional regression framework for path loss modeling in urban environments at 3 to 6 GHz frequency band. ANN is used to learn the path loss structure from the measured path loss data which is a function of distance and frequency. The effect of the network architecture parameter (activation function, the number of hidden layers and nodes) on the prediction accuracy are analyzed. We observe that the proposed model is more accurate and flexible compared to the conventional linear model.

This paper considers the problem of Byzantine fault tolerance in distributed linear regression in a multi-agent system. However, the proposed algorithms are given for a more general class of distributed optimization problems, of which distributed linear regression is a special case. The system comprises of a server and multiple agents, where each agent is holding a certain number of data points and responses that satisfy a linear relationship (could be noisy). The objective of the server is to determine this relationship, given that some of the agents in the system (up to a known number) are Byzantine faulty (aka. actively adversarial). We show that the server can achieve this objective, in a deterministic manner, by robustifying the original distributed gradient descent method using norm based filters, namely 'norm filtering' and 'norm-cap filtering', incurring an additional log-linear computation cost in each iteration. The proposed algorithms improve upon the existing methods on three levels: i) no assumptions are required on the probability distribution of data points, ii) system can be partially asynchronous, and iii) the computational overhead (in order to handle Byzantine faulty agents) is log-linear in number of agents and linear in dimension of data points. The proposed algorithms differ from each other in the assumptions made for their correctness, and the gradient filter they use.

We consider Online Convex Optimization (OCO) in the setting where the costs are $m$-strongly convex and the online learner pays a switching cost for changing decisions between rounds. We show that the recently proposed Online Balanced Descent (OBD) algorithm is constant competitive in this setting, with competitive ratio $3 + O(1/m)$, irrespective of the ambient dimension. Additionally, we show that when the sequence of cost functions is $\epsilon$-smooth, OBD has near-optimal dynamic regret and maintains strong per-round accuracy. We demonstrate the generality of our approach by showing that the OBD framework can be used to construct competitive algorithms for a variety of online problems across learning and control, including online variants of ridge regression, logistic regression, maximum likelihood estimation, and LQR control.

Industrial process control systems try to keep an output variable within a given tolerance around a target value. PID control systems have been widely used in industry to control input variables in order to reach this goal. However, this kind of Transfer Function based approach cannot be extended to complex processes where input data might be non-numeric, high dimensional, sparse, etc. In such cases, there is still a need for determining the subspace of input data that produces an output within a given range. This paper presents a non-stochastic heuristic to determine input values for a mathematical function or trained regression model given an output range. The proposed method creates a synthetic training data set of input combinations with a class label that indicates whether the output is within the given target range or not. Then, a decision tree classifier is used to determine the subspace of input data of interest. This method is more general than a traditional controller as the target range for the output does not have to be centered around a reference value and it can be applied given a regression model of the output variable, which may have categorical variables as inputs and may be high dimensional, sparse... The proposed heuristic is validated with a proof of concept on a real use case where the quality of a lamination factory is established to identify the suitable subspace of production variable values.

Selecting input data or design points for statistical models has been of great interest in sequential design and active learning. In this paper, we present a new strategy of selecting the design points for a regression model when the underlying regression function is discontinuous. Two main motivating examples are (1) compressed material imaging with the purpose of accelerating the imaging speed and (2) design for regression analysis over a phase diagram in chemistry. In both examples, the underlying regression functions have discontinuities, so many of the existing design optimization approaches cannot be applied for the two examples because they mostly assume a continuous regression function. There are some studies for estimating a discontinuous regression function from its noisy observations, but all noisy observations are typically provided in advance in these studies. In this paper, we develop a design strategy of selecting the design points for regression analysis with discontinuities. We first review the existing approaches relevant to design optimization and active learning for regression analysis and discuss their limitations in handling a discontinuous regression function. We then present our novel design strategy for a regression analysis with discontinuities: some statistical properties with a fixed design will be presented first, and then these properties will be used to propose a new criterion of selecting the design points for the regression analysis. Sequential design of experiments with the new criterion will be presented with numerical examples.

Understanding of the effect of a particular treatment or a policy pertains to many areas of interest -- ranging from political economics, marketing to health-care and personalized treatment studies. In this paper, we develop a non-parametric, model-free test for detecting the effects of treatment over time that extends widely used Synthetic Control tests. The test is built on counterfactual predictions arising from many learning algorithms. In the Neyman-Rubin potential outcome framework with possible carry-over effects, we show that the proposed test is asymptotically consistent for stationary, beta mixing processes. We do not assume that class of learners captures the correct model necessarily. We also discuss estimates of the average treatment effect, and we provide regret bounds on the predictive performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first set of results that allow for example any Random Forest to be useful for provably valid statistical inference in the Synthetic Control setting. In experiments, we show that our Synthetic Learner is substantially more powerful than classical methods based on Synthetic Control or Difference-in-Differences, especially in the presence of non-linear outcome models.

Future buildings will offer new convenience, comfort, and efficiency possibilities to their residents. Changes will occur to the way people live as technology involves into people's lives and information processing is fully integrated into their daily living activities and objects. The future expectation of smart buildings includes making the residents' experience as easy and comfortable as possible. The massive streaming data generated and captured by smart building appliances and devices contains valuable information that needs to be mined to facilitate timely actions and better decision making. Machine learning and big data analytics will undoubtedly play a critical role to enable the delivery of such smart services. In this paper, we survey the area of smart building with a special focus on the role of techniques from machine learning and big data analytics. This survey also reviews the current trends and challenges faced in the development of smart building services.