In literature there are several studies on the performance of Bayesian network structure learning algorithms. The focus of these studies is almost always the heuristics the learning algorithms are based on, i.e. the maximisation algorithms (in score-based algorithms) or the techniques for learning the dependencies of each variable (in constraint-based algorithms). In this paper we investigate how the use of permutation tests instead of parametric ones affects the performance of Bayesian network structure learning from discrete data. Shrinkage tests are also covered to provide a broad overview of the techniques developed in current literature.

We present a multi-task learning approach to jointly estimate the means of multiple independent data sets. The proposed multi-task averaging (MTA) algorithm results in a convex combination of the single-task maximum likelihood estimates. We derive the optimal minimum risk estimator and the minimax estimator, and show that these estimators can be efficiently estimated. Simulations and real data experiments demonstrate that MTA estimators often outperform both single-task and James-Stein estimators.

A very important topic in systems biology is developing statistical methods that automatically find causal relations in gene regulatory networks with no prior knowledge of causal connectivity. Many methods have been developed for time series data. However, discovery methods based on steady-state data are often necessary and preferable since obtaining time series data can be more expensive and/or infeasible for many biological systems. A conventional approach is causal Bayesian networks. However, estimation of Bayesian networks is ill-posed. In many cases it cannot uniquely identify the underlying causal network and only gives a large class of equivalent causal networks that cannot be distinguished between based on the data distribution. We propose a new discovery algorithm for uniquely identifying the underlying causal network of genes. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed method is the first algorithm for learning gene networks based on a fully identifiable causal model called LiNGAM. We here compare our algorithm with competing algorithms using artificially-generated data, although it is definitely better to test it based on real microarray gene expression data.

The use of L1 regularisation for sparse learning has generated immense research interest, with successful application in such diverse areas as signal acquisition, image coding, genomics and collaborative filtering. While existing work highlights the many advantages of L1 methods, in this paper we find that L1 regularisation often dramatically underperforms in terms of predictive performance when compared with other methods for inferring sparsity. We focus on unsupervised latent variable models, and develop L1 minimising factor models, Bayesian variants of "L1", and Bayesian models with a stronger L0-like sparsity induced through spike-and-slab distributions. These spike-and-slab Bayesian factor models encourage sparsity while accounting for uncertainty in a principled manner and avoiding unnecessary shrinkage of non-zero values. We demonstrate on a number of data sets that in practice spike-and-slab Bayesian methods outperform L1 minimisation, even on a computational budget. We thus highlight the need to re-assess the wide use of L1 methods in sparsity-reliant applications, particularly when we care about generalising to previously unseen data, and provide an alternative that, over many varying conditions, provides improved generalisation performance.

This paper presents a novel fuzzy logic based Adaptive Super-twisting Sliding Mode Controller for the control of dynamic uncertain systems. The proposed controller combines the advantages of Second order Sliding Mode Control, Fuzzy Logic Control and Adaptive Control. The reaching conditions, stability and robustness of the system with the proposed controller are guaranteed. In addition, the proposed controller is well suited for simple design and implementation. The effectiveness of the proposed controller over the first order Sliding Mode Fuzzy Logic controller is illustrated by Matlab based simulations performed on a DC-DC Buck converter. Based on this comparison, the proposed controller is shown to obtain the desired transient response without causing chattering and error under steady-state conditions. The proposed controller is able to give robust performance in terms of rejection to input voltage variations and load variations.

Inferring probabilistic networks from data is a notoriously difficult task. Under various goodness-of-fit measures, finding an optimal network is NP-hard, even if restricted to polytrees of bounded in-degree. Polynomial-time algorithms are known only for rare special cases, perhaps most notably for branchings, that is, polytrees in which the in-degree of every node is at most one. Here, we study the complexity of finding an optimal polytree that can be turned into a branching by deleting some number of arcs or nodes, treated as a parameter. We show that the problem can be solved via a matroid intersection formulation in polynomial time if the number of deleted arcs is bounded by a constant. The order of the polynomial time bound depends on this constant, hence the algorithm does not establish fixed-parameter tractability when parameterized by the number of deleted arcs. We show that a restricted version of the problem allows fixed-parameter tractability and hence scales well with the parameter. We contrast this positive result by showing that if we parameterize by the number of deleted nodes, a somewhat more powerful parameter, the problem is not fixed-parameter tractable, subject to a complexity-theoretic assumption.

