OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
An Active Approach for Model Interpretation
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Model interpretation, or explanation of a machine learning classifier, aims to extract generalizable knowledge from a trained classifier into a human-understandable format, for various purposes such as model assessment, debugging and trust. From a computaional viewpoint, it is formulated as approximating the target classifier using a simpler interpretable model, such as rule models like a decision set/list/tree. Often, this approximation is handled as standard supervised learning and the only difference is that the labels are provided by the target classifier instead of ground truth. This paradigm is particularly popular because there exists a variety of well-studied supervised algorithms for learning an interpretable classifier. However, we argue that this paradigm is suboptimal for it does not utilize the unique property of the model interpretation problem, that is, the ability to generate synthetic instances and query the target classifier for their labels. We call this the active-query property, suggesting that we should consider model interpretation from an active learning perspective. Following this insight, we argue that the active-query property should be employed when designing a model interpretation algorithm, and that the generation of synthetic instances should be integrated seamlessly with the algorithm that learns the model interpretation. In this paper, we demonstrate that by doing so, it is possible to achieve more faithful interpretation with simpler model complexity. As a technical contribution, we present an active algorithm Active Decision Set Induction (ADS) to learn a decision set, a set of if-else rules, for model interpretation. ADS performs a local search over the space of all decision sets. In every iteration, ADS computes confidence intervals for the value of the objective function of all local actions and utilizes active-query to determine the best one.
Fostering Peer Learning through a New Game-Theoretical Approach in a Blended Learning Environment
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2019
Year: 2019

Obtaining knowledge and skill achievement through peer learning can lead to higher academic achievement. However, peer learning implementation is not just about putting students together and hoping for the best. At its worst-designed, peer learning may result in one person doing all the effort for instance, or may fail to encourage the students to interact enough with the task and so enhance the task in hand. This study proposes a mechanism as well as an instructional design to foster well-organized peer learning based on game theory $(PD\_PL)$. The proposed mechanism uses prisoner's dilemma and maps the strategy and payoff concepts found in prisoner's dilemma onto a peer learning atmosphere. PD\_PL was implemented during several sessions of four university courses and with 142 computer engineering students. %The results of the pre-test and post-test exams of all the sessions were compared with R software through Paired Hotelling's T-Square analysis in order to investigate the impacts of $PD\_PL$ and the proposed instructional design on students' personal learning. The study results indicated that PD\_PL was beneficial and favourable to the students. Further analysis showed that the $PD\_PL$ had sometimes even enhanced learning by up to $47.2\%$. %The results of a subjective evaluation showed that the majority of respondents found $PD\_PL$ to be an attractive and efficient tool for learning enhancement. %Everybody who is interested in designing peer learning programs and tools will find this study interesting.
New quaternary codes derived from posets of the disjoint union of two chains
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2019
Year: 2019

Based on the generic construction of linear codes, we construct linear codes over the ring $\Bbb Z_4$ via posets of the disjoint union of two chains. We determine the Lee weight distributions of the quaternary codes. Moreover, we obtain some new linear quaternary codes and good binary codes by using the Gray map.
Investigating MMM Ponzi scheme on Bitcoin
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2019
Year: 2019

Cybercriminals exploit cryptocurrencies to carry out illicit activities. In this paper, we focus on Ponzi schemes that operate on Bitcoin and perform an in-depth analysis of MMM, one of the oldest and most popular Ponzi schemes. Based on 423K transactions involving 16K addresses, we show that: (1) Starting Sep 2014, the scheme goes through three phases over three years. At its peak, MMM circulated more than 150M dollars a day, after which it collapsed by the end of Jun 2016. (2) There is a high income inequality between MMM members, with the daily Gini index reaching more than 0.9. The scheme also exhibits a zero-sum investment model, in which one member's loss is another member's gain. The percentage of victims who never made any profit has grown from 0% to 41% in five months, during which the top-earning scammer has made 765K dollars in profit. (3) The scheme has a global reach with 80 different member countries but a highly-asymmetrical flow of money between them. While India and Indonesia have the largest pairwise flow in MMM, members in Indonesia have received 12x more money than they have sent to their counterparts in India.
Optimal $k$-Deletion Correcting Codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2019
Year: 2019

Levenshtein introduced the problem of constructing $k$-deletion correcting codes in 1966, proved that the optimal redundancy of those codes is $O(k\log N)$, and proposed an optimal redundancy single-deletion correcting code (using the so-called VT construction). However, the problem of constructing optimal redundancy $k$-deletion correcting codes remained open. Our key contribution is a solution to this longstanding open problem. We present a $k$-deletion correcting code that has redundancy $8k\log n +o(\log n)$ and encoding/decoding algorithms of complexity $O(n^{2k+1})$ for constant $k$.
Long-term Joint Scheduling for Urban Traffic
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2019
Year: 2019

