Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #671269. 	[Title] Predicting Conditional Probability Distributions: A Connectionist Approach [Abstract] Most traditional prediction techniques deliver the mean of the probability distribution (a single point). For multimodal processes, instead of predicting the mean of the probability distribution, it is important to predict the full distribution. This article presents a new connectionist method to predict the conditional probability distribution in response to an input. The main idea is to transform the problem from a regression to a classification problem. The conditional probability distribution network can perform both direct predictions and iterated predictions, a task which is specific for time series problems. We compare our method to fuzzy logic and discuss important differences, and also demonstrate the architecture on two time series. The first is the benchmark laser series used in the Santa Fe competition, a deterministic chaotic system. The second is a time series from a Markov process which exhibits structure on two time scales. The network produces multimodal predictions for this series. We compare the predictions of the network with a nearest-neighbor predictor and find that the conditional probability network is more than twice as likely a model. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1132418. 	[Title] NONPARAMETRIC SELECTION OF INPUT VARIABLES FOR CONNECTIONIST LEARNING [Abstract]  Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #675847. 	[Title] NONLINEAR TRADING MODELS THROUGH SHARPE RATIO MAXIMIZATION [Abstract] Working Paper IS-97-005, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University. In: Decision Technologies for Financial Engineering (Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Neural Networks in the Capital Markets, NNCM-96), pp. 3-22. Edited by A.S.Weigend, Y.S.Abu-Mostafa, and A.-P.N.Refenes. Singapore: World Scientific, 1997. http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~aweigend/Research/Papers/SharpeRatio While many trading strategies are based on price prediction, traders in financial markets are typically interested in risk-adjusted performance such as the Sharpe Ratio, rather than price predictions themselves. This paper introduces an approach which generates a nonlinear strategy that explicitly maximizes the Sharpe Ratio. It is expressed as a neural network model whose output is the position size between a risky and a risk-free asset. The iterative parameter update rules are derived and compared to alternative approaches. The resulting trading strategy is evaluated and analyzed on both computer-generated data and real world data (DAX, the daily German equity index). Trading based on Sharpe Ratio maximization compares favorably to both profit optimization and probability matching (through cross-entropy optimization). The results show that the goal of optimizing out-of-sample risk-adjusted profit can be achieved with this nonlinear approach. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #202639. 	[Title] PREDICTING SUNSPOTS AND EXCHANGE RATES WITH CONNECTIONIST NETWORKS [Abstract] We investigate the effectiveness of connectionist networks for predicting the future continuation of temporal sequences. The problem of overfitting, particularly serious for short records of noisy data, is addressed by the method of weight-elimination: a term penalizing network complexity is added to the usual cost function in back-propagation. The ultimate goal is prediction accuracy. We analyze two time series. On the benchmark sunspot series, the networks outperform traditional statistical approaches. We show that the network performance does not deteriorate when there are more input units than needed. Weight-elimination also manages to extract some part of the dynamics of the notoriously noisy currency exchange rates and makes the network solution interpretable. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #69392. 	[Title] Forecasting electricity demand using nonlinear mixture of experts [Abstract] In this paper we study a forecasting model based on mixture of experts for predicting the French electric daily consumption energy. We split the task into two parts. Using mixture of experts, a first model predicts the electricity demand from the exogenous variables (such as temperature and degree of cloud cover) and can be viewed as a nonlinear regression model of mixture of Gaussians. Using a single neural network, a second model predicts the evolution of the residual error of the first one, and can be viewed as an nonlinear autoregression model. We analyze the splitting of the input space generated by the mixture of experts model, and compare the performance to models presently used. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #145176. 	