Statistical Learning
An MCMC Method to Sample from Lattice Distributions
George, Anand Jerry, Kashyap, Navin
We introduce a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to generate samples from probability distributions supported on a $d$-dimensional lattice $\Lambda = \mathbf{B}\mathbb{Z}^d$, where $\mathbf{B}$ is a full-rank matrix. Specifically, we consider lattice distributions $P_\Lambda$ in which the probability at a lattice point is proportional to a given probability density function, $f$, evaluated at that point. To generate samples from $P_\Lambda$, it suffices to draw samples from a pull-back measure $P_{\mathbb{Z}^d}$ defined on the integer lattice. The probability of an integer lattice point under $P_{\mathbb{Z}^d}$ is proportional to the density function $\pi = |\det(\mathbf{B})|f\circ \mathbf{B}$. The algorithm we present in this paper for sampling from $P_{\mathbb{Z}^d}$ is based on the Metropolis-Hastings framework. In particular, we use $\pi$ as the proposal distribution and calculate the Metropolis-Hastings acceptance ratio for a well-chosen target distribution. We can use any method, denoted by ALG, that ideally draws samples from the probability density $\pi$, to generate a proposed state. The target distribution is chosen such that the coordinate-wise rounding of a sample drawn from the target distribution gives a sample from $P_{\mathbb{Z}^d}$. When ALG is ideal, we show that our algorithm is uniformly ergodic if $-\log(\pi)$ satisfies a gradient Lipschitz condition.
Bayesian Inference Forgetting
Fu, Shaopeng, He, Fengxiang, Xu, Yue, Tao, Dacheng
The right to be forgotten has been legislated in many countries but the enforcement in machine learning would cause unbearable costs: companies may need to delete whole models trained from massive resources because of single individual requests. Existing works propose to remove the influence of the requested datums on the learned models via its influence function which is no longer naturally well-defined in Bayesian inference. To address this problem, this paper proposes a {\it Bayesian inference forgetting} (BIF) framework to extend the applicable domain to Bayesian inference. In the BIF framework, we develop forgetting algorithms for variational inference and Markov chain Monte Carlo. We show that our algorithms can provably remove the influence of single datums on the learned models. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that our algorithms have guaranteed generalizability. Experiments of Gaussian mixture models on the synthetic dataset and Bayesian neural networks on the Fashion-MNIST dataset verify the feasibility of our methods. The source code package is available at \url{https://github.com/fshp971/BIF}.
Informative core identification in complex networks
In network analysis, the core structure of modeling interest is usually hidden in a larger network in which most structures are not informative. The noise and bias introduced by the non-informative component in networks can obscure the salient structure and limit many network modeling procedures' effectiveness. This paper introduces a novel core-periphery model for the non-informative periphery structure of networks without imposing a specific form for the informative core structure. We propose spectral algorithms for core identification as a data preprocessing step for general downstream network analysis tasks based on the model. The algorithm enjoys a strong theoretical guarantee of accuracy and is scalable for large networks. We evaluate the proposed method by extensive simulation studies demonstrating various advantages over many traditional core-periphery methods. The method is applied to extract the informative core structure from a citation network and give more informative results in the downstream hierarchical community detection.
No-go Theorem for Acceleration in the Hyperbolic Plane
Hamilton, Linus, Moitra, Ankur
Geodesically convex optimization is a natural generalization that replaces Euclidean space with a Riemannian manifold and we require that the function we want to minimize is convex along geodesics [1, 5, 31]. It turns out that many optimization problems of interest, while non-convex in the Euclidean view, become geodesically convex when equipped with the right geometry. Some notable examples: The fastest known algorithms for computing Brascamp-Lieb constants [3, 17], and solving related problems like the null cone problem [6-8], exploit geodesic convexity. In machine learning, it arises in matrix completion [9, 28, 33], dictionary learning [11, 26], robust subspace recovery [39], mixture models [18] and optimization under orthogonality constraints [14]. In statistics, some basic problems like estimating the shape of an elliptical distribution [16, 35] or estimation matrix normal models [4, 29] are best viewed through the lens of geodesic convexity.
Ensemble Learning Based Classification Algorithm Recommendation
Wang, Guangtao, Song, Qinbao, Zhu, Xiaoyan
Recommending appropriate algorithms to a classification problem is one of the most challenging issues in the field of data mining. The existing algorithm recommendation models are generally constructed on only one kind of meta-features by single learners. Considering that i) ensemble learners usually show better performance and ii) different kinds of meta-features characterize the classification problems in different viewpoints independently, and further the models constructed with different sets of meta-features will be complementary with each other and applicable for ensemble. This paper proposes an ensemble learning-based algorithm recommendation method. To evaluate the proposed recommendation method, extensive experiments with 13 well-known candidate classification algorithms and five different kinds of meta-features are conducted on 1090 benchmark classification problems. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed ensemble learning based recommendation method.
