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 Statistical Learning


Efficient and Adaptive Kernelization for Nonlinear Max-margin Multi-view Learning

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Existing multi-view learning methods based on kernel function either require the user to select and tune a single predefined kernel or have to compute and store many Gram matrices to perform multiple kernel learning. Apart from the huge consumption of manpower, computation and memory resources, most of these models seek point estimation of their parameters, and are prone to overfit-ting to small training data. This paper presents an adaptive kernel nonlinear max-margin multi-view learning model under the Bayesian framework. Specifically, we regularize the posterior of an efficient multi-view latent variable model by explicitly mapping the latent representations extracted from multiple data views to a random Fourier feature space where max-margin classification constraints are imposed. Assuming these random features are drawn from Dirichlet process Gaussian mixtures, we can adaptively learn shift-invariant kernels from data according to Bochners theorem. For inference, we employ the data augmentation idea for hinge loss, and design an efficient gradient-based MCMC sampler in the augmented space. Having no need to compute the Gram matrix, our algorithm scales linearly with the size of training set. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that our method has superior performance.


NLS: an accurate and yet easy-to-interpret regression method

arXiv.org Machine Learning

An important feature of successful supervised machine learning applications is to be able to explain the predictions given by the regression or classification model being used. However, most state-of-the-art models that have good predictive power lead to predictions that are hard to interpret. Thus, several model-agnostic interpreters have been developed recently as a way of explaining black-box classifiers. In practice, using these methods is a slow process because a novel fitting is required for each new testing instance, and several non-trivial choices must be made. We develop NLS (neural local smoother), a method that is complex enough to give good predictions, and yet gives solutions that are easy to be interpreted without the need of using a separate interpreter. The key idea is to use a neural network that imposes a local linear shape to the output layer. We show that NLS leads to predictive power that is comparable to state-of-the-art machine learning models, and yet is easier to interpret.


Deep Kernel Transfer in Gaussian Processes for Few-shot Learning

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Here, we use the nomenclature derived from the meta-learning literature which is the most prevalent at time of writing. Let S {( x l,y l)} L l 1 be a support-set containing input-output pairs, with L equal to one (1-shot) or five (5-shot), and Q { (x m,y m)} M m 1be a query-set (sometimes referred to in the literature as a target-set), with M typically one order of magnitude greater than L. For ease of notation, the support and query sets are grouped in a task T {S, Q}, with the dataset D {T n} N n 1 defined as a collection of such tasks. Models are trained on random tasks sampled from D . Then, given a new task T {S, Q } sampled from a test set, the objective is to condition the model on the samples of the support S to estimate the membership of the samples in the query set Q . In the most common scenario, the inputs x D belong to the same distribution p(x) and are distributed across training, validation, and test sets such that their class membership is non-overlapping. Note that y can be a continuous value (regression) or a discrete one (classification), even though most of the previous work has focused on classification. We also consider the cross-domain scenario, where the inputs are sampled from different distributions at training and test time; this is more representative of real-world scenarios.


SUM: Suboptimal Unitary Multi-task Learning Framework for Spatiotemporal Data Prediction

arXiv.org Machine Learning

The typical multi-task learning methods for spatio-temporal data prediction involve low-rank tensor computation. However, such a method have relatively weak performance when the task number is small, and we cannot integrate it into non-linear models. In this paper, we propose a two-step suboptimal unitary method (SUM) to combine a meta-learning strategy into multi-task models. In the first step, it searches for a global pattern by optimising the general parameters with gradient descents under constraints, which is a geological regularizer to enable model learning with less training data. In the second step, we derive an optimised model on each specific task from the global pattern with only a few local training data. Compared with traditional multi-task learning methods, SUM shows advantages of generalisation ability on distant tasks. It can be applied on any multi-task models with the gradient descent as its optimiser regardless if the prediction function is linear or not. Moreover, we can harness the model to enable traditional prediction model to make coKriging. The experiments on public datasets have suggested that our framework, when combined with current multi-task models, has a conspicuously better prediction result when the task number is small compared to low-rank tensor learning, and our model has a quite satisfying outcome when adjusting the current prediction models for coKriging.