[Title] Bayesian Non-linear Modelling for the Prediction Competition [Abstract] The 1993 energy prediction competition involved the prediction of a series of building energy loads from a series of environmental input variables. Non-linear regression using `neural networks' is a popular technique for such modeling tasks. Since it is not obvious how large a time-window of inputs is appropriate, or what preprocessing of inputs is best, this can be viewed as a regression problem in which there are many possible input variables, some of which may actually be irrelevant to the prediction of the output variable. Because a finite data set will show random correlations between the irrelevant inputs and the output, any conventional neural network (even with reg-ularisation or `weight decay') will not set the coefficients for these junk inputs to zero. Thus the irrelevant variables will hurt the model's performance. The Automatic Relevance Determination (ARD) model puts a prior over the regression parameters which embodies the concept of relevance. This is done in a simple and `soft' way by introducing multiple regularisation constants, one associated with each input. Using Bayesian methods, the regularisation constants for junk inputs are automatically inferred to be large, preventing those inputs from causing significant overfitting. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1132443. 	[Title] The Observer-Observation Dilemma in Neuro-Forecasting: Reliable Models From Unreliable Data Through CLEARNING [Abstract] This paper introduces the idea of clearning, of simultaneously cleaning data and learning the underlying structure. The cleaning step can be viewed as top-down processing (the model modifies the data), and the learning step can be viewed as bottom-up processing (where the data modifies the model). After discussing the statistical foundation of the proposed method from a maximum likelihood perspective, we apply clearning to a notoriously hard problem where benchmark performances are very well known: the prediction of foreign exchange rates. On the difficult 1993-1994 test period, clearning in conjunction with pruning yields an annualized return between 35 and 40% (out-of-sample), significantly better than an otherwise identical network trained without cleaning. The network was started with 69 inputs and 15 hidden units and ended up with only 39 non-zero weights between inputs and hidden units. The resulting ultra-sparse final architectures obtained with clearning and pruning are immune against overfitting, even on very noisy problems since the cleaned data allow for a simpler model. Apart from the very competitive performance, clearning gives insight into the data: we show how to estimate the overall signal-to-noise ratio of each input variable, and we show that error estimates for each pattern can be used to detect and remove outliers, and to replace missing or corrupted data by cleaned values. Clearning can be used in any nonlinear regression or classification problem. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #3229. 	[Title] Book Review  Introduction to the Theory of Neural Computation Reviewed by: 2 [Abstract] Neural computation, also called connectionism, parallel distributed processing, neural network modeling or brain-style computation, has grown rapidly in the last decade. Despite this explosion, and ultimately because of impressive applications, there has been a dire need for a concise introduction from a theoretical perspective, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of connectionist approaches and establishing links to other disciplines, such as statistics or control theory. The Introduction to the Theory of Neural Computation by Hertz, Krogh and Palmer (subsequently referred to as HKP) is written from the perspective of physics, the home discipline of the authors. The book fulfills its mission as an introduction for neural network novices, provided that they have some background in calculus, linear algebra, and statistics. It covers a number of models that are often viewed as disjoint. Critical analyses and fruitful comparisons between these models Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1132461. 	[Title] Avoiding overfitting by locally matching the noise level of the data gating network discovers the [Abstract] When trying to forecast the future behavior of a real-world system, two of the key problems are nonstationarity of the process (e.g., regime switching) and overfitting of the model (particularly serious for noisy processes). This articles shows how gated experts can point to solutions to these problems. The architecture, also called society of experts and mixture of experts consists of a (nonlinear) gating network and several (nonlinear) competing experts. Each expert learns a conditional mean (as usual), but each expert also has its own adaptive width. The gating network learns to assign a probability to each expert that depends on the input. This article first discusses the assumptions underlying this architecture and derives the weight update rules. It then evaluates the performance of gated experts in comparison to that of single networks, as well as to networks with two outputs, one predicting the mean, the other one the local error bar. This article also investigates the ability of gated experts to discover and characterize underlying the regimes. The results are: * there is significantly less overfitting compared to single nets, for two reasons: only subsets of the potential inputs are given to the experts and gating network (less of a curse of dimensionality), and the experts learn to match their variances to the (local) noise levels, thus only learning as This article focuses on the architecture and the overfitting problem. Applications to a computer-generated toy problem and the laser data from Santa Fe Competition are given in [Mangeas and Weigend, 1995], and the application to the real-world problem of predicting the electricity demand of France are given in [Mangeas et al., 1995]. much as the data support. