OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
On Analyzing Churn Prediction in Mobile Games
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

In subscription-based businesses, the churn rate refers to the percentage of customers who discontinue their subscriptions within a given time period. Particularly, in the mobile games industry, the churn rate is often pronounced due to the high competition and cost in customer acquisition; therefore, the process of minimizing the churn rate is crucial. This needs churn prediction, predicting users who will be churning within a given time period. Accurate churn prediction can enable the businesses to devise and engage strategic remediations to maintain a low churn rate. The paper presents our highly accurate churn prediction method. We designed this method to take into account each individual user's distinct usage period in churn prediction. As presented in the paper, this approach was able to achieve 96.6% churn prediction accuracy on a real game business. In addition, the paper shows that other existing churn prediction algorithms are improved in prediction accuracy when this method is applied.
Can Author Collaboration Reveal Impact? The Case of h-index
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2021
Year: 2021

Scientific impact has been the center of extended debate regarding its accuracy and reliability. From hiring committees in academic institutions to governmental agencies that distribute funding, an author's scientific success as measured by the h-index is a vital point to their career. The objective of this work is to investigate whether the collaboration patterns of an author are good predictors of the author's future $h$-index. Although not directly related to each other, a more intense collaboration can result into increased productivity which can potentially have an impact on the author's future $h$-index. In this paper, we capitalize on recent advances in graph neural networks and we examine the possibility of predicting the $h$-index relying solely on the author's collaboration and the textual content of a subset of their papers. We perform our experiments on a large-scale network consisting of more than $1$ million authors that have published papers in computer science venues and more than $37$ million edges. The task is a six-months-ahead forecast, i.e. what the $h$-index of each author will be after six months. Our experiments indicate that there is indeed some relationship between the future $h$-index of an author and their structural role in the co-authorship network. Furthermore, we found that the proposed method outperforms standard machine learning techniques based on simple graph metrics along with node representations learned from the textual content of the author's papers.
PAC Bayesian Performance Guarantees for Deep (Stochastic) Networks in Medical Imaging
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Application of deep neural networks to medical imaging tasks has in some sense become commonplace. Still, a "thorn in the side" of the deep learning movement is the argument that deep networks are prone to overfitting and are thus unable to generalize well when datasets are small (as is common in medical imaging tasks). One way to bolster confidence is to provide mathematical guarantees, or bounds, on network performance after training which explicitly quantify the possibility of overfitting. In this work, we explore recent advances using the PAC-Bayesian framework to provide bounds on generalization error for large (stochastic) networks. While previous efforts focus on classification in larger natural image datasets (e.g., MNIST and CIFAR-10), we apply these techniques to both classification and segmentation in a smaller medical imagining dataset: the ISIC 2018 challenge set. We observe the resultant bounds are competitive compared to a simpler baseline, while also being more explainable and alleviating the need for holdout sets.
Secure and Privacy-Preserving Stored Surveillance Video Sharing atop Permissioned Blockchain
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2021
Year: 2021

At present, more than a billion closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras are watching the world. These cameras garner a lot of visual information that is often processed and stored in remote and centralized cloud servers. Multiple occasions have revealed that this traditional approach is plagued with security and privacy breaches. The breaches could be the interception of raw videos while in transit to distant surveillance analytics centers (SAC), infiltration to cameras and network video records (NVR), or abuse of cameras and stored videos. Hence, the traditional video surveillance system (VSS) cannot guarantee the protection of the privacy of individuals caught on CCTV cameras. Wherefore, this paper proposes a Secure and Privacy-preserving Stored surveillance video sharing (SePriS) mechanism for authorized users/nodes based on smart contracts, blockchain (BC), and the enciphering of video frames using DAB, a mechanism developed based on discrete cosine transform (DCT), advanced encryption standard (AES), and block shuffling (BS) algorithm. The BC-based solution creates an environment auspicious for creating decentralized, reliable SACs and storage sites with secure and privacy-aware sharing of stored surveillance videos across SAC nodes and by law enforcers, police departments, and courts securely connected to the SAC nodes. The experiments and analyses validate that the proposed BC-based SePriS solution achieves the design purpose.
Confidence-Optimal Random Embeddings
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