A Nonparametric Bayesian Model for Sparse Temporal Multigraphs

arXiv.org Machine Learning

As the availability and importance of temporal interaction data--such as email communication--increases, it becomes increasingly important to understand the underlying structure that underpins these interactions. Often these interactions form a multigraph, where we might have multiple interactions between two entities. Such multigraphs tend to be sparse yet structured, and their distribution often evolves over time. Existing statistical models with interpretable parameters can capture some, but not all, of these properties. We propose a dynamic nonparametric model for interaction multigraphs that combines the sparsity of edge-exchangeable multigraphs with dynamic clustering patterns that tend to reinforce recent behavioral patterns. We show that our method yields improved held-out likelihood over stationary variants, and impressive predictive performance against a range of state-of-the-art dynamic graph models.


Sparse Reduced-Rank Regression for Simultaneous Rank and Variable Selection via Manifold Optimization

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We consider the problem of constructing a reduced-rank regression model whose coefficient parameter is represented as a singular value decomposition with sparse singular vectors. The traditional estimation procedure for the coefficient parameter often fails when the true rank of the parameter is high. To overcome this issue, we develop an estimation algorithm with rank and variable selection via sparse regularization and manifold optimization, which enables us to obtain an accurate estimation of the coefficient parameter even if the true rank of the coefficient parameter is high. Using sparse regularization, we can also select an optimal value of the rank. We conduct Monte Carlo experiments and real data analysis to illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.


Finding Interpretable Concept Spaces in Node Embeddings using Knowledge Bases

arXiv.org Machine Learning

In this paper we propose and study the novel problem of explaining node embeddings by finding embedded human interpretable subspaces in already trained unsupervised node representation embeddings. We use an external knowledge base that is organized as a taxonomy of human-understandable concepts over entities as a guide to identify subspaces in node embeddings learned from an entity graph derived from Wikipedia. We propose a method that given a concept finds a linear transformation to a subspace where the structure of the concept is retained. Our initial experiments show that we obtain low error in finding fine-grained concepts.


Customizing Sequence Generation with Multi-Task Dynamical Systems

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Dynamical system models (including RNNs) often lack the ability to adapt the sequence generation or prediction to a given context, limiting their real-world application. In this paper we show that hierarchical multi-task dynamical systems (MTDSs) provide direct user control over sequence generation, via use of a latent code $\mathbf{z}$ that specifies the customization to the individual data sequence. This enables style transfer, interpolation and morphing within generated sequences. We show the MTDS can improve predictions via latent code interpolation, and avoid the long-term performance degradation of standard RNN approaches.


Learning Invariant Representations of Social Media Users

arXiv.org Machine Learning

The evolution of social media users' behavior over time complicates user-level comparison tasks such as verification, classification, clustering, and ranking. As a result, na ıve approaches may fail to generalize to new users or even to future observations of previously known users. In this paper, we propose a novel procedure to learn a mapping from short episodes of user activity on social media to a vector space in which the distance between points captures the similarity of the corresponding users' invariant features. We fit the model by optimizing a surrogate metric learning objective over a large corpus of unlabeled social media content. Once learned, the mapping may be applied to users not seen at training time and enables efficient comparisons of users in the resulting vector space. We present a comprehensive evaluation to validate the benefits of the proposed approach using data from Reddit, Twitter, and Wikipedia.


The Power of Batching in Multiple Hypothesis Testing

arXiv.org Machine Learning

One important partition of algorithms for controlling the false discovery rate (FDR) in multiple testing is into offline and online algorithms. The first generally achieve significantly higher power of discovery, while the latter allow making decisions sequentially as well as adaptively formulating hypotheses based on past observations. Using existing methodology, it is unclear how one could trade off the benefits of these two broad families of algorithms, all the while preserving their formal FDR guarantees. To this end, we introduce $\text{Batch}_{\text{BH}}$ and $\text{Batch}_{\text{St-BH}}$, algorithms for controlling the FDR when a possibly infinite sequence of batches of hypotheses is tested by repeated application of one of the most widely used offline algorithms, the Benjamini-Hochberg (BH) method or Storey's improvement of the BH method. We show that our algorithms interpolate between existing online and offline methodology, thus trading off the best of both worlds.