Uncertainty
Patient Subtyping with Disease Progression and Irregular Observation Trajectories
Galagali, Nikhil, Xu-Wilson, Minnan
Patient subtyping based on temporal observations can lead to significantly nuanced subtyping that acknowledges the dynamic characteristics of diseases. Existing methods for subtyping trajectories treat the evolution of clinical observations as a homogeneous process or employ data available at regular intervals. In reality, diseases may have transient underlying states and a state-dependent observation pattern. In our paper, we present an approach to subtype irregular patient data while acknowledging the underlying progression of disease states. Our approach consists of two components: a probabilistic model to determine the likelihood of a patient's observation trajectory and a mixture model to measure similarity between asynchronous patient trajectories. We demonstrate our model by discovering subtypes of progression to hemodynamic instability (requiring cardiovascular intervention) in a patient cohort from a multi-institution ICU dataset. We find three primary patterns: two of which show classic signs of decompensation (rising heart rate with dropping blood pressure), with one of these showing a faster course of decompensation than the other. The third pattern has transient period of low heart rate and blood pressure. We also show that our model results in a 13% reduction in average cross-entropy error compared to a model with no state progression when forecasting vital signs.
Optimal Errors and Phase Transitions in High-Dimensional Generalized Linear Models
Barbier, Jean, Krzakala, Florent, Macris, Nicolas, Miolane, Léo, Zdeborová, Lenka
Generalized linear models (GLMs) arise in high-dimensional machine learning, statistics, communications and signal processing. In this paper we analyze GLMs when the data matrix is random, as relevant in problems such as compressed sensing, error-correcting codes or benchmark models in neural networks. We evaluate the mutual information (or "free entropy") from which we deduce the Bayes-optimal estimation and generalization errors. Our analysis applies to the high-dimensional limit where both the number of samples and the dimension are large and their ratio is fixed. Non-rigorous predictions for the optimal errors existed for special cases of GLMs, e.g. for the perceptron, in the field of statistical physics based on the so-called replica method. Our present paper rigorously establishes those decades old conjectures and brings forward their algorithmic interpretation in terms of performance of the generalized approximate message-passing algorithm. Furthermore, we tightly characterize, for many learning problems, regions of parameters for which this algorithm achieves the optimal performance, and locate the associated sharp phase transitions separating learnable and non-learnable regions. We believe that this random version of GLMs can serve as a challenging benchmark for multi-purpose algorithms. This paper is divided in two parts that can be read independently: The first part (main part) presents the model and main results, discusses some applications and sketches the main ideas of the proof. The second part (supplementary informations) is much more detailed and provides more examples as well as all the proofs.
Adaptive Extreme Learning Machine for Recurrent Beta-basis Function Neural Network Training
Chouikhi, Naima, Alimi, Adel M.
Abstract-- Beta Basis Function Neural Network (BBFNN) is a special kind of kernel basis neural networks. It is a feedforward network typified by the use of beta function as a hidden activation function. Beta is a flexible transfer function representing richer forms than the common existing functions. As in every network, the architecture setting as well as the learning method are two main gauntlets faced by BBFNN. In this paper, new architecture and training algorithm are proposed for the BBFNN. An Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) is used as a training approach of BBFNN with the aim of quickening the training process. The peculiarity of ELM is permitting a certain decrement of the computing time and complexity regarding the already used BBFNN learning algorithms such as backpropagation, OLS, etc. For the architectural design, a recurrent structure is added to the common BBFNN architecture in order to make it more able to deal with complex, nonlinear and time varying problems. Throughout this paper, the conceived recurrent ELMtrained BBFNN is tested on a number of tasks related to time series prediction, classification and regression. Experimental results show noticeable achievements of the proposed network compared to common feed-forward and recurrent networks trained by ELM and using hyperbolic tangent as activation function. These achievements are in terms of accuracy and robustness against data breakdowns such as noise signals. HE appeal to machine learning is resurged owing to reasons related to the high popularity of data mining and analysis. In fact, in a world full of available data varieties, computational processing seems to be very useful as it is cheap and powerful and it ensures affordable data handling [1] [2]. The automatic data treatment has provided quick and accurate models which are capable to manipulate much more complex data then deliver more precise results. They perform not only on small data but also on very large scale ones [3].
Pymc-learn: Practical Probabilistic Machine Learning in Python
Pymc-learn is a Python package providing a variety of state-of-the-art probabilistic models for supervised and unsupervised machine learning. It is inspired by scikit-learn and focuses on bringing probabilistic machine learning to non-specialists. It uses a general-purpose high-level language that mimics scikit-learn. Emphasis is put on ease of use, productivity, flexibility, performance, documentation, and an API consistent with scikit-learn. It depends on scikit-learn and pymc3 and is distributed under the new BSD-3 license, encouraging its use in both academia and industry.
A tutorial on MDL hypothesis testing for graph analysis
Bloem, Peter, de Rooij, Steven
When analysing graph structure, it can be difficult to determine whether patterns found are due to chance, or due to structural aspects of the process that generated the data. Hypothesis tests are often used to support such analyses. These allow us to make statistical inferences about which null models are responsible for the data, and they can be used as a heuristic in searching for meaningful patterns. The minimum description length (MDL) principle [6, 4] allows us to build such hypothesis tests, based on efficient descriptions of the data. Broadly: we translate the regularity we are interested in into a code for the data, and if this code describes the data more efficiently than a code corresponding to the null model, by a sufficient margin, we may reject the null model. This is a frequentist approach to MDL, based on hypothesis testing. Bayesian approaches to MDL for model selection rather than model rejection are more common, but for the purposes of pattern analysis, a hypothesis testing approach provides a more natural fit with existing literature. 1 We provide a brief illustration of this principle based on the running example of analysing the size of the largest clique in a graph. We illustrate how a code can be constructed to efficiently represent graphs with large cliques, and how the description length of the data under this code can be compared to the description length under a code corresponding to a null model to show that the null model is highly unlikely to have generated the data.