TC-DTW: Accelerating Multivariate Dynamic Time Warping Through Triangle Inequality and Point Clustering
Dynamic time warping (DTW) plays an important role in analytics on time series. Despite the large body of research on speeding up univariate DTW, the method for multivariate DTW has not been improved much in the last two decades. The most popular algorithm used today is still the one developed seventeen years ago. This paper presents a solution that, as far as we know, for the first time consistently outperforms the classic multivariate DTW algorithm across dataset sizes, series lengths, data dimensions, temporal window sizes, and machines. The new solution, named TC-DTW, introduces Triangle Inequality and Point Clustering into the algorithm design on lower bound calculations for multivariate DTW. In experiments on DTW-based nearest neighbor finding, the new solution avoids as much as 98% (60% average) DTW distance calculations and yields as much as 25X (7.5X average) speedups.
Probabilistic Inference for Learning from Untrusted Sources
Nguyen, Duc Thien, Lim, Shiau Hoong, Wynter, Laura, Cai, Desmond
Federated learning brings potential benefits of faster learning, better solutions, and a greater propensity to transfer when heterogeneous data from different parties increases diversity. However, because federated learning tasks tend to be large and complex, and training times non-negligible, it is important for the aggregation algorithm to be robust to non-IID data and corrupted parties. This robustness relies on the ability to identify, and appropriately weight, incompatible parties. Recent work assumes that a \textit{reference dataset} is available through which to perform the identification. We consider settings where no such reference dataset is available; rather, the quality and suitability of the parties needs to be \textit{inferred}. We do so by bringing ideas from crowdsourced predictions and collaborative filtering, where one must infer an unknown ground truth given proposals from participants with unknown quality. We propose novel federated learning aggregation algorithms based on Bayesian inference that adapt to the quality of the parties. Empirically, we show that the algorithms outperform standard and robust aggregation in federated learning on both synthetic and real data.
Motion-Based Handwriting Recognition
Chen, Junshen Kevin, Xie, Wanze, He, Yutong
Sensor-Based Gesture Recognition Recently, there have It is prevalent in today's world for people to write on a been lots of researches for various ways of leveraging inertial touch screen with a smart pen, as there is a strong need to digitize motion unit (IMU) data to predict the gesture or the activity handwritten content, to make the review and indexing of users [7, 8, 9, 10, 11], but few studies make use of the IMU easier. However, despite the success of character recognition data to predict the handwriting letter due to the lack of relevant on digital devices [1, 2, 3], requiring a digitizer as the writing dataset. Oh et al. analyzed using inertial sensor based data to surface poses a possibly unnecessary restriction to overcome.
GLISTER: Generalization based Data Subset Selection for Efficient and Robust Learning
Killamsetty, Krishnateja, Sivasubramanian, Durga, Ramakrishnan, Ganesh, Iyer, Rishabh
Large scale machine learning and deep models are extremely data-hungry. Unfortunately, obtaining large amounts of labeled data is expensive, and training state-of-the-art models (with hyperparameter tuning) requires significant computing resources and time. Secondly, real-world data is noisy and imbalanced. As a result, several recent papers try to make the training process more efficient and robust. However, most existing work either focuses on robustness or efficiency, but not both. In this work, we introduce Glister, a GeneraLIzation based data Subset selecTion for Efficient and Robust learning framework. We formulate Glister as a mixed discrete-continuous bi-level optimization problem to select a subset of the training data, which maximizes the log-likelihood on a held-out validation set. Next, we propose an iterative online algorithm Glister-Online, which performs data selection iteratively along with the parameter updates and can be applied to any loss-based learning algorithm. We then show that for a rich class of loss functions including cross-entropy, hinge-loss, squared-loss, and logistic-loss, the inner discrete data selection is an instance of (weakly) submodular optimization, and we analyze conditions for which Glister-Online reduces the validation loss and converges. Finally, we propose Glister-Active, an extension to batch active learning, and we empirically demonstrate the performance of Glister on a wide range of tasks including, (a) data selection to reduce training time, (b) robust learning under label noise and imbalance settings, and (c) batch-active learning with several deep and shallow models. We show that our framework improves upon state of the art both in efficiency and accuracy (in cases (a) and (c)) and is more efficient compared to other state-of-the-art robust learning algorithms in case (b).
Exponential Kernels with Latency in Hawkes Processes: Applications in Finance
The Tick library allows researchers in market microstructure to simulate and learn Hawkes process in high-frequency data, with optimized parametric and non-parametric learners. But one challenge is to take into account the correct causality of order book events considering latency: the only way one order book event can influence another is if the time difference between them (by the central order book timestamps) is greater than the minimum amount of time for an event to be (i) published in the order book, (ii) reach the trader responsible for the second event, (iii) influence the decision (processing time at the trader) and (iv) the 2nd event reach the order book and be processed. For this we can use exponential kernels shifted to the right by the latency amount. We derive the expression for the log-likelihood to be minimized for the 1-D and the multidimensional cases, and test this method with simulated data and real data. On real data we find that, although not all decays are the same, the latency itself will determine most of the decays. We also show how the decays are related to the latency. Code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/MarcosCarreira/Hawkes-With-Latency.