The seminal result of Johnson and Lindenstrauss on random embeddings has been intensively studied in applied and theoretical computer science. Despite that vast body of literature, we still lack of complete understanding of statistical properties of random projections; a particularly intriguing question is: why are the theoretical bounds that far behind the empirically observed performance? Motivated by this question, this work develops Johnson-Lindenstrauss distributions with optimal, data-oblivious, statistical confidence bounds. These bounds are numerically best possible, for any given data dimension, embedding dimension, and distortion tolerance. They improve upon prior works in terms of statistical accuracy, as well as exactly determine the no-go regimes for data-oblivious approaches. Furthermore, the corresponding projection matrices are efficiently samplable. The construction relies on orthogonal matrices, and the proof uses certain elegant properties of the unit sphere. The following techniques introduced in this work are of independent interest: a) a compact expression for distortion in terms of singular eigenvalues of the projection matrix, b) a parametrization linking the unit sphere and the Dirichlet distribution and c) anti-concentration bounds for the Dirichlet distribution. Besides the technical contribution, the paper presents applications and numerical evaluation along with working implementation in Python.
Learning Robust Visual-semantic Mapping for Zero-shot Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Zero-shot learning (ZSL) aims at recognizing unseen class examples (e.g., images) with knowledge transferred from seen classes. This is typically achieved by exploiting a semantic feature space shared by both seen and unseen classes, e.g., attributes or word vectors, as the bridge. In ZSL, the common practice is to train a mapping function between the visual and semantic feature spaces with labeled seen class examples. When inferring, given unseen class examples, the learned mapping function is reused to them and recognizes the class labels on some metrics among their semantic relations. However, the visual and semantic feature spaces are generally independent and exist in entirely different manifolds. Under such a paradigm, the ZSL models may easily suffer from the domain shift problem when constructing and reusing the mapping function, which becomes the major challenge in ZSL. In this thesis, we explore effective ways to mitigate the domain shift problem and learn a robust mapping function between the visual and semantic feature spaces. We focus on fully empowering the semantic feature space, which is one of the key building blocks of ZSL. In summary, this thesis targets fully empowering the semantic feature space and design effective solutions to mitigate the domain shift problem and hence obtain a more robust visual-semantic mapping function for ZSL. Extensive experiments on various datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods.
Backtranslation Feedback Improves User Confidence in MT, Not Quality
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

Translating text into a language unknown to the text's author, dubbed outbound translation, is a modern need for which the user experience has significant room for improvement, beyond the basic machine translation facility. We demonstrate this by showing three ways in which user confidence in the outbound translation, as well as its overall final quality, can be affected: backward translation, quality estimation (with alignment) and source paraphrasing. In this paper, we describe an experiment on outbound translation from English to Czech and Estonian. We examine the effects of each proposed feedback module and further focus on how the quality of machine translation systems influence these findings and the user perception of success. We show that backward translation feedback has a mixed effect on the whole process: it increases user confidence in the produced translation, but not the objective quality.
A Novel Visualization System of Using Augmented Reality in Knee Replacement Surgery: Enhanced Bidirectional Maximum Correntropy Algorithm
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Background and aim: Image registration and alignment are the main limitations of augmented reality-based knee replacement surgery. This research aims to decrease the registration error, eliminate outcomes that are trapped in local minima to improve the alignment problems, handle the occlusion, and maximize the overlapping parts. Methodology: markerless image registration method was used for Augmented reality-based knee replacement surgery to guide and visualize the surgical operation. While weight least square algorithm was used to enhance stereo camera-based tracking by filling border occlusion in right to left direction and non-border occlusion from left to right direction. Results: This study has improved video precision to 0.57 mm~0.61 mm alignment error. Furthermore, with the use of bidirectional points, for example, forwards and backwards directional cloud point, the iteration on image registration was decreased. This has led to improve the processing time as well. The processing time of video frames was improved to 7.4~11.74 fps. Conclusions: It seems clear that this proposed system has focused on overcoming the misalignment difficulty caused by movement of patient and enhancing the AR visualization during knee replacement surgery. The proposed system was reliable and favorable which helps in eliminating alignment error by ascertaining the optimal rigid transformation between two cloud points and removing the outliers and non-Gaussian noise. The proposed augmented reality system helps in accurate visualization and navigation of anatomy of knee such as femur, tibia, cartilage, blood vessels, etc.
Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic with a Holistic BERT Ensemble
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

This paper describes the TOKOFOU system, an ensemble model for misinformation detection tasks based on six different transformer-based pre-trained encoders, implemented in the context of the COVID-19 Infodemic Shared Task for English. We fine tune each model on each of the task's questions and aggregate their prediction scores using a majority voting approach. TOKOFOU obtains an overall F1 score of 89.7%, ranking first.
Tensor Processing Primitives: A Programming Abstraction for Efficiency and Portability in Deep Learning & HPC Workloads
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2021
Year: 2021

