Softmax Loss (SL) is widely applied in recommender systems (RS) and has demonstrated effectiveness. This work analyzes SL from a pairwise perspective, revealing two significant limitations: 1) the relationship between SL and conventional ranking metrics like DCG is not sufficiently tight; 2) SL is highly sensitive to false negative instances. Our analysis indicates that these limitations are primarily due to the use of the exponential function. To address these issues, this work extends SL to a new family of loss functions, termed Pairwise Softmax Loss (PSL), which replaces the exponential function in SL with other appropriate activation functions. While the revision is minimal, we highlight three merits of PSL: 1) it serves as a tighter surrogate for DCG with suitable activation functions; 2) it better balances data contributions; and 3) it acts as a specific BPR loss enhanced by Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO).

Neural Information Processing Systems http://nips.cc/

A soft-max function is a mechanism for choosing one out of a number of options, given the value of each option.

Exponential family distributions are highly useful in machine learning since their calculation can be performed efficiently through natural parameters. The exponential family has recently been extended to the t-exponential family, which contains Student-t distributions as family members and thus allows us to handle noisy data well. However, since the t-exponential family is defined by the deformed exponential, an efficient learning algorithm for the t-exponential family such as expectation propagation (EP) cannot be derived in the same way as the ordinary exponential family. In this paper, we borrow the mathematical tools of q-algebra from statistical physics and show that the pseudo additivity of distributions allows us to perform calculation of t-exponential family distributions through natural parameters. We then develop an expectation propagation (EP) algorithm for the t-exponential family, which provides a deterministic approximation to the posterior or predictive distribution with simple moment matching. We finally apply the proposed EP algorithm to the Bayes point machine and Student-t process classification, and demonstrate their performance numerically.

We provide an upper bound on the number of neurons required in a shallow neural network to approximate a continuous function on a compact set with a given accuracy. This method, inspired by a specific proof of the Stone-Weierstrass theorem, is constructive and more general than previous bounds of this character, as it applies to any continuous function on any compact set.

By tuning the two temperatures, we create loss functions that are non-convex already in the single layer case.

We greatly appreciate the three reviewers for their valuable comments. The following are our responses. Therefore, the cumulative hazard function also plays a crucial role in generating a median predictor. The performance is evaluated by the mean absolute error, summarized below. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of our model in the prediction task.

In this paper, we develop a wide class Mirror Descent (MD) algorithms, which play a key role in machine learning. For this purpose we formulated the constrained optimization problem, in which we exploits the Bregman divergence with the Tempesta multi-parametric deformation logarithm as a link function. This link function called also mirror function defines the mapping between the primal and dual spaces and is associated with a very-wide (in fact, theoretically infinite) class of generalized trace-form entropies. In order to derive novel MD updates, we estimate generalized exponential function, which closely approximates the inverse of the multi-parametric Tempesta generalized logarithm. The shape and properties of the Tempesta logarithm and its inverse-deformed exponential functions can be tuned by several hyperparameters. By learning these hyperparameters, we can adapt to distribution or geometry of training data, and we can adjust them to achieve desired properties of MD algorithms. The concept of applying multi-parametric logarithms allow us to generate a new wide and flexible family of MD and mirror-less MD updates.

Softmax Loss (SL) is widely applied in recommender systems (RS) and has demonstrated effectiveness. This work analyzes SL from a pairwise perspective, revealing two significant limitations: 1) the relationship between SL and conventional ranking metrics like DCG is not sufficiently tight; 2) SL is highly sensitive to false negative instances. Our analysis indicates that these limitations are primarily due to the use of the exponential function. To address these issues, this work extends SL to a new family of loss functions, termed Pairwise Softmax Loss (PSL), which replaces the exponential function in SL with other appropriate activation functions. While the revision is minimal, we highlight three merits of PSL: 1) it serves as a tighter surrogate for DCG with suitable activation functions; 2) it better balances data contributions; and 3) it acts as a specific BPR loss enhanced by Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO).

Straight line equation $y=mx$ with slope $m$, when singularly perturbed as $ay^3+y=mx$ with a positive parameter $a$, results in S-shaped curves or S-curves on a real plane. As $a\rightarrow 0$, we get back $y=mx$ which is a cumulative distribution function of a continuous uniform distribution that describes the occurrence of every event in an interval to be equally probable. As $a\rightarrow\infty$, the derivative of $y$ has finite support only at $y=0$ resembling a degenerate distribution. Based on these arguments, in this work, we propose that these S-curves can represent maximum entropy uniform distribution to a zero entropy single value. We also argue that these S-curves are superposable as they are only parametrically nonlinear but fundamentally linear. So far, the superposed forms have been used to capture the patterns of natural systems such as nonlinear dynamics of biological growth and kinetics of enzyme reactions. Here, we attempt to use the S-curve and its superposed form as statistical models. We fit the models on a classical dataset containing flower measurements of iris plants and analyze their usefulness in pattern recognition. Based on these models, we claim that any non-uniform pattern can be represented as a singular perturbation to uniform distribution. However, our parametric estimation procedure have some limitations such as sensitivity to initial conditions depending on the data at hand.