Recently, the traffic congestion in modern cities has become a growing worry for the residents. As presented in Baidu traffic report, the commuting stress index has reached surprising 1.973 in Beijing during rush hours, which results in longer trip time and increased vehicular queueing. Previous works have demonstrated that by reasonable scheduling, e.g, rebalancing bike-sharing systems and optimized bus transportation, the traffic efficiency could be significantly improved with little resource consumption. However, there are still two disadvantages that restrict their performance: (1) they only consider single scheduling in a short time, but ignoring the layout after first reposition, and (2) they only focus on the single transport. However, the multi-modal characteristics of urban public transportation are largely under-exploited. In this paper, we propose an efficient and economical multi-modal traffic scheduling scheme named JLRLS based on spatio -temporal prediction, which adopts reinforcement learning to obtain optimal long-term and joint schedule. In JLRLS, we combines multiple transportation to conduct scheduling by their own characteristics, which potentially helps the system to reach the optimal performance. Our implementation of an example by PaddlePaddle is available at https://github.com/bigdata-ustc/Long-term-Joint-Scheduling, with an explaining video at https://youtu.be/t5M2wVPhTyk.
The Quo Vadis submission at Traffic4cast 2019
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

We describe the submission of the Quo Vadis team to the Traffic4cast competition, which was organized as part of the NeurIPS 2019 series of challenges. Our system consists of a temporal regression module, implemented as $1\times1$ 2d convolutions, augmented with spatio-temporal biases. We have found that using biases is a straightforward and efficient way to include seasonal patterns and to improve the performance of the temporal regression model. Our implementation obtains a mean squared error of $9.47\times 10^{-3}$ on the test data, placing us on the eight place team-wise. We also present our attempts at incorporating spatial correlations into the model; however, contrary to our expectations, adding this type of auxiliary information did not benefit the main system. Our code is available at https://github.com/danoneata/traffic4cast.
Deep causal representation learning for unsupervised domain adaptation
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Studies show that the representations learned by deep neural networks can be transferred to similar prediction tasks in other domains for which we do not have enough labeled data. However, as we transition to higher layers in the model, the representations become more task-specific and less generalizable. Recent research on deep domain adaptation proposed to mitigate this problem by forcing the deep model to learn more transferable feature representations across domains. This is achieved by incorporating domain adaptation methods into deep learning pipeline. The majority of existing models learn the transferable feature representations which are highly correlated with the outcome. However, correlations are not always transferable. In this paper, we propose a novel deep causal representation learning framework for unsupervised domain adaptation, in which we propose to learn domain-invariant causal representations of the input from the source domain. We simulate a virtual target domain using reweighted samples from the source domain and estimate the causal effect of features on the outcomes. The extensive comparative study demonstrates the strengths of the proposed model for unsupervised domain adaptation via causal representations.
Virtual Piano using Computer Vision
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

In this research, Piano performances have been analyzed only based on visual information. Computer vision algorithms, e.g., Hough transform and binary thresholding, have been applied to find where the keyboard and specific keys are located. At the same time, Convolutional Neural Networks(CNNs) has been also utilized to find whether specific keys are pressed or not, and how much intensity the keys are pressed only based on visual information. Especially for detecting intensity, a new method of utilizing spatial, temporal CNNs model is devised. Early fusion technique is especially applied in temporal CNNs architecture to analyze hand movement. We also make a new dataset for training each model. Especially when finding an intensity of a pressed key, both of video frames and their optical flow images are used to train models to find effectiveness.
Safe and Private Forward-Trading Platform for Transactive Microgrids
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2019
Year: 2019

Transactive microgrids have emerged as a transformative solution for the problems faced by distribution system operators due to an increase in the use of distributed energy resources and rapid growth in renewable energy generation. Transactive microgrids are tightly coupled cyber and physical systems, which require resilient and robust financial markets where transactions can be submitted and cleared, while ensuring that erroneous or malicious transactions cannot destabilize the grid. In this paper, we introduce TRANSAX, a novel decentralized platform for transactive microgrids. TRANSAX enables participants to trade in an energy futures market, which improves efficiency by finding feasible matches for energy trades, reducing the load on the distribution system operator. TRANSAX provides privacy to participants by anonymizing their trading activity using a distributed mixing service, while also enforcing constraints that limit trading activity based on safety requirements, such as keeping power flow below line capacity. We show that TRANSAX can satisfy the seemingly conflicting requirements of efficiency, safety, and privacy, and we demonstrate its performance using simulation results
A Multivariate Elo-based Learner Model for Adaptive Educational Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2019
Year: 2019

