Bayesian Networks (BNs) are useful tools giving a natural and compact representation of joint probability distributions. In many applications one needs to learn a Bayesian Network (BN) from data. In this context, it is important to understand the number of samples needed in order to guarantee a successful learning. Previous work have studied BNs sample complexity, yet it mainly focused on the requirement that the learned distribution will be close to the original distribution which generated the data. In this work, we study a different aspect of the learning, namely the number of samples needed in order to learn the correct structure of the network. We give both asymptotic results, valid in the large sample limit, and experimental results, demonstrating the learning behavior for feasible sample sizes. We show that structure learning is a more difficult task, compared to approximating the correct distribution, in the sense that it requires a much larger number of samples, regardless of the computational power available for the learner.

Ranking objects is a simple and natural procedure for organizing data. It is often performed by assigning a quality score to each object according to its relevance to the problem at hand. Ranking is widely used for object selection, when resources are limited and it is necessary to select a subset of most relevant objects for further processing. In real world situations, the object's scores are often calculated from noisy measurements, casting doubt on the ranking reliability. We introduce an analytical method for assessing the influence of noise levels on the ranking reliability. We use two similarity measures for reliability evaluation, Top-K-List overlap and Kendall's tau measure, and show that the former is much more sensitive to noise than the latter. We apply our method to gene selection in a series of microarray experiments of several cancer types. The results indicate that the reliability of the lists obtained from these experiments is very poor, and that experiment sizes which are necessary for attaining reasonably stable Top-K-Lists are much larger than those currently available. Simulations support our analytical results.

A new approach for clustering is proposed. This method is based on an analogy to a physical model; the ferromagnetic Potts model at thermal equilibrium is used as an analog computer for this hard optimization problem. We do not assume any structure of the underlying distributionof the data. Phase space of the Potts model is divided into three regions; ferromagnetic, super-paramagnetic and paramagnetic phases. The region of interest is that corresponding to the super-paramagnetic one, where domains of aligned spins appear.

A new approach for clustering is proposed. This method is based on an analogy to a physical model; the ferromagnetic Potts model at thermal equilibrium is used as an analog computer for this hard optimization problem. We do not assume any structure of the underlying distribution of the data. Phase space of the Potts model is divided into three regions; ferromagnetic, super-paramagnetic and paramagnetic phases. The region of interest is that corresponding to the super-paramagnetic one, where domains of aligned spins appear.

We introduce a learning algorithm for multilayer neural networks composed of binary linear threshold elements. Whereas existing algorithms reduce the learning process to minimizing a cost function over the weights, our method treats the internal representations as the fundamental entities to be determined. Once a correct set of internal representations is arrived at, the weights are found by the local aild biologically plausible Perceptron Learning Rule (PLR). We tested our learning algorithm on four problems: adjacency, symmetry, parity and combined symmetry-parity.

We introduce a learning algorithm for multilayer neural networks composedof binary linear threshold elements. Whereas existing algorithms reduce the learning process to minimizing a cost function over the weights, our method treats the internal representations asthe fundamental entities to be determined. Once a correct set of internal representations is arrived at, the weights are found by the local aild biologically plausible Perceptron Learning Rule (PLR). We tested our learning algorithm on four problems: adjacency, symmetry, parity and combined symmetry-parity.

We introduce a learning algorithm for multilayer neural networks composed of binary linear threshold elements. Whereas existing algorithms reduce the learning process to minimizing a cost function over the weights, our method treats the internal representations as the fundamental entities to be determined. Once a correct set of internal representations is arrived at, the weights are found by the local aild biologically plausible Perceptron Learning Rule (PLR). We tested our learning algorithm on four problems: adjacency, symmetry, parity and combined symmetry-parity.