Statistical Learning
Sparse Mixed Linear Regression with Guarantees: Taming an Intractable Problem with Invex Relaxation
In this paper, we study the problem of sparse mixed linear regression on an unlabeled dataset that is generated from linear measurements from two different regression parameter vectors. Since the data is unlabeled, our task is not only to figure out a good approximation of the regression parameter vectors but also to label the dataset correctly. In its original form, this problem is NP-hard. The most popular algorithms to solve this problem (such as Expectation-Maximization) have a tendency to stuck at local minima. We provide a novel invex relaxation for this intractable problem which leads to a solution with provable theoretical guarantees. This relaxation enables exact recovery of data labels. Furthermore, we recover a close approximation of the regression parameter vectors which match the true parameter vectors in support and sign. Our formulation uses a carefully constructed primal dual witnesses framework for the invex problem. Furthermore, we show that the sample complexity of our method is only logarithmic in terms of the dimension of the regression parameter vectors.
Dimensionality Reduction: Principal Component Analysis
A dataset is made up of a number of features. As long as these features are related in someway to the target and are optimal in number a machine learning model will be able to produce decent results after learning from the data. But if the number of features are high and most of the features do not contribute towards the model's learning then the performance of the model will go down and the time taken to output predictions also increases. The process of reducing the number of dimensions by transforming the original feature space into a subspace is one method of performing dimensionality reduction and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) does this. So let's take a look into the building concepts of PCA.
Statistical Learning
This is an introductory-level course in supervised learning, with a focus on regression and classification methods. The syllabus includes: linear and polynomial regression, logistic regression and linear discriminant analysis; cross-validation and the bootstrap, model selection and regularization methods (ridge and lasso); nonlinear models, splines and generalized additive models; tree-based methods, random forests and boosting; support-vector machines; neural networks and deep learning; survival models; multiple testing. Some unsupervised learning methods are discussed: principal components and clustering (k-means and hierarchical). This is not a math-heavy class, so we try and describe the methods without heavy reliance on formulas and complex mathematics. We focus on what we consider to be the important elements of modern data science.
Linear Regression in Python: Explained with coding examples
Before I go to the implementation of Linear Regression in Python, we'll take a minute to understand what Linear Regression is. Linear Regression is a linear line that predicts the relationship of a dependent variable to an independent variable. From the above simple definition, you might be confused as to how the line predicts this relationship? Suppose we have the per capita income of the US by year, as shown in Figure 1 below. In the figure, each year has a corresponding income with it.
Special Issue! Foundational Algorithms, Where They Came From, Where They're Going
Years ago, I had to choose between a neural network and a decision tree learning algorithm. It was necessary to pick an efficient one, because we planned to apply the algorithm to a very large set of users on a limited compute budget. I went with a neural network. I hadn't used boosted decision trees in a while, and I thought they required more computation than they actually do -- so I made a bad call. Fortunately, my team quickly revised my decision, and the project was successful. This experience was a lesson in the importance of learning, and continually refreshing, foundational knowledge. If I had refreshed my familiarity with boosted trees, I would have made a better decision.
Computing the Variance of Shuffling Stochastic Gradient Algorithms via Power Spectral Density Analysis
When solving finite-sum minimization problems, two common alternatives to stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with theoretical benefits are random reshuffling (SGD-RR) and shuffle-once (SGD-SO), in which functions are sampled in cycles without replacement. Under a convenient stochastic noise approximation which holds experimentally, we study the stationary variances of the iterates of SGD, SGD-RR and SGD-SO, whose leading terms decrease in this order, and obtain simple approximations. To obtain our results, we study the power spectral density of the stochastic gradient noise sequences. Our analysis extends beyond SGD to SGD with momentum and to the stochastic Nesterov's accelerated gradient method. We perform experiments on quadratic objective functions to test the validity of our approximation and the correctness of our findings.
Predicting Political Ideology from Digital Footprints
Kitchener, Michael, Anantharama, Nandini, Angus, Simon D., Raschky, Paul A.
This paper proposes a new method to predict individual political ideology from digital footprints on one of the world's largest online discussion forum. We compiled a unique data set from the online discussion forum reddit that contains information on the political ideology of around 91,000 users as well as records of their comment frequency and the comments' text corpus in over 190,000 different subforums of interest. Applying a set of statistical learning approaches, we show that information about activity in non-political discussion forums alone, can very accurately predict a user's political ideology. Depending on the model, we are able to predict the economic dimension of ideology with an accuracy of up to 90.63% and the social dimension with and accuracy of up to 82.02%. In comparison, using the textual features from actual comments does not improve predictive accuracy. Our paper highlights the importance of revealed digital behaviour to complement stated preferences from digital communication when analysing human preferences and behaviour using online data.
Analysis of Catastrophic Forgetting for Random Orthogonal Transformation Tasks in the Overparameterized Regime
Overparameterization is known to permit strong generalization performance in neural networks. In this work, we provide an initial theoretical analysis of its effect on catastrophic forgetting in a continual learning setup. We show experimentally that in permuted MNIST image classification tasks, the generalization performance of multilayer perceptrons trained by vanilla stochastic gradient descent can be improved by overparameterization, and the extent of the performance increase achieved by overparameterization is comparable to that of state-of-the-art continual learning algorithms. We provide a theoretical explanation of this effect by studying a qualitatively similar two-task linear regression problem, where each task is related by a random orthogonal transformation. We show that when a model is trained on the two tasks in sequence without any additional regularization, the risk gain on the first task is small if the model is sufficiently overparameterized.
A machine-learning-based model for predicting the effective stiffness of precast concrete columns
Machine learning method is firstly used to systematically study the ES of PCCs. A database is assembled including 177 flexural-dominant PCCs with 42 features. A VEL model with feature selection is proposed to predict the ES of PCCs. The VEL model is experimentally verified and compared with empirical formulas. The VEL model is interpreted using the combination of PDA and ICE.