Statistical Learning
Sparse Linear Regression With Missing Data
Ganti, Ravi, Willett, Rebecca M.
This paper proposes a fast and accurate method for sparse regression in the presence of missing data. The underlying statistical model encapsulates the low-dimensional structure of the incomplete data matrix and the sparsity of the regression coefficients, and the proposed algorithm jointly learns the low-dimensional structure of the data and a linear regressor with sparse coefficients. The proposed stochastic optimization method, Sparse Linear Regression with Missing Data (SLRM), performs an alternating minimization procedure and scales well with the problem size. Large deviation inequalities shed light on the impact of the various problem-dependent parameters on the expected squared loss of the learned regressor. Extensive simulations on both synthetic and real datasets show that SLRM performs better than competing algorithms in a variety of contexts.
Bayesian Cross Validation and WAIC for Predictive Prior Design in Regular Asymptotic Theory
Prior design is one of the most important problems in both statistics and machine learning. The cross validation (CV) and the widely applicable information criterion (WAIC) are predictive measures of the Bayesian estimation, however, it has been difficult to apply them to find the optimal prior because their mathematical properties in prior evaluation have been unknown and the region of the hyperparameters is too wide to be examined. In this paper, we derive a new formula by which the theoretical relation among CV, WAIC, and the generalization loss is clarified and the optimal hyperparameter can be directly found. By the formula, three facts are clarified about predictive prior design. Firstly, CV and WAIC have the same second order asymptotic expansion, hence they are asymptotically equivalent to each other as the optimizer of the hyperparameter. Secondly, the hyperparameter which minimizes CV or WAIC makes the average generalization loss to be minimized asymptotically but does not the random generalization loss. And lastly, by using the mathematical relation between priors, the variances of the optimized hyperparameters by CV and WAIC are made smaller with small computational costs. Also we show that the optimized hyperparameter by DIC or the marginal likelihood does not minimize the average or random generalization loss in general.
Sparse graphs using exchangeable random measures
Caron, Franรงois, Fox, Emily B.
Statistical network modeling has focused on representing the graph as a discrete structure, namely the adjacency matrix, and considering the exchangeability of this array. In such cases, the Aldous-Hoover representation theorem (Aldous, 1981;Hoover, 1979} applies and informs us that the graph is necessarily either dense or empty. In this paper, we instead consider representing the graph as a measure on $\mathbb{R}_+^2$. For the associated definition of exchangeability in this continuous space, we rely on the Kallenberg representation theorem (Kallenberg, 2005). We show that for certain choices of such exchangeable random measures underlying our graph construction, our network process is sparse with power-law degree distribution. In particular, we build on the framework of completely random measures (CRMs) and use the theory associated with such processes to derive important network properties, such as an urn representation for our analysis and network simulation. Our theoretical results are explored empirically and compared to common network models. We then present a Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm for efficient exploration of the posterior distribution and demonstrate that we are able to recover graphs ranging from dense to sparse--and perform associated tests--based on our flexible CRM-based formulation. We explore network properties in a range of real datasets, including Facebook social circles, a political blogosphere, protein networks, citation networks, and world wide web networks, including networks with hundreds of thousands of nodes and millions of edges.
On Gridless Sparse Methods for Line Spectral Estimation From Complete and Incomplete Data
This paper is concerned about sparse, continuous frequency estimation in line spectral estimation, and focused on developing gridless sparse methods which overcome grid mismatches and correspond to limiting scenarios of existing grid-based approaches, e.g., $\ell_1$ optimization and SPICE, with an infinitely dense grid. We generalize AST (atomic-norm soft thresholding) to the case of nonconsecutively sampled data (incomplete data) inspired by recent atomic norm based techniques. We present a gridless version of SPICE (gridless SPICE, or GLS), which is applicable to both complete and incomplete data without the knowledge of noise level. We further prove the equivalence between GLS and atomic norm-based techniques under different assumptions of noise. Moreover, we extend GLS to a systematic framework consisting of model order selection and robust frequency estimation, and present feasible algorithms for AST and GLS. Numerical simulations are provided to validate our theoretical analysis and demonstrate performance of our methods compared to existing ones.
Adaptive Metric Dimensionality Reduction
Gottlieb, Lee-Ad, Kontorovich, Aryeh, Krauthgamer, Robert
We study adaptive data-dependent dimensionality reduction in the context of supervised learning in general metric spaces. Our main statistical contribution is a generalization bound for Lipschitz functions in metric spaces that are doubling, or nearly doubling. On the algorithmic front, we describe an analogue of PCA for metric spaces: namely an efficient procedure that approximates the data's intrinsic dimension, which is often much lower than the ambient dimension. Our approach thus leverages the dual benefits of low dimensionality: (1) more efficient algorithms, e.g., for proximity search, and (2) more optimistic generalization bounds.