During the past decade, novel Deep Learning (DL) algorithms, workloads and hardware have been developed to tackle a wide range of problems. Despite the advances in workload and hardware ecosystems, the programming methodology of DL systems is stagnant. DL workloads leverage either highly-optimized, yet platform-specific and inflexible kernels from DL libraries, or in the case of novel operators, reference implementations are built via DL framework primitives with underwhelming performance. This work introduces the Tensor Processing Primitives (TPP), a programming abstraction striving for efficient, portable implementation of DL workloads with high-productivity. TPPs define a compact, yet versatile set of 2D-tensor operators (or a virtual Tensor ISA), which subsequently can be utilized as building-blocks to construct complex operators on high-dimensional tensors. The TPP specification is platform-agnostic, thus code expressed via TPPs is portable, whereas the TPP implementation is highly-optimized and platform-specific. We demonstrate the efficacy and viability of our approach using standalone kernels and end-to-end DL & HPC workloads expressed entirely via TPPs that outperform state-of-the-art implementations on multiple platforms.
Censored Semi-Bandits for Resource Allocation
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

We consider the problem of sequentially allocating resources in a censored semi-bandits setup, where the learner allocates resources at each step to the arms and observes loss. The loss depends on two hidden parameters, one specific to the arm but independent of the resource allocation, and the other depends on the allocated resource. More specifically, the loss equals zero for an arm if the resource allocated to it exceeds a constant (but unknown) arm dependent threshold. The goal is to learn a resource allocation that minimizes the expected loss. The problem is challenging because the loss distribution and threshold value of each arm are unknown. We study this setting by establishing its `equivalence' to Multiple-Play Multi-Armed Bandits (MP-MAB) and Combinatorial Semi-Bandits. Exploiting these equivalences, we derive optimal algorithms for our problem setting using known algorithms for MP-MAB and Combinatorial Semi-Bandits. The experiments on synthetically generated data validate the performance guarantees of the proposed algorithms.
Efficient algorithms for computing a rank-revealing UTV factorization on parallel computing architectures
Venue: arXiv cs.MS 2021
Year: 2021

The randomized singular value decomposition (RSVD) is by now a well established technique for efficiently computing an approximate singular value decomposition of a matrix. Building on the ideas that underpin the RSVD, the recently proposed algorithm "randUTV" computes a FULL factorization of a given matrix that provides low-rank approximations with near-optimal error. Because the bulk of randUTV is cast in terms of communication-efficient operations like matrix-matrix multiplication and unpivoted QR factorizations, it is faster than competing rank-revealing factorization methods like column pivoted QR in most high performance computational settings. In this article, optimized randUTV implementations are presented for both shared memory and distributed memory computing environments. For shared memory, randUTV is redesigned in terms of an "algorithm-by-blocks" that, together with a runtime task scheduler, eliminates bottlenecks from data synchronization points to achieve acceleration over the standard "blocked algorithm", based on a purely fork-join approach. The distributed memory implementation is based on the ScaLAPACK library. The performances of our new codes compare favorably with competing factorizations available on both shared memory and distributed memory architectures.
From partners to populations: A hierarchical Bayesian account of coordination and convention
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

Languages are powerful solutions to coordination problems: they provide stable, shared expectations about how the words we say correspond to the beliefs and intentions in our heads. Yet language use in a variable and non-stationary social environment requires linguistic representations to be flexible: old words acquire new ad hoc or partner-specific meanings on the fly. In this paper, we introduce CHAI (Continual Hierarchical Adaptation through Inference), a hierarchical Bayesian theory of coordination and convention formation that aims to reconcile the long-standing tension between these two basic observations. We argue that the central computational problem of communication is not simply transmission, as in classical formulations, but continual learning and adaptation over multiple timescales. Partner-specific common ground quickly emerges from social inferences within dyadic interactions, while community-wide social conventions are stable priors that have been abstracted away from interactions with multiple partners. We present new empirical data alongside simulations showing how our model provides a computational foundation for several phenomena that have posed a challenge for previous accounts: (1) the convergence to more efficient referring expressions across repeated interaction with the same partner, (2) the gradual transfer of partner-specific common ground to strangers, and (3) the influence of communicative context on which conventions eventually form.
A Model using agile methodologies for defining metrics to be used by the Public Sector in Brazil to set remuneration for outsourced software development
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2021
Year: 2021

