Uncertainty
A Comparative study of Transportation Problem under Probabilistic and Fuzzy Uncertainties
Transportation Problem is an important aspect which has been widely studied in Operations Research domain. It has been studied to simulate different real life problems. In particular, application of this Problem in NP- Hard Problems has a remarkable significance. In this Paper, we present a comparative study of Transportation Problem through Probabilistic and Fuzzy Uncertainties. Fuzzy Logic is a computational paradigm that generalizes classical two-valued logic for reasoning under uncertainty. In order to achieve this, the notation of membership in a set needs to become a matter of degree. By doing this we accomplish two things viz., (i) ease of describing human knowledge involving vague concepts and (ii) enhanced ability to develop cost-effective solution to real-world problem. The multi-valued nature of Fuzzy Sets allows handling uncertain and vague information. It is a model-less approach and a clever disguise of Probability Theory. We give comparative simulation results of both approaches and discuss the Computational Complexity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work on comparative study of Transportation Problem using Probabilistic and Fuzzy Uncertainties.
A Comparison of Non-stationary, Type-2 and Dual Surface Fuzzy Control
Benatar, Naisan, Aickelin, Uwe, Garibaldi, Jonathan M.
Type-1 fuzzy logic has frequently been used in control systems. However this method is sometimes shown to be too restrictive and unable to adapt in the presence of uncertainty. In this paper we compare type-1 fuzzy control with several other fuzzy approaches under a range of uncertain conditions. Interval type-2 and non-stationary fuzzy controllers are compared, along with 'dual surface' type-2 control, named due to utilising both the lower and upper values produced from standard interval type-2 systems. We tune a type-1 controller, then derive the membership functions and footprints of uncertainty from the type-1 system and evaluate them using a simulated autonomous sailing problem with varying amounts of environmental uncertainty. We show that while these more sophisticated controllers can produce better performance than the type-1 controller, this is not guaranteed and that selection of Footprint of Uncertainty (FOU) size has a large effect on this relative performance.
An Efficient Model Selection for Gaussian Mixture Model in a Bayesian Framework
In order to cluster or partition data, we often use Expectation-and-Maximization (EM) or Variational approximation with a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), which is a parametric probability density function represented as a weighted sum of $\hat{K}$ Gaussian component densities. However, model selection to find underlying $\hat{K}$ is one of the key concerns in GMM clustering, since we can obtain the desired clusters only when $\hat{K}$ is known. In this paper, we propose a new model selection algorithm to explore $\hat{K}$ in a Bayesian framework. The proposed algorithm builds the density of the model order which any information criterions such as AIC and BIC basically fail to reconstruct. In addition, this algorithm reconstructs the density quickly as compared to the time-consuming Monte Carlo simulation.
Learning Mixed Graphical Models
Lee, Jason D., Hastie, Trevor J.
We consider the problem of learning the structure of a pairwise graphical model over continuous and discrete variables. We present a new pairwise model for graphical models with both continuous and discrete variables that is amenable to structure learning. In previous work, authors have considered structure learning of Gaussian graphical models and structure learning of discrete models. Our approach is a natural generalization of these two lines of work to the mixed case. The penalization scheme involves a novel symmetric use of the group-lasso norm and follows naturally from a particular parametrization of the model.
Algorithms of the LDA model [REPORT]
ล peh, Jaka, Muhiฤ, Andrej, Rupnik, Jan
ABSTRACT We review three algorithms for Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Two of them are variational inference algorithms: V ariational Bayesian inference and Online V ariational Bayesian inference and one is Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm - Collapsed Gibbs sampling. We compare their time complexity and performance. We find that online variational Bayesian inference is the fastest algorithm and still returns reasonably good results. 1 INTRODUCTION Nowadays big corpora are used daily. People often search through huge numbers of documents either in libraries or online, using web search engines.
Gaussian Process Conditional Copulas with Applications to Financial Time Series
Hernรกndez-Lobato, Josรฉ Miguel, Lloyd, James Robert, Hernรกndez-Lobato, Daniel
The estimation of dependencies between multiple variables is a central problem in the analysis of financial time series. A common approach is to express these dependencies in terms of a copula function. Typically the copula function is assumed to be constant but this may be inaccurate when there are covariates that could have a large influence on the dependence structure of the data. To account for this, a Bayesian framework for the estimation of conditional copulas is proposed. In this framework the parameters of a copula are non-linearly related to some arbitrary conditioning variables. We evaluate the ability of our method to predict time-varying dependencies on several equities and currencies and observe consistent performance gains compared to static copula models and other time-varying copula methods.