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #671293. 	[Title] Selecting Input Variables Using Mutual Information and Nonparametric Density Estimation [Abstract] In learning problems where a connectionist network is trained with a finite sized training set, better generalization performance is often obtained when unneeded weights in the network are eliminated. One source of unneeded weights comes from the inclusion of input variables that provide little information about the output variables. We propose a method for identifying and eliminating these input variables. The method first determines the relationship between input and output variables using nonparametric density estimation and then measures the relevance of input variables using the information theoretic concept of mutual information. We present results from our method on a simple toy problem and a nonlinear time series. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #672064. 	[Title] Direct Multi-Step Time Series Prediction Using TD() [Abstract] This paper explores the application of Temporal Difference (TD) learning (Sutton, 1988) to forecasting the behavior of dynamical systems with real-valued outputs (as opposed to game-like situations). The performance of TD learning in comparison to standard supervised learning depends on the amount of noise present in the data. In this paper, we use a deterministic chaotic time series from a low-noise laser. For the task of direct five-step ahead predictions, our experiments show that standard supervised learning is better than TD learning. The TD algorithm can be viewed as linking adjacent predictions. A similar effect can be obtained by sharing the internal representation in the network. We thus compare two architectures for both paradigms: the first architecture (separate hidden units) consists of individual networks for each of the five direct multi-step prediction tasks, the second (shared hidden units) has a single (larger) hidden layer that finds a representation from which all five predictions for the next five steps are generated. For this data set we do not find any significant difference between the two architectures. fl http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~andreas/Home.html. This paper is available as ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/Time-Series/MyPapers/kazlas.weigend nips7.ps.Z Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #240321. 	[Title] Nonlinear gated experts for time series: discovering regimes and avoiding overfitting [Abstract] In: International Journal of Neural Systems 6 (1995) p. 373 - 399. URL of this paper: ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/Time-Series/MyPapers/experts.ps.Z, or http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~andreas/Time-Series/MyPapers/experts.ps.Z University of Colorado Computer Science Technical Report CU-CS-798-95. In the analysis and prediction of real-world systems, two of the key problems are nonstationarity(often in the form of switching between regimes), and overfitting (particularly serious for noisy processes). This article addresses these problems using gated experts, consisting of a (nonlinear) gating network, and several (also nonlinear) competing experts. Each expert learns to predict the conditional mean, and each expert adapts its width to match the noise level in its regime. The gating network learns to predict the probability of each expert, given the input. This article focuses on the case where the gating network bases its decision on information from the inputs. This can be contrasted to hidden Markov models where the decision is based on the previous state(s) (i.e., on the output of the gating network at the previous time step), as well as to averaging over several predictors. In contrast, gated experts soft-partition the input space. This article discusses the underlying statistical assumptions, derives the weight update rules, and compares the performance of gated experts to standard methods on three time series: (1) a computer-generated series, obtained by randomly switching between two nonlinear processes, (2) a time series from the Santa Fe Time Series Competition (the light intensity of a laser in chaotic state), and (3) the daily electricity demand of France, a real-world multivariate problem with structure on several time scales. The main results are (1) the gating network correctly discovers the different regimes of the process, (2) the widths associated with each expert are important for the segmentation task (and they can be used to characterize the sub-processes), and (3) there is less overfitting compared to single networks (homogeneous multi-layer perceptrons), since the experts learn to match their variances to the (local) noise levels. This can be viewed as matching the local complexity of the model to the local complexity of the data. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #672070. 	