The Elo rating system has been recognised as an effective method for modelling students and items within adaptive educational systems. The existing Elo-based models have the limiting assumption that items are only tagged with a single concept and are mainly studied in the context of adaptive testing systems. In this paper, we introduce a multivariate Elo-based learner model that is suitable for the domains where learning items can be tagged with multiple concepts, and investigate its fit in the context of adaptive learning. To evaluate the model, we first compare the predictive performance of the proposed model against the standard Elo-based model using synthetic and public data sets. Our results from this study indicate that our proposed model has superior predictive performance compared to the standard Elo-based model, but the difference is rather small. We then investigate the fit of the proposed multivariate Elo-based model by integrating it into an adaptive learning system which incorporates the principles of open learner models (OLMs). The results from this study suggest that the availability of additional parameters derived from multivariate Elo-based models have two further advantages: guiding adaptive behaviour for the system and providing additional insight for students and instructors.
A blockchain-orchestrated Federated Learning architecture for healthcare consortia
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2019
Year: 2019

We propose a novel architecture for federated learning within healthcare consortia. At the heart of the solution is a unique integration of privacy preserving technologies, built upon native enterprise blockchain components available in the Ethereum ecosystem. We show how the specific characteristics and challenges of healthcare consortia informed our design choices, notably the conception of a new Secure Aggregation protocol assembled with a protected hardware component and an encryption toolkit native to Ethereum. Our architecture also brings in a privacy preserving audit trail that logs events in the network without revealing identities.
Textual Data for Time Series Forecasting
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2019
Year: 2019

While ubiquitous, textual sources of information such as company reports, social media posts, etc. are hardly included in prediction algorithms for time series, despite the relevant information they may contain. In this work, openly accessible daily weather reports from France and the United-Kingdom are leveraged to predict time series of national electricity consumption, average temperature and wind-speed with a single pipeline. Two methods of numerical representation of text are considered, namely traditional Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) as well as our own neural word embedding. Using exclusively text, we are able to predict the aforementioned time series with sufficient accuracy to be used to replace missing data. Furthermore the proposed word embeddings display geometric properties relating to the behavior of the time series and context similarity between words.
Interrupted and cascaded permutation invariant training for speech separation
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2019
Year: 2019

Permutation Invariant Training (PIT) has long been a stepping stone method for training speech separation model in handling the label ambiguity problem. With PIT selecting the minimum cost label assignments dynamically, very few studies considered the separation problem to be optimizing both the model parameters and the label assignments, but focused on searching for good model architecture and parameters. In this paper, we investigate instead for a given model architecture the various flexible label assignment strategies for training the model, rather than directly using PIT. Surprisingly, we discover a significant performance boost compared to PIT is possible if the model is trained with fixed label assignments and a good set of labels is chosen. With fixed label training cascaded between two sections of PIT, we achieved the state-of-the-art performance on WSJ0-2mix without changing the model architecture at all.
Real-Time, Environmentally-Robust 3D LiDAR Localization
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2019
Year: 2019

Localization, or position fixing, is an important problem in robotics research. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for long-term localization in a changing environment using 3D LiDAR. We first create the map of a real environment using GPS and LiDAR. Then, we divide the map into several small parts as the targets for cloud registration, which can not only improve the robustness but also reduce the registration time. PointLocalization allows us to fuse different kinds of odometers, which can optimize the accuracy and frequency of localization results. We evaluate our algorithm on an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) using LiDAR and a wheel encoder, and obtain the localization results at more than 20 Hz after fusion. The algorithm can also localize the UGV in a 180-degree field of view (FOV). Using an outdated map captured six months ago, this algorithm shows great robustness, and the test results show that it can achieve an accuracy of 10 cm. PointLocalization has been tested for a period of more than six months in a crowded factory and has operated successfully over a distance of more than 2000 km.
A Semi-Automated Approach for Information Extraction, Classification and Analysis of Unstructured Data
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2019
Year: 2019

