regression and classification
Unifying Generation and Prediction on Graphs with Latent Graph Diffusion
In this paper, we propose the first framework that enables solving graph learning tasks of all levels (node, edge and graph) and all types (generation, regression and classification) using one formulation. We first formulate prediction tasks including regression and classification into a generic (conditional) generation framework, which enables diffusion models to perform deterministic tasks with provable guarantees. We then propose Latent Graph Diffusion (LGD), a generative model that can generate node, edge, and graph-level features of all categories simultaneously. We achieve this goal by embedding the graph structures and features into a latent space leveraging a powerful encoder and decoder, then training a diffusion model in the latent space. LGD is also capable of conditional generation through a specifically designed cross-attention mechanism. Leveraging LGD and the ``all tasks as generation'' formulation, our framework is capable of solving graph tasks of various levels and types. We verify the effectiveness of our framework with extensive experiments, where our models achieve state-of-the-art or highly competitive results across a wide range of generation and regression tasks.
Unifying Generation and Prediction on Graphs with Latent Graph Diffusion
In this paper, we propose the first framework that enables solving graph learning tasks of all levels (node, edge and graph) and all types (generation, regression and classification) using one formulation. We first formulate prediction tasks including regression and classification into a generic (conditional) generation framework, which enables diffusion models to perform deterministic tasks with provable guarantees. We then propose Latent Graph Diffusion (LGD), a generative model that can generate node, edge, and graph-level features of all categories simultaneously. We achieve this goal by embedding the graph structures and features into a latent space leveraging a powerful encoder and decoder, then training a diffusion model in the latent space. LGD is also capable of conditional generation through a specifically designed cross-attention mechanism.
A Fundamental Accuracy--Robustness Trade-off in Regression and Classification
We derive a fundamental trade-off between standard and adversarial risk in a rather general situation that formalizes the following simple intuition: "If no (nearly) optimal predictor is smooth, adversarial robustness comes at the cost of accuracy." As a concrete example, we evaluate the derived trade-off in regression with polynomial ridge functions under mild regularity conditions.
Relaxed Clipping: A Global Training Method for Robust Regression and Classification
Robust regression and classification are often thought to require non-convex loss functions that prevent scalable, global training. However, such a view neglects the possibility of reformulated training methods that can yield practically solvable alternatives. A natural way to make a loss function more robust to outliers is to truncate loss values that exceed a maximum threshold. We demonstrate that a relaxation of this form of "loss clipping" can be made globally solvable and applicable to any standard loss while guaranteeing robustness against outliers. We present a generic procedure that can be applied to standard loss functions and demonstrate improved robustness in regression and classification problems.
Target Variable Engineering
How does the formulation of a target variable affect performance within the ML pipeline? The experiments in this study examine numeric targets that have been binarized by comparing against a threshold. We compare the predictive performance of regression models trained to predict the numeric targets vs. classifiers trained to predict their binarized counterparts. Specifically, we make this comparison at every point of a randomized hyperparameter optimization search to understand the effect of computational resource budget on the tradeoff between the two. We find that regression requires significantly more computational effort to converge upon the optimal performance, and is more sensitive to both randomness and heuristic choices in the training process. Although classification can and does benefit from systematic hyperparameter tuning and model selection, the improvements are much less than for regression. This work comprises the first systematic comparison of regression and classification within the framework of computational resource requirements. Our findings contribute to calls for greater replicability and efficiency within the ML pipeline for the sake of building more sustainable and robust AI systems.
FilterBoost: Regression and Classification on Large Datasets
We study boosting in the filtering setting, where the booster draws examples from an oracle instead of using a fixed training set and so may train efficiently on very large datasets. Our algorithm, which is based on a logistic regression technique proposed by Collins, Schapire, & Singer, requires fewer assumptions to achieve bounds equivalent to or better than previous work. Moreover, we give the first proof that the algorithm of Collins et al. is a strong PAC learner, albeit within the filtering setting. Our proofs demonstrate the algorithm's strong theoretical proper- ties for both classification and conditional probability estimation, and we validate these results through extensive experiments. Empirically, our algorithm proves more robust to noise and overfitting than batch boosters in conditional probability estimation and proves competitive in classification.
Supervised Machine Learning: Regression and Classification
In this beginner-friendly program, you will learn the fundamentals of machine learning and how to use these techniques to build real-world AI applications. This Specialization is taught by Andrew Ng, an AI visionary who has led critical research at Stanford University and groundbreaking work at Google Brain, Baidu, and Landing.AI to advance the AI field. This 3-course Specialization is an updated and expanded version of Andrew's pioneering Machine Learning course, rated 4.9 out of 5 and taken by over 4.8 million learners since it launched in 2012. It provides a broad introduction to modern machine learning, including supervised learning (multiple linear regression, logistic regression, neural networks, and decision trees), unsupervised learning (clustering, dimensionality reduction, recommender systems), and some of the best practices used in Silicon Valley for artificial intelligence and machine learning innovation (evaluating and tuning models, taking a data-centric approach to improving performance, and more.) By the end of this Specialization, you will have mastered key concepts and gained the practical know-how to quickly and powerfully apply machine learning to challenging real-world problems.
Towards Speaker Age Estimation with Label Distribution Learning
Si, Shijing, Wang, Jianzong, Peng, Junqing, Xiao, Jing
Existing methods for speaker age estimation usually treat it as a multi-class classification or a regression problem. However, precise age identification remains a challenge due to label ambiguity, \emph{i.e.}, utterances from adjacent age of the same person are often indistinguishable. To address this, we utilize the ambiguous information among the age labels, convert each age label into a discrete label distribution and leverage the label distribution learning (LDL) method to fit the data. For each audio data sample, our method produces a age distribution of its speaker, and on top of the distribution we also perform two other tasks: age prediction and age uncertainty minimization. Therefore, our method naturally combines the age classification and regression approaches, which enhances the robustness of our method. We conduct experiments on the public NIST SRE08-10 dataset and a real-world dataset, which exhibit that our method outperforms baseline methods by a relatively large margin, yielding a 10\% reduction in terms of mean absolute error (MAE) on a real-world dataset.
Regression and classification with spline-based separable expansions
We introduce a supervised learning framework for target functions that are well approximated by a sum of (few) separable terms. The framework proposes to approximate each component function by a B-spline, resulting in an approximant where the underlying coefficient tensor of the tensor product expansion has a low-rank polyadic decomposition parametrization. By exploiting the multilinear structure, as well as the sparsity pattern of the compactly supported B-spline basis terms, we demonstrate how such an approximant is well-suited for regression and classification tasks by using the Gauss--Newton algorithm to train the parameters. Various numerical examples are provided analyzing the effectiveness of the approach.