Statistical Learning
Top 10 Machine Learning Algorithms
This was the subject of a question asked on Quora: What are the top 10 data mining or machine learning algorithms? Some modern algorithms such as collaborative filtering, recommendation engine, segmentation, or attribution modeling, are missing from the lists below. Algorithms from graph theory (to find the shortest path in a graph, or to detect connected components), from operations research (the simplex, to optimize the supply chain), or from time series, are not listed either. And I could not find MCM (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) and related algorithms used to process hierarchical, spatio-temporal and other Bayesian models. My point of view is of course biased, but I would like to also add some algorithms developed or re-developed at the Data Science Central's research lab: These algorithms are described in the article What you wont learn in statistics classes.
Bayesian machine learning - FastML
So you know the Bayes rule. How does it relate to machine learning? It can be quite difficult to grasp how the puzzle pieces fit together - we know it took us a while. This article is an introduction we wish we had back then. While we have some grasp on the matter, we're not experts, so the following might contain inaccuracies or even outright errors. Feel free to point them out, either in the comments or privately.
Generalized Statistical Tests for mRNA and Protein Subcellular Spatial Patterning against Complete Spatial Randomness
Warrell, Jonathan H., Savulescu, Anca F., Brackin, Robyn, Mhlanga, Musa M.
We derive generalized estimators for a number of spatial statistics that have been used in the analysis of spatially resolved omics data, such as Ripley's K, H and L functions, clustering index, and degree of clustering, which allow these statistics to be calculated on data modelled by arbitrary random measures (RMs). Our estimators generalize those typically used to calculate these statistics on point process data, allowing them to be calculated on RMs which assign continuous values to spatial regions, for instance to model protein intensity. The clustering index (H*) compares Ripley's H function calculated empirically to its distribution under complete spatial randomness (CSR), leading us to consider CSR null hypotheses for RMs which are not point-processes when generalizing this statistic. We thus consider restricted classes of completely random measures which can be simulated directly (Gamma processes and Marked Poisson Processes), as well as the general class of all CSR RMs, for which we derive an exact permutation-based H* estimator. We establish several properties of the estimators, including bounds on the accuracy of our general Ripley K estimator, its relationship to a previous estimator for the cross-correlation measure, and the relationship of our generalized H* estimator to previous statistics. To test the ability of our approach to identify spatial patterning, we use Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization (FISH) and Immunofluorescence (IF) data to probe for mRNA and protein subcellular localization patterns respectively in polarizing mouse fibroblasts on micropattened cells. We observe correlated patterns of clustering over time for corresponding mRNAs and proteins, suggesting a deterministic effect of mRNA localization on protein localization for several pairs tested, including one case in which spatial patterning at the mRNA level has not been previously demonstrated.
Distance for Functional Data Clustering Based on Smoothing Parameter Commutation
Tzeng, ShengLi, Hennig, Christian, Li, Yu-Fen, Lin, Chien-Ju
We propose a novel method to determine the dissimilarity between subjects for functional data clustering. Spline smoothing or interpolation is common to deal with data of such type. Instead of estimating the best-representing curve for each subject as fixed during clustering, we measure the dissimilarity between subjects based on varying curve estimates with commutation of smoothing parameters pair-by-pair (of subjects). The intuitions are that smoothing parameters of smoothing splines reflect inverse signal-to-noise ratios and that applying an identical smoothing parameter the smoothed curves for two similar subjects are expected to be close. The effectiveness of our proposal is shown through simulations comparing to other dissimilarity measures. It also has several pragmatic advantages. First, missing values or irregular time points can be handled directly, thanks to the nature of smoothing splines. Second, conventional clustering method based on dissimilarity can be employed straightforward, and the dissimilarity also serves as a useful tool for outlier detection. Third, the implementation is almost handy since subroutines for smoothing splines and numerical integration are widely available. Fourth, the computational complexity does not increase and is parallel with that in calculating Euclidean distance between curves estimated by smoothing splines.
Evaluating the Performance of Offensive Linemen in the NFL
Byanna, Nikhil, Klabjan, Diego
How does one objectively measure the performance of an individual offensive lineman in the NFL? The existing literature proposes various measures that rely on subjective assessments of game film, but has yet to develop an objective methodology to evaluate performance. Using a variety of statistics related to an offensive lineman's performance, we develop a framework to objectively analyze the overall performance of an individual offensive lineman and determine specific linemen who are overvalued or undervalued relative to their salary. We identify eight players across the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 NFL seasons that are considered to be overvalued or undervalued and corroborate the results with existing metrics that are based on subjective evaluation. To the best of our knowledge, the techniques set forth in this work have not been utilized in previous works to evaluate the performance of NFL players at any position, including offensive linemen.
Intro to Machine Learning in H2O
The focus of this workshop is machine learning using the H2O R and Python packages. H2O is an open source distributed machine learning platform designed for big data, with the added benefit that it's easy to use on a laptop (in addition to a multi-node Hadoop or Spark cluster). The core machine learning algorithms of H2O are implemented in high-performance Java; however, fully featured APIs are available in R, Python, Scala, REST/JSON and also through a web interface. Since H2O's algorithm implementations are distributed, this allows the software to scale to very large datasets that may not fit into RAM on a single machine. H2O currently features distributed implementations of generalized linear models, gradient boosting machines, random forest, deep neural nets, dimensionality reduction methods (PCA, GLRM), clustering algorithms (K-means), and anomaly detection methods, among others.
Machine Learning Methods: Classification without negative examples – EFavDB
Here, we discuss some methods for carrying out classification when only positive examples are available. The latter half of our discussion borrows heavily from W.S. Lee and B. Liu, Proc. Follow @efavdb Follow us on twitter for new submission alerts! Logistic regression is a commonly used tool for estimating the level sets of a Boolean function y on a set of feature vectors \textbf{F}: In a sense, you can think of it as a method for playing the game "Battleship" on whatever data set you're interested in. Consider now a situation where all training examples given are positive -- i.e., no negative examples are available.
Untapped opportunities in AI
Editor's note: this post is part of an ongoing series exploring developments in artificial intelligence. First, collect huge amounts of training data -- probably more than anyone thought sensible or even possible a decade ago. Second, massage and preprocess that data so the key relationships it contains are easily accessible (the jargon here is "feature engineering"). Finally, feed the result into ludicrously high-performance, parallelized implementations of pretty standard machine-learning methods like logistic regression, deep neural networks, and k-means clustering (don't worry if those names don't mean anything to you -- the point is that they're widely available in high-quality open source packages). Google pioneered this formula, applying it to ad placement, machine translation, spam filtering, YouTube recommendations, and even the self-driving car -- creating billions of dollars of value in the process.
Ensemble Methods: Elegant Techniques to Produce Improved Machine Learning Results
Ensemble methods are techniques that create multiple models and then combine them to produce improved results. Ensemble methods usually produces more accurate solutions than a single model would. This has been the case in a number of machine learning competitions, where the winning solutions used ensemble methods. In the popular Netflix Competition, the winner used an ensemble method to implement a powerful collaborative filtering algorithm. Another example is KDD 2009 where the winner also used ensemble methods.