System identification from the experimental data plays a vital role for model based controller design. Derivation of process model from first principles is often difficult due to its complexity. The first stage in the development of any control and monitoring system is the identification and modeling of the system. Each model is developed within the context of a specific control problem. Thus, the need for a general system identification framework is warranted. The proposed framework should be able to adapt and emphasize different properties based on the control objective and the nature of the behavior of the system. Therefore, system identification has been a valuable tool in identifying the model of the system based on the input and output data for the design of the controller. The present work is concerned with the identification of transfer function models using statistical model identification, process reaction curve method, ARX model, genetic algorithm and modeling using neural network and fuzzy logic for interacting and non interacting tank process. The identification technique and modeling used is prone to parameter change & disturbance. The proposed methods are used for identifying the mathematical model and intelligent model of interacting and non interacting process from the real time experimental data.

We present the multidimensional membership mixture (M3) models where every dimension of the membership represents an independent mixture model and each data point is generated from the selected mixture components jointly. This is helpful when the data has a certain shared structure. For example, three unique means and three unique variances can effectively form a Gaussian mixture model with nine components, while requiring only six parameters to fully describe it. In this paper, we present three instantiations of M3 models (together with the learning and inference algorithms): infinite, finite, and hybrid, depending on whether the number of mixtures is fixed or not. They are built upon Dirichlet process mixture models, latent Dirichlet allocation, and a combination respectively. We then consider two applications: topic modeling and learning 3D object arrangements. Our experiments show that our M3 models achieve better performance using fewer topics than many classic topic models. We also observe that topics from the different dimensions of M3 models are meaningful and orthogonal to each other.

This paper proposes a decision theory for a symbolic generalization of probability theory (SP). Darwiche and Ginsberg [2, 3] proposed SP to relax the requirement of using numbers for uncertainty while preserving desirable patterns of Bayesian reasoning. SP represents uncertainty by symbolic supports that are ordered partially rather than completely as in the case of standard probability. We show that a preference relation on acts that satisfies a number of intuitive postulates is represented by a utility function whose domain is a set of pairs of supports. We argue that a subjective interpretation is as useful and appropriate for SP as it is for numerical probability. It is useful because the subjective interpretation provides a basis for uncertainty elicitation. It is appropriate because we can provide a decision theory that explains how preference on acts is based on support comparison.

Distributions over rankings are used to model data in a multitude of real world settings such as preference analysis and political elections. Modeling such distributions presents several computational challenges, however, due to the factorial size of the set of rankings over an item set. Some of these challenges are quite familiar to the artificial intelligence community, such as how to compactly represent a distribution over a combinatorially large space, and how to efficiently perform probabilistic inference with these representations. With respect to ranking, however, there is the additional challenge of what we refer to as human task complexity -- users are rarely willing to provide a full ranking over a long list of candidates, instead often preferring to provide partial ranking information. Simultaneously addressing all of these challenges -- i.e., designing a compactly representable model which is amenable to efficient inference and can be learned using partial ranking data -- is a difficult task, but is necessary if we would like to scale to problems with nontrivial size. In this paper, we show that the recently proposed riffled independence assumptions cleanly and efficiently address each of the above challenges. In particular, we establish a tight mathematical connection between the concepts of riffled independence and of partial rankings. This correspondence not only allows us to then develop efficient and exact algorithms for performing inference tasks using riffled independence based representations with partial rankings, but somewhat surprisingly, also shows that efficient inference is not possible for riffle independent models (in a certain sense) with observations which do not take the form of partial rankings. Finally, using our inference algorithm, we introduce the first method for learning riffled independence based models from partially ranked data.