Statistical Learning
Mobile APP User Attribute Prediction by Heterogeneous Information Network Modeling
Zhang, Hekai, Gong, Jibing, Teng, Zhiyong, Wang, Dan, Wang, Hongfei, Du, Linfeng, Bhuiyan, Zakirul Alam
User-based attribute information, such as age and gender, is usually considered as user privacy information. It is difficult for enterprises to obtain user-based privacy attribute information. However, user-based privacy attribute information has a wide range of applications in personalized services, user behavior analysis and other aspects. this paper advances the HetPathMine model and puts forward TPathMine model. With applying the number of clicks of attributes under each node to express the user's emotional preference information, optimizations of the solution of meta-path weight are also presented. Based on meta-path in heterogeneous information networks, the new model integrates all relationships among objects into isomorphic relationships of classified objects. Matrix is used to realize the knowledge dissemination of category knowledge among isomorphic objects. The experimental results show that: (1) the prediction of user attributes based on heterogeneous information networks can achieve higher accuracy than traditional machine learning classification methods; (2) TPathMine model based on the number of clicks is more accurate in classifying users of different age groups, and the weight of each meta-path is consistent with human intuition or the real world situation.
Weighted Clustering Ensemble: A Review
Clustering ensemble has emerged as a powerful tool for improving both the robustness and the stability of results from individual clustering methods. Weighted clustering ensemble arises naturally from clustering ensemble. One of the arguments for weighted clustering ensemble is that elements (clusterings or clusters) in a clustering ensemble are of different quality, or that objects or features are of varying significance. However, it is not possible to directly apply the weighting mechanisms from classification (supervised) domain to clustering (unsupervised) domain, also because clustering is inherently an ill-posed problem. This paper provides an overview of weighted clustering ensemble by discussing different types of weights, major approaches to determining weight values, and applications of weighted clustering ensemble to complex data. The unifying framework presented in this paper will help clustering practitioners select the most appropriate weighting mechanisms for their own problems.
Patterns of Urban Foot Traffic Dynamics
Dobler, Gregory, Vani, Jordan, Dam, Trang Tran Linh
Using publicly available traffic camera data in New York City, we quantify time-dependent patterns in aggregate pedestrian foot traffic. These patterns exhibit repeatable diurnal behaviors that differ for weekdays and weekends but are broadly consistent across neighborhoods in the borough of Manhattan. Weekday patterns contain a characteristic 3-peak structure with increased foot traffic around 9:00am, 12:00-1:00pm, and 5:00pm aligned with the "9-to-5" work day in which pedestrians are on the street during their morning commute, during lunch hour, and then during their evening commute. Weekend days do not show a peaked structure, but rather increase steadily until sunset. Our study period of June 28, 2017 to September 11, 2017 contains two holidays, the 4th of July and Labor Day, and their foot traffic patterns are quantitatively similar to weekend days despite the fact that they fell on weekdays. Projecting all days in our study period onto the weekday/weekend phase space (by regressing against the average weekday and weekend day) we find that Friday foot traffic can be represented as a mixture of both the 3-peak weekday structure and non-peaked weekend structure. We also show that anomalies in the foot traffic patterns can be used for detection of events and network-level disruptions. Finally, we show that clustering of foot traffic time series generates associations between cameras that are spatially aligned with Manhattan neighborhood boundaries indicating that foot traffic dynamics encode information about neighborhood character.
GraphZoom: A multi-level spectral approach for accurate and scalable graph embedding
Deng, Chenhui, Zhao, Zhiqiang, Wang, Yongyu, Zhang, Zhiru, Feng, Zhuo
Graph embedding techniques have been increasingly deployed in a multitude of different applications that involve learning on non-Euclidean data. However, existing graph embedding models either fail to incorporate node attribute information during training or suffer from node attribute noise, which compromises the accuracy. Moreover, very few of them scale to large graphs due to their high computational complexity and memory usage. In this paper we propose GraphZoom, a multi-level framework for improving both accuracy and scalability of unsupervised graph embedding algorithms. GraphZoom first performs graph fusion to generate a new graph that effectively encodes the topology of the original graph and the node attribute information. This fused graph is then repeatedly coarsened into a much smaller graph by merging nodes with high spectral similarities. GraphZoom allows any existing embedding methods to be applied to the coarsened graph, before it progressively refine the embeddings obtained at the coarsest level to increasingly finer graphs. We have evaluated our approach on a number of popular graph datasets for both transductive and inductive tasks. Our experiments show that GraphZoom increases the classification accuracy and significantly reduces the run time compared to state-of-the-art unsupervised embedding methods.
On the convergence of gradient descent for two layer neural networks
It has been shown that gradient descent can yield the zero training loss in the over-parametrized regime (the width of the neural networks is much larger than the number of data points). In this work, combining the ideas of some existing works, we investigate the gradient descent method for training two-layer neural networks for approximating some target continuous functions. By making use the generic chaining technique from probability theory, we show that gradient descent can yield an exponential convergence rate, while the width of the neural networks needed is independent of the size of the training data. The result also implies some strong approximation ability of the two-layer neural networks without curse of dimensionality.