[Title] Evaluating Neural Network Predictors by Bootstrapping [Abstract] We present a new method, inspired by the bootstrap, whose goal it is to determine the quality and reliability of a neural network predictor. Our method leads to more robust forecasting along with a large amount of statistical information on forecast performance that we exploit. We exhibit the method in the context of multi-variate time series prediction on financial data from the New York Stock Exchange. It turns out that the variation due to different resamplings (i.e., splits between training, cross-validation, and test sets) is significantly larger than the variation due to different network conditions (such as architecture and initial weights). Furthermore, this method allows us to forecast a probability distribution, as opposed to the traditional case of just a single value at each time step. We demonstrate this on a strictly held-out test set that includes the 1987 stock market crash. We also compare the performance of the class of neural networks to identically bootstrapped linear models. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #672071. 	[Title] Predictions with Confidence Intervals (Local Error Bars) [Abstract] We present a new method for obtaining local error bars, i.e., estimates of the confidence in the predicted value that depend on the input. We approach this problem of nonlinear regression in a maximum likelihood framework. We demonstrate our technique first on computer generated data with locally varying, normally distributed target noise. We then apply it to the laser data from the Santa Fe Time Series Competition. Finally, we extend the technique to estimate error bars for iterated predictions, and apply it to the exact competition task where it gives the best performance to date. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1154123. 	[Title]  [Abstract] Most connectionist modeling assumes noise-free inputs. This assumption is often violated. This paper introduces the idea of clearning, of simultaneously cleaning the data and learning the underlying structure. The cleaning step can be viewed as top-down processing (where the model modifies the data), and the learning step can be viewed as bottom-up processing (where the data modifies the model). Clearning is used in conjunction with standard pruning. This paper discusses the statistical foundation of clearning, gives an interpretation in terms of a mechanical model, describes how to obtain both point predictions and conditional densities for the output, and shows how the resulting model can be used to discover properties of the data otherwise not accessible (such as the signal-to-noise ratio of the inputs). This paper uses clearning to predict foreign exchange rates, a noisy time series problem with well-known benchmark performances. On the out-of-sample 1993-1994 test period, clearning obtains an annualized return on investment above 30%, significantly better than an otherwise identical network. The final ultra-sparse network with 36 remaining non-zero input-to-hidden weights (of the 1035 initial weights between 69 inputs and 15 hidden units) is very robust against overfitting. This small network also lends itself to interpretation. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1154124. 	[Title]  [Abstract] Most connectionist modeling assumes noise-free inputs. This assumption is often violated. This paper introduces the idea of clearning, of simultaneously cleaning the data and learning the underlying structure. The cleaning step can be viewed as top-down processing (where the model modifies the data), and the learning step can be viewed as bottom-up processing (where the data modifies the model). Clearning is used in conjunction with standard pruning. This paper discusses the statistical foundation of clearning, gives an interpretation in terms of a mechanical model, describes how to obtain both point predictions and conditional densities for the output, and shows how the resulting model can be used to discover properties of the data otherwise not accessible (such as the signal-to-noise ratio of the inputs). This paper uses clearning to predict foreign exchange rates, a noisy time series problem with well-known benchmark performances. On the out-of-sample 1993-1994 test period, clearning obtains an annualized return on investment above 30%, significantly better than an otherwise identical network. The final ultra-sparse network with 36 remaining non-zero input-to-hidden weights (of the 1035 initial weights between 69 inputs and 15 hidden units) is very robust against overfitting. This small network also lends itself to interpretation. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #40151. 	[Title] Hoeffding Races: Accelerating Model Selection Search for Classification and Function Approximation [Abstract] Selecting a good model of a set of input points by cross validation is a computationally intensive process, especially if the number of possible models or the number of training points is high. Techniques such as gradient descent are helpful in searching through the space of models, but problems such as local minima, and more importantly, lack of a distance metric between various models reduce the applicability of these search methods. Hoeffding Races is a technique for finding a good model for the data by quickly discarding bad models, and concentrating the computational effort at differentiating between the better ones. This paper focuses on the special case of leave-one-out cross validation applied to memory-based learning algorithms, but we also argue that it is applicable to any class of model selection problems. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #4330. 	