Penalty, Shrinkage, and Preliminary Test Estimators under Full Model Hypothesis
Raheem, Enayetur, Saleh, A. K. Md. Ehsanes
This paper considers a multiple regression model and compares, under full model hypothesis, analytically as well as by simulation, the performance characteristics of some popular penalty estimators such as ridge regression, LASSO, adaptive LASSO, SCAD, and elastic net versus Least Squares Estimator, restricted estimator, preliminary test estimator, and Stein-type estimators when the dimension of the parameter space is smaller than the sample space dimension. We find that RR uniformly dominates LSE, RE, PTE, SE and PRSE while LASSO, aLASSO, SCAD, and EN uniformly dominates LSE only. Further, it is observed that neither penalty estimators nor Stein-type estimator dominate one another.
Using Semantics and Statistics to Turn Data into Knowledge
Pujara, Jay (University of Maryland, College Park) | Miao, Hui (University of California, Santa Cruz) | Getoor, Lise (Carnegie Mellon University) | Cohen, William W.
Many information extraction and knowledge base construction systems are addressing the challenge of deriving knowledge from text. A key problem in constructing these knowledge bases from sources like the web is overcoming the erroneous and incomplete information found in millions of candidate extractions. To solve this problem, we turn to semantics โ using ontological constraints between candidate facts to eliminate errors. In this article, we represent the desired knowledge base as a knowledge graph and introduce the problem of knowledge graph identification, collectively resolving the entities, labels, and relations present in the knowledge graph. Knowledge graph identification requires reasoning jointly over millions of extractions simultaneously, posing a scalability challenge to many approaches. We use probabilistic soft logic (PSL), a recently-introduced statistical relational learning framework, to implement an efficient solution to knowledge graph identification and present state-of-the-art results for knowledge graph construction while performing an order of magnitude faster than competing methods.
Unsupervised model compression for multilayer bootstrap networks
Recently, multilayer bootstrap network (MBN) has demonstrated promising performance in unsupervised dimensionality reduction. It can learn compact representations in standard data sets, i.e. MNIST and RCV1. However, as a bootstrap method, the prediction complexity of MBN is high. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised model compression framework for this general problem of unsupervised bootstrap methods. The framework compresses a large unsupervised bootstrap model into a small model by taking the bootstrap model and its application together as a black box and learning a mapping function from the input of the bootstrap model to the output of the application by a supervised learner. To specialize the framework, we propose a new technique, named compressive MBN. It takes MBN as the unsupervised bootstrap model and deep neural network (DNN) as the supervised learner. Our initial result on MNIST showed that compressive MBN not only maintains the high prediction accuracy of MBN but also is over thousands of times faster than MBN at the prediction stage. Our result suggests that the new technique integrates the effectiveness of MBN on unsupervised learning and the effectiveness and efficiency of DNN on supervised learning together for the effectiveness and efficiency of compressive MBN on unsupervised learning.
Indian Buffet process for model selection in convolved multiple-output Gaussian processes
Guarnizo, Cristian, รlvarez, Mauricio A.
Multi-output Gaussian processes have received increasing attention during the last few years as a natural mechanism to extend the powerful flexibility of Gaussian processes to the setup of multiple output variables. The key point here is the ability to design kernel functions that allow exploiting the correlations between the outputs while fulfilling the positive definiteness requisite for the covariance function. Alternatives to construct these covariance functions are the linear model of coregionalization and process convolutions. Each of these methods demand the specification of the number of latent Gaussian process used to build the covariance function for the outputs. We propose in this paper, the use of an Indian Buffet process as a way to perform model selection over the number of latent Gaussian processes. This type of model is particularly important in the context of latent force models, where the latent forces are associated to physical quantities like protein profiles or latent forces in mechanical systems. We use variational inference to estimate posterior distributions over the variables involved, and show examples of the model performance over artificial data, a motion capture dataset, and a gene expression dataset.
Construction of FuzzyFind Dictionary using Golay Coding Transformation for Searching Applications
Kowsari, Kamran, Yammahi, Maryam, Bari, Nima, Vichr, Roman, Alsaby, Faisal, Berkovich, Simon Y.
Searching through a large volume of data is very critical for companies, scientists, and searching engines applications due to time complexity and memory complexity. In this paper, a new technique of generating FuzzyFind Dictionary for text mining was introduced. We simply mapped the 23 bits of the English alphabet into a FuzzyFind Dictionary or more than 23 bits by using more FuzzyFind Dictionary, and reflecting the presence or absence of particular letters. This representation preserves closeness of word distortions in terms of closeness of the created binary vectors within Hamming distance of 2 deviations. This paper talks about the Golay Coding Transformation Hash Table and how it can be used on a FuzzyFind Dictionary as a new technology for using in searching through big data. This method is introduced by linear time complexity for generating the dictionary and constant time complexity to access the data and update by new data sets, also updating for new data sets is linear time depends on new data points. This technique is based on searching only for letters of English that each segment has 23 bits, and also we have more than 23-bit and also it could work with more segments as reference table.