In this paper, we show how Quantitative Narrative Analysis and simple Natural Language Processing techniques apply to the extraction and categorization of data in a sample case study of the Diary of the former President of the Italian Republic (PoR), Giorgio Napolitano. The Diary contains a record of all his institutional meetings. This information, if properly handled, allows for an analysis of how the PoR used his so-called soft-powers to influence the Italian political system during his first mandate. In this paper, we propose a way to use simple, yet very effective, Natural Language Processing techniques - such as Regular Expressions and Named Entity Recognition - to extract information from the Diary. Then, we propose an innovative way to organize the extracted data relying on the methodological framework of Quantitative Narrative Analysis. Finally, we show how to analyze the structured data under different levels of detail using PC-ACE (Program for Computer-Assisted Coding of Events), a software developed specifically for this task and for data visualization.
Skip-Clip: Self-Supervised Spatiotemporal Representation Learning by Future Clip Order Ranking
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Deep neural networks require collecting and annotating large amounts of data to train successfully. In order to alleviate the annotation bottleneck, we propose a novel self-supervised representation learning approach for spatiotemporal features extracted from videos. We introduce Skip-Clip, a method that utilizes temporal coherence in videos, by training a deep model for future clip order ranking conditioned on a context clip as a surrogate objective for video future prediction. We show that features learned using our method are generalizable and transfer strongly to downstream tasks. For action recognition on the UCF101 dataset, we obtain 51.8% improvement over random initialization and outperform models initialized using inflated ImageNet parameters. Skip-Clip also achieves results competitive with state-of-the-art self-supervision methods.
Moving Towards Open Set Incremental Learning: Readily Discovering New Authors
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

The classification of textual data often yields important information. Most classifiers work in a closed world setting where the classifier is trained on a known corpus, and then it is tested on unseen examples that belong to one of the classes seen during training. Despite the usefulness of this design, often there is a need to classify unseen examples that do not belong to any of the classes on which the classifier was trained. This paper describes the open set scenario where unseen examples from previously unseen classes are handled while testing. This further examines a process of enhanced open set classification with a deep neural network that discovers new classes by clustering the examples identified as belonging to unknown classes, followed by a process of retraining the classifier with newly recognized classes. Through this process the model moves to an incremental learning model where it continuously finds and learns from novel classes of data that have been identified automatically. This paper also develops a new metric that measures multiple attributes of clustering open set data. Multiple experiments across two author attribution data sets demonstrate the creation an incremental model that produces excellent results.
A data set of aerial imagery from robotics simulator for map-based localization systems benchmark
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2019
Year: 2019

Purpose: This paper presents a new dataset of Aerial Imagery from Robotics simulator (abbr. AIR). AIR dataset aims to provide a starting point for localization system development and to become a typical benchmark for accuracy comparison of map-based localization algorithms, visual odometry, and SLAM for high altitude flights. Design/methodology/approach: The presented dataset contains over 100 thousand aerial images captured from Gazebo robotics simulator using orthophoto maps as a ground plane. Flights with 3 different trajectories are performed on maps from urban and forest environment at different altitudes, totaling over 33 kilometers of flight distance. Findings: The review of previous researches shows, that the presented dataset is the largest currently available public dataset with downward facing camera imagery. Originality/value: This paper presents the problem of missing publicly available datasets for high altitude (100--3000 meters) UAV flights, the current state-of-the-art researches performed to develop map-based localization system for UAVs, depend on real-life test flights and custom simulated datasets for accuracy evaluation of the algorithms. The presented new dataset solves this problem and aims to help the researchers to improve and benchmark new algorithms for high-altitude flights.
Conjugate Phase Retrieval in Paley-Wiener Space
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2019
Year: 2019

We consider the problem of conjugate phase retrieval in Paley-Wiener space $PW_π$. The goal of conjugate phase retrieval is to recover a signal $f$ from the magnitudes of linear measurements up to unknown phase factor and unknown conjugate, meaning $f(t)$ and $\overline{f(t)}$ are not necessarily distinguishable from the available data. We show that conjugate phase retrieval can be accomplished in $PW_π$ by sampling only on the real line by using structured convolutions. We also show that conjugate phase retrieval can be accomplished in $PW_π$ by sampling both $f$ and $f^{\prime}$ only on the real line. Moreover, we demonstrate experimentally that the Gerchberg-Saxton method of alternating projections can accomplish the reconstruction from vectors that do conjugate phase retrieval in finite dimensional spaces. Finally, we show that generically, conjugate phase retrieval can be accomplished by sampling at three times the Nyquist rate, whereas phase retrieval requires sampling at four times the Nyquist rate.
Human-centered Control of a Growing Soft Robot for Object Manipulation
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2019
Year: 2019

We present a user-friendly interface to teleoperate a soft robot manipulator in a complex environment. Key components of the system include a manipulator with a grasping end-effector that grows via tip eversion, gesture-based control, and haptic display to the operator for feedback and guidance. In the initial work, the operator uses the soft robot to build a tower of blocks, and future works will extend this to shared autonomy scenarios in which the human operator and robot intelligence are both necessary for task completion.