Improving Dataset Distillation
Sucholutsky, Ilia, Schonlau, Matthias
Dataset distillation is a method for reducing dataset sizes: the goal is to learn a small number of synthetic samples containing all the information of a large dataset. This has several benefits: speeding up model training in deep learning, reducing energy consumption, and reducing required storage space. Currently, each synthetic sample is assigned a single `hard' label, which limits the accuracies that models trained on distilled datasets can achieve. Also, currently dataset distillation can only be used with image data. We propose to simultaneously distill both images and their labels, and thus to assign each synthetic sample a `soft' label (a distribution of labels) rather than a single `hard' label. Our improved algorithm increases accuracy by 2-4% over the original dataset distillation algorithm for several image classification tasks. For example, training a LeNet model with just 10 distilled images (one per class) results in over 96% accuracy on the MNIST data. Using `soft' labels also enables distilled datasets to consist of fewer samples than there are classes as each sample can encode information for more than one class. For example, we show that LeNet achieves almost 92% accuracy on MNIST after being trained on just 5 distilled images. We also propose an extension of the dataset distillation algorithm that allows it to distill sequential datasets including texts. We demonstrate that text distillation outperforms other methods across multiple datasets. For example, we are able to train models to almost their original accuracy on the IMDB sentiment analysis task using just 20 distilled sentences.
Optimising energy and overhead for large parameter space simulations
Kell, Alexander J. M., Forshaw, Matthew, McGough, A. Stephen
Many systems require optimisation over multiple objectives, where objectives are characteristics of the system such as energy consumed or increase in time to perform the work. Optimisation is performed by selecting the `best' set of input parameters to elicit the desired objectives. However, the parameter search space can often be far larger than can be searched in a reasonable time. Additionally, the objectives are often mutually exclusive -- leading to a decision being made as to which objective is more important or optimising over a combination of the objectives. This work is an application of a Genetic Algorithm to identify the Pareto frontier for finding the optimal parameter sets for all combinations of objectives. A Pareto frontier can be used to identify the sets of optimal parameters for which each is the `best' for a given combination of objectives -- thus allowing decisions to be made with full knowledge. We demonstrate this approach for the HTC-Sim simulation system in the case where a Reinforcement Learning scheduler is tuned for the two objectives of energy consumption and task overhead. Demonstrating that this approach can reduce the energy consumed by ~36% over previously published work without significantly increasing the overhead.
What Is Machine Learning?
Machine learning is one of the quickest growing technological fields, but despite how often the words "machine learning" are tossed around, it can be difficult to understand what machine learning is, precisely. Machine learning doesn't refer to just one thing, it's an umbrella term that can be applied to many different concepts and techniques. Understanding machine learning means being familiar with different forms of model analysis, variables, and algorithms. Let's take a close look at machine learning to better understand what it encompasses. While the term machine learning can be applied to many different things, in general, the term refers to enabling a computer to carry out tasks without receiving explicit line-by-line instructions to do so.
The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book GC Coupons
WARNING: to avoid counterfeit, make sure that the book ships from and sold by Amazon. Statistical Learning, with Applications in R: "This is a compact "how to do data science" manual and I predict it will become a go-to resource for academics and practitioners alike. At 100 pages (or a little more), the book is short enough to read in a single sitting. Yet, despite its length, it covers all the major machine learning approaches, ranging from classical linear and logistic regression, through to modern support vector machines, deep learning, boosting, and random forests. There is also no shortage of details on the various approaches and the interested reader can gain further information on any particular method via the innovative companion book wiki. The book does not assume any high level mathematical or statistical training or even programming experience, so should be accessible to almost anyone willing to invest the time to learn about these methods. It should certainly be required reading for anyone starting a PhD program in this area and will serve as a useful reference as they progress further. Finally, the book illustrates some of the algorithms using Python code, one of the most popular coding languages for machine learning. I would highly recommend "The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book" for both the beginner looking to learn more about machine learning and the experienced practitioner seeking to extend their knowledge base."
Bayesian Linear Mixed Models: Random Intercepts, Slopes, and Missing Data
This past summer, I watched a brilliant lecture series by Richard McElreath on Bayesian statistics. It honestly changed my whole outlook on statistics, so I couldn't recommend it more (plus, McElreath is an engaging instructor). One of the most compelling cases for using Bayesian statistics is with a collection of statistical tools called linear mixed models or multilevel/hierarchical models. It's common that data are grouped or clustered in some way. Often in psychology we have repeated observations nested within participants, so we know that data coming from the same participant will share some variance. Linear mixed models are powerful tools for dealing with multilevel data, usually in the form of modeling random intercepts and random slopes.