Design by adaptive sampling
Brookes, David H., Listgarten, Jennifer
We present a probabilistic modeling framework and adaptive sampling algorithm wherein unsupervised generative models are combined with black box predictive models to tackle the problem of input design. In input design, one is given one or more stochastic "oracle" predictive functions, each of which maps from the input design space (e. g., DNA sequences or images) to a distribution over a property of interest (e. g., protein fluorescence or image content). Given such stochastic oracles, the problem is to find an input that is expected to maximize one or more properties, or to achieve a specified value of one or more properties, or any combination thereof. We demonstrate experimentally that our approach substantially outperforms other recently presented methods for tackling a specific version of this problem, namely, maximization when the oracle is assumed to be deterministic and unbiased. We also demonstrate that our method can tackle more general versions of the problem.
Reliable Uncertainty Estimates in Deep Neural Networks using Noise Contrastive Priors
Hafner, Danijar, Tran, Dustin, Lillicrap, Timothy, Irpan, Alex, Davidson, James
Obtaining reliable uncertainty estimates of neural network predictions is a long standing challenge. Bayesian neural networks have been proposed as a solution, but it remains open how to specify their prior. In particular, the common practice of a standard normal prior in weight space imposes only weak regularities, causing the function posterior to possibly generalize in unforeseen ways on inputs outside of the training distribution. We propose noise contrastive priors (NCPs) to obtain reliable uncertainty estimates. The key idea is to train the model to output high uncertainty for data points outside of the training distribution. NCPs do so using an input prior, which adds noise to the inputs of the current mini batch, and an output prior, which is a wide distribution given these inputs. NCPs are compatible with any model that can output uncertainty estimates, are easy to scale, and yield reliable uncertainty estimates throughout training. Empirically, we show that NCPs prevent overfitting outside of the training distribution and result in uncertainty estimates that are useful for active learning. We demonstrate the scalability of our method on the flight delays data set, where we significantly improve upon previously published results.
Neural Rendering Model: Joint Generation and Prediction for Semi-Supervised Learning
Ho, Nhat, Nguyen, Tan, Patel, Ankit, Anandkumar, Anima, Jordan, Michael I., Baraniuk, Richard G.
Unsupervised and semi-supervised learning are important problems that are especially challenging with complex data like natural images. Progress on these problems would accelerate if we had access to appropriate generative models under which to pose the associated inference tasks. Inspired by the success of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for supervised prediction in images, we design the Neural Rendering Model (NRM), a new probabilistic generative model whose inference calculations correspond to those in a given CNN architecture. The NRM uses the given CNN to design the prior distribution in the probabilistic model. Furthermore, the NRM generates images from coarse to finer scales. It introduces a small set of latent variables at each level, and enforces dependencies among all the latent variables via a conjugate prior distribution. This conjugate prior yields a new regularizer based on paths rendered in the generative model for training CNNs-the Rendering Path Normalization (RPN). We demonstrate that this regularizer improves generalization, both in theory and in practice. In addition, likelihood estimation in the NRM yields training losses for CNNs, and inspired by this, we design a new loss termed as the Max-Min cross entropy which outperforms the traditional cross-entropy loss for object classification. The Max-Min cross entropy suggests a new deep network architecture, namely the Max-Min network, which can learn from less labeled data while maintaining good prediction performance. Our experiments demonstrate that the NRM with the RPN and the Max-Min architecture exceeds or matches the-state-of-art on benchmarks including SVHN, CIFAR10, and CIFAR100 for semi-supervised and supervised learning tasks.
Gaussian Process Conditional Density Estimation
Dutordoir, Vincent, Salimbeni, Hugh, Deisenroth, Marc, Hensman, James
Conditional Density Estimation (CDE) models deal with estimating conditional distributions. The conditions imposed on the distribution are the inputs of the model. CDE is a challenging task as there is a fundamental trade-off between model complexity, representational capacity and overfitting. In this work, we propose to extend the model's input with latent variables and use Gaussian processes (GP) to map this augmented input onto samples from the conditional distribution. Our Bayesian approach allows for the modeling of small datasets, but we also provide the machinery for it to be applied to big data using stochastic variational inference. Our approach can be used to model densities even in sparse data regions, and allows for sharing learned structure between conditions. We illustrate the effectiveness and wide-reaching applicability of our model on a variety of real-world problems, such as spatio-temporal density estimation of taxi drop-offs, non-Gaussian noise modeling, and few-shot learning on omniglot images.
Pseudo-Bayesian Learning with Kernel Fourier Transform as Prior
Letarte, Gaël, Morvant, Emilie, Germain, Pascal
We revisit Rahimi and Recht (2007)'s kernel random Fourier features (RFF) method through the lens of the PAC-Bayesian theory. While the primary goal of RFF is to approximate a kernel, we look at the Fourier transform as a prior distribution over trigonometric hypotheses. It naturally suggests learning a posterior on these hypotheses. We derive generalization bounds that are optimized by learning a pseudo-posterior obtained from a closed-form expression. Based on this study, we consider two learning strategies: The first one finds a compact landmarks-based representation of the data where each landmark is given by a distribution-tailored similarity measure, while the second one provides a PAC-Bayesian justification to the kernel alignment method of Sinha and Duchi (2016).