[Title] Hierarchical Mixtures of Experts and the EM Algorithm [Abstract] We present a tree-structured architecture for supervised learning. The statistical model underlying the architecture is a hierarchical mixture model in which both the mixture coefficients and the mixture components are generalized linear models (GLIM's). Learning is treated as a maximum likelihood problem; in particular, we present an Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm for adjusting the parameters of the architecture. We also develop an on-line learning algorithm in which the parameters are updated incrementally. Comparative simulation results are presented in the robot dynamics domain. This report describes research done at the Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, the Center for Biological and Computational Learning, and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support for CBCL is provided in part by a grant from the NSF (ASC-9217041). Support for the laboratory's artificial intelligence research is provided in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Dept. of Defense. The authors were supported by a grant from the McDonnell-Pew Foundation, by a grant from ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories, by a grant from Siemens Corporation, by by grant IRI-9013991 from the National Science Foundation, by grant N00014-90-J-1942 from the Office of Naval Research, and by NSF grant ECS-9216531 to support an Initiative in Intelligent Control at MIT. Michael I. Jordan is a NSF Presidential Young Investigator. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #6130. 	[Title] ``Learning Local Error Bars for Nonlinear Regression.''  Learning Local Error Bars for Nonlinear Regression [Abstract] We present a new method for obtaining local error bars for nonlinear regression, i.e., estimates of the confidence in predicted values that depend on the input. We approach this problem by applying a maximum-likelihood framework to an assumed distribution of errors. We demonstrate our method first on computer-generated data with locally varying, normally distributed target noise. We then apply it to laser data from the Santa Fe Time Series Competition where the underlying system noise is known quantization error and the error bars give local estimates of model misspecification. In both cases, the method also provides a weighted-regression effect that improves generalization performance. Please summarise all the given information.

Paper #671269 has the title `Predicting Conditional Probability Distributions: A Connectionist Approach  
` and the abstract `Most traditional prediction techniques deliver the mean of the probability distribution (a single point). For multimodal processes, instead of predicting the mean of the probability distribution, it is important to predict the full distribution. This article presents a new connectionist method to predict the conditional probability distribution in response to an input. The main idea is to transform the problem from a regression to a classification problem. The conditional probability distribution network can perform both direct predictions and iterated predictions, a task which is specific for time series problems. We compare our method to fuzzy logic and discuss important differences, and also demonstrate the architecture on two time series. The first is the benchmark laser series used in the Santa Fe competition, a deterministic chaotic system. The second is a time series from a Markov process which exhibits structure on two time scales. The network produces multimodal predictions for this series. We compare the predictions of the network with a nearest-neighbor predictor and find that the conditional probability network is more than twice as likely a model.
`.
Question: Which category should Paper #671269 be classified as ?
You can select one from ['Neural_Networks', 'Case_Based', 'Theory', 'Reinforcement_Learning', 'Probabilistic_Methods', 'Rule_Learning', 'Genetic_Algorithms'].


Paper #671269 has the title `Predicting Conditional Probability Distributions: A Connectionist Approach  
` and the abstract `Most traditional prediction techniques deliver the mean of the probability distribution (a single point). For multimodal processes, instead of predicting the mean of the probability distribution, it is important to predict the full distribution. This article presents a new connectionist method to predict the conditional probability distribution in response to an input. The main idea is to transform the problem from a regression to a classification problem. The conditional probability distribution network can perform both direct predictions and iterated predictions, a task which is specific for time series problems. We compare our method to fuzzy logic and discuss important differences, and also demonstrate the architecture on two time series. The first is the benchmark laser series used in the Santa Fe competition, a deterministic chaotic system. The second is a time series from a Markov process which exhibits structure on two time scales. The network produces multimodal predictions for this series. We compare the predictions of the network with a nearest-neighbor predictor and find that the conditional probability network is more than twice as likely a model.
`.
Question: Which category should Paper #671269 be classified as ?
You can select one from ['Neural_Networks', 'Case_Based', 'Theory', 'Reinforcement_Learning', 'Probabilistic_Methods', 'Rule_Learning', 'Genetic_Algorithms'].

This paper should be classified into: Neural_Networks