Approximate Bayesian Image Interpretation using Generative Probabilistic Graphics Programs
Mansinghka, Vikash K., Kulkarni, Tejas D., Perov, Yura N., Tenenbaum, Joshua B.
The idea of computer vision as the Bayesian inverse problem to computer graphics has a long history and an appealing elegance, but it has proved difficult to directly implement. Instead, most vision tasks are approached via complex bottom-up processing pipelines. Here we show that it is possible to write short, simple probabilistic graphics programs that define flexible generative models and to automatically invert them to interpret real-world images. Generative probabilistic graphics programs consist of a stochastic scene generator, a renderer based on graphics software, a stochastic likelihood model linking the renderer's output and the data, and latent variables that adjust the fidelity of the renderer and the tolerance of the likelihood model. Representations and algorithms from computer graphics, originally designed to produce high-quality images, are instead used as the deterministic backbone for highly approximate and stochastic generative models. This formulation combines probabilistic programming, computer graphics, and approximate Bayesian computation, and depends only on general-purpose, automatic inference techniques. We describe two applications: reading sequences of degraded and adversarially obscured alphanumeric characters, and inferring 3D road models from vehicle-mounted camera images. Each of the probabilistic graphics programs we present relies on under 20 lines of probabilistic code, and supports accurate, approximately Bayesian inferences about ambiguous real-world images.
ABC Reinforcement Learning
Dimitrakakis, Christos, Tziortziotis, Nikolaos
This paper introduces a simple, general framework for likelihood-free Bayesian reinforcement learning, through Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC). The main advantage is that we only require a prior distribution on a class of simulators (generative models). This is useful in domains where an analytical probabilistic model of the underlying process is too complex to formulate, but where detailed simulation models are available. ABC-RL allows the use of any Bayesian reinforcement learning technique, even in this case. In addition, it can be seen as an extension of rollout algorithms to the case where we do not know what the correct model to draw rollouts from is. We experimentally demonstrate the potential of this approach in a comparison with LSPI. Finally, we introduce a theorem showing that ABC is a sound methodology in principle, even when non-sufficient statistics are used.
Locally adaptive factor processes for multivariate time series
Durante, Daniele, Scarpa, Bruno, Dunson, David B.
In modeling multivariate time series, it is important to allow time-varying smoothness in the mean and covariance process. In particular, there may be certain time intervals exhibiting rapid changes and others in which changes are slow. If such time-varying smoothness is not accounted for, one can obtain misleading inferences and predictions, with over-smoothing across erratic time intervals and under-smoothing across times exhibiting slow variation. This can lead to mis-calibration of predictive intervals, which can be substantially too narrow or wide depending on the time. We propose a locally adaptive factor process for characterizing multivariate mean-covariance changes in continuous time, allowing locally varying smoothness in both the mean and covariance matrix. This process is constructed utilizing latent dictionary functions evolving in time through nested Gaussian processes and linearly related to the observed data with a sparse mapping. Using a differential equation representation, we bypass usual computational bottlenecks in obtaining MCMC and online algorithms for approximate Bayesian inference. The performance is assessed in simulations and illustrated in a financial application.
Machine Learning with Operational Costs
Tulabandhula, Theja, Rudin, Cynthia
This work proposes a way to align statistical modeling with decision making. We provide a method that propagates the uncertainty in predictive modeling to the uncertainty in operational cost, where operational cost is the amount spent by the practitioner in solving the problem. The method allows us to explore the range of operational costs associated with the set of reasonable statistical models, so as to provide a useful way for practitioners to understand uncertainty. To do this, the operational cost is cast as a regularization term in a learning algorithm's objective function, allowing either an optimistic or pessimistic view of possible costs, depending on the regularization parameter. From another perspective, if we have prior knowledge about the operational cost, for instance that it should be low, this knowledge can help to restrict the hypothesis space, and can help with generalization. We provide a theoretical generalization bound for this scenario. We also show that learning with operational costs is related to robust optimization.