The problem of learning Markov equivalence classes of Bayesian network structures may be solved by searching for the maximum of a scoring metric in a space of these classes. This paper deals with the definition and analysis of one such search space. We use a theoretically motivated neighbourhood, the inclusion boundary, and represent equivalence classes by essential graphs. We show that this search space is connected and that the score of the neighbours can be evaluated incrementally. We devise a practical way of building this neighbourhood for an essential graph that is purely graphical and does not explicitely refer to the underlying independences. We find that its size can be intractable, depending on the complexity of the essential graph of the equivalence class. The emphasis is put on the potential use of this space with greedy hill -climbing search

Robust optimization is one of the fundamental approaches to deal with uncertainty in combinatorial optimization. This paper considers the robust spanning tree problem with interval data, which arises in a variety of telecommunication applications. It proposes a constraint satisfaction approach using a combinatorial lower bound, a pruning component that removes infeasible and suboptimal edges, as well as a search strategy exploring the most uncertain edges first. The resulting algorithm is shown to produce very dramatic improvements over the mathematical programming approach of Yaman et al. and to enlarge considerably the class of problems amenable to effective solutions

Ancestral graphs provide a class of graphs that can encode conditional independence relations that arise in directed acyclic graph (DAG) models with latent and selection variables, corresponding to marginalization and conditioning. However, for any ancestral graph, there may be several other graphs to which it is Markov equivalent. We introduce a simple representation of a Markov equivalence class of ancestral graphs, thereby facilitating the model search process for some given data. More specifically, we define a join operation on ancestral graphs which will associate a unique graph with an equivalence class. We also extend the separation criterion for ancestral graphs (which is an extension of d-separation) and provide a proof of the pairwise Markov property for joined ancestral graphs. Proving the pairwise Markov property is the first step towards developing a global Markov property for these graphs. The ultimate goal of this work is to obtain a full characterization of the structure of Markov equivalence classes for maximal ancestral graphs, thereby extending analogous results for DAGs given by Frydenberg (1990), Verma and Pearl (1991), Chickering (1995) and Andersson et a!.

We introduce a new method for training deep Boltzmann machines jointly. Prior methods require an initial learning pass that trains the deep Boltzmann machine greedily, one layer at a time, or do not perform well on classifi- cation tasks.

We consider the problem of learning the structure of undirected graphical models with bounded treewidth, within the maximum likelihood framework. This is an NP-hard problem and most approaches consider local search techniques. In this paper, we pose it as a combinatorial optimization problem, which is then relaxed to a convex optimization problem that involves searching over the forest and hyperforest polytopes with special structures, independently. A supergradient method is used to solve the dual problem, with a run-time complexity of $O(k^3 n^{k+2} \log n)$ for each iteration, where $n$ is the number of variables and $k$ is a bound on the treewidth. We compare our approach to state-of-the-art methods on synthetic datasets and classical benchmarks, showing the gains of the novel convex approach.

In machine learning, Domain Adaptation (DA) arises when the distribution gen- erating the test (target) data differs from the one generating the learning (source) data. It is well known that DA is an hard task even under strong assumptions, among which the covariate-shift where the source and target distributions diverge only in their marginals, i.e. they have the same labeling function. Another popular approach is to consider an hypothesis class that moves closer the two distributions while implying a low-error for both tasks. This is a VC-dim approach that restricts the complexity of an hypothesis class in order to get good generalization. Instead, we propose a PAC-Bayesian approach that seeks for suitable weights to be given to each hypothesis in order to build a majority vote. We prove a new DA bound in the PAC-Bayesian context. This leads us to design the first DA-PAC-Bayesian algorithm based on the minimization of the proposed bound. Doing so, we seek for a \rho-weighted majority vote that takes into account a trade-off between three quantities. The first two quantities being, as usual in the PAC-Bayesian approach, (a) the complexity of the majority vote (measured by a Kullback-Leibler divergence) and (b) its empirical risk (measured by the \rho-average errors on the source sample). The third quantity is (c) the capacity of the majority vote to distinguish some structural difference between the source and target samples.

Results are presented on the performance of Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference system (ANFIS) for wind velocity forecasts in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The data bank was provided by the meteorological station located at the University of Isthmus, Tehuantepec campus, and this data bank covers the period from 2008 to 2011. Three data models were constructed to carry out 16, 24 and 48 hours forecasts using the following variables: wind velocity, temperature, barometric pressure, and date. The performance measure for the three models is the mean standard error (MSE). In this work, performance analysis in short-term prediction is presented, because it is essential in order to define an adequate wind speed model for eolian parks, where a right planning provide economic benefits.

In their nature configuration problems are combinatorial (optimization) problems. In order to find a configuration a solver has to instantiate a number of components of a some type and each of these components can be used in a relation defined for a type. Therefore, many solutions of a configuration problem have symmetric ones which can be obtained by replacing some component of a solution by another one of the same type. These symmetric solutions decrease performance of optimization algorithms because of two reasons: a) they satisfy all requirements and cannot be pruned out from the search space; and b) existence of symmetric optimal solutions does not allow to prove the optimum in a feasible time.

In the present paper we use principles of fuzzy logic to develop a general model representing several processes in a system's operation characterized by a degree of vagueness and/or uncertainty. For this, the main stages of the corresponding process are represented as fuzzy subsets of a set of linguistic labels characterizing the system's performance at each stage. We also introduce three alternative measures of a fuzzy system's effectiveness connected to our general model. These measures include the system's total possibilistic uncertainty, the Shannon's entropy properly modified for use in a fuzzy environment and the "centroid" method in which the coordinates of the center of mass of the graph of the membership function involved provide an alternative measure of the system's performance. The advantages and disadvantages of the above measures are discussed and a combined use of them is suggested for achieving a worthy of credit mathematical analysis of the corresponding situation. An application is also developed for the Mathematical Modelling process illustrating the use of our results in practice.

Tree projections provide a mathematical framework that encompasses all the various (purely) structural decomposition methods that have been proposed in the literature to single out classes of nearly-acyclic (hyper)graphs, such as the tree decomposition method, which is the most powerful decomposition method on graphs, and the (generalized) hypertree decomposition method, which is its natural counterpart on arbitrary hypergraphs. The paper analyzes this framework, by focusing in particular on "minimal" tree projections, that is, on tree projections without useless redundancies. First, it is shown that minimal tree projections enjoy a number of properties that are usually required for normal form decompositions in various structural decomposition methods. In particular, they enjoy the same kind of connection properties as (minimal) tree decompositions of graphs, with the result being tight in the light of the negative answer that is provided to the open question about whether they enjoy a slightly stronger notion of connection property, defined to speed-up the computation of hypertree decompositions. Second, it is shown that tree projections admit a natural game-theoretic characterization in terms of the Captain and Robber game. In this game, as for the Robber and Cops game characterizing tree decompositions, the existence of winning strategies implies the existence of monotone ones. As a special case, the Captain and Robber game can be used to characterize the generalized hypertree decomposition method, where such a game-theoretic characterization was missing and asked for. Besides their theoretical interest, these results have immediate algorithmic applications both for the general setting and for structural decomposition methods that can be recast in terms of tree projections.