The process of contracting software factories within the scope of the Federal Public Administration (APF, in Portuguese) in Brazil has undergone some changes due to legislative alterations and a model has been proposed to improve the rendering of services regarding delivering results. Software factory contracts based on predictive processes and on the metrics of Function Points are the target of criticisms and have issues in achieving results, as verified in previous research. The initial objective of the study now proposed will be to define a process model for formulating metrics that can be used in agile contracts as opposed to those of standardized Function Points which have already proved to be quite problematic and difficult for the contractor to manage. Thus, in line with the theme of agile contracts for software development companies, the study proposed will looking for better understand the problem of software development and its maintenance by public agencies by means of contracts using agile methodologies and appropriate metrics for remunerating these services.
Multiple regression techniques for modeling dates of first performances of Shakespeare-era plays
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2021
Year: 2021

The date of the first performance of a play of Shakespeare's time must usually be guessed with reference to multiple indirect external sources, or to some aspect of the content or style of the play. Identifying these dates is important to literary history and to accounts of developing authorial styles, such as Shakespeare's. In this study, we took a set of Shakespeare-era plays (181 plays from the period 1585--1610), added the best-guess dates for them from a standard reference work as metadata, and calculated a set of probabilities of individual words in these samples. We applied 11 regression methods to predict the dates of the plays at an 80/20 training/test split. We withdrew one play at a time, used the best-guess date metadata with the probabilities and weightings to infer its date, and thus built a model of date-probabilities interaction. We introduced a memetic algorithm-based Continued Fraction Regression (CFR) which delivered models using a small number of variables, leading to an interpretable model and reduced dimensionality. An in-depth analysis of the most commonly occurring 20 words in the CFR models in 100 independent runs helps explain the trends in linguistic and stylistic terms. The analysis with the subset of words revealed an interesting correlation of signature words with the Shakespeare-era play's genre.
Two-stage training algorithm for AI robot soccer
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2021
Year: 2021

In multi-agent reinforcement learning, the cooperative learning behavior of agents is very important. In the field of heterogeneous multi-agent reinforcement learning, cooperative behavior among different types of agents in a group is pursued. Learning a joint-action set during centralized training is an attractive way to obtain such cooperative behavior, however, this method brings limited learning performance with heterogeneous agents. To improve the learning performance of heterogeneous agents during centralized training, two-stage heterogeneous centralized training which allows the training of multiple roles of heterogeneous agents is proposed. During training, two training processes are conducted in a series. One of the two stages is to attempt training each agent according to its role, aiming at the maximization of individual role rewards. The other is for training the agents as a whole to make them learn cooperative behaviors while attempting to maximize shared collective rewards, e.g., team rewards. Because these two training processes are conducted in a series in every timestep, agents can learn how to maximize role rewards and team rewards simultaneously. The proposed method is applied to 5 versus 5 AI robot soccer for validation. Simulation results show that the proposed method can train the robots of the robot soccer team effectively, achieving higher role rewards and higher team rewards as compared to other approaches that can be used to solve problems of training cooperative multi-agent.
Dealing with Missing Modalities in the Visual Question Answer-Difference Prediction Task through Knowledge Distillation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

In this work, we address the issues of missing modalities that have arisen from the Visual Question Answer-Difference prediction task and find a novel method to solve the task at hand. We address the missing modality-the ground truth answers-that are not present at test time and use a privileged knowledge distillation scheme to deal with the issue of the missing modality. In order to efficiently do so, we first introduce a model, the "Big" Teacher, that takes the image/question/answer triplet as its input and outperforms the baseline, then use a combination of models to distill knowledge to a target network (student) that only takes the image/question pair as its inputs. We experiment our models on the VizWiz and VQA-V2 Answer Difference datasets and show through extensive experimentation and ablation the performances of our method and a diverse possibility for future research.
Dynamic Fusion Network For Light Field Depth Estimation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Focus based methods have shown promising results for the task of depth estimation. However, most existing focus based depth estimation approaches depend on maximal sharpness of the focal stack. Out of focus information in the focal stack poses challenges for this task. In this paper, we propose a dynamically multi modal learning strategy which incorporates RGB data and the focal stack in our framework. Our goal is to deeply excavate the spatial correlation in the focal stack by designing the spatial correlation perception module and dynamically fuse multi modal information between RGB data and the focal stack in a adaptive way by designing the multi modal dynamic fusion module. The success of our method is demonstrated by achieving the state of the art performance on two datasets. Furthermore, we test our network on a set of different focused images generated by a smart phone camera to prove that the proposed method not only broke the limitation of only using light field data, but also open a path toward practical applications of depth estimation on common consumer level cameras data.