In this task, you are given a part of an article. Your task is to generate headline (title) for this text. Preferred headlines are under fifteen words.

We introduce a parametric nonlinear transformation that is well-suited for Gaussianizing data from natural images. After a linear transformation of the data, each component is normalized by a pooled activity measure, computed by exponentiating a weighted sum of rectified and exponentiated components and an additive constant. We optimize the parameters of this transformation (linear transform, exponents, weights, constant) over a database of natural images, directly minimizing the negentropy of the responses. We find that the optimized transformation successfully Gaussianizes the data, achieving a significantly smaller mutual information between transformed components than previous methods including ICA and radial Gaussianization. The transformation is differentiable and can be efficiently inverted, and thus induces a density model on images. We show that samples of this model are visually similar to samples of natural image patches. We also demonstrate the use of the model as a prior density in removing additive noise. Finally, we show that the transformation can be cascaded, with each layer optimized (unsupervised) using the same Gaussianization objective, to capture additional probabilistic structure.
GENERALIZED NORMALIZATION TRANSFORMATION

We study truthful mechanisms for matching and related problems in a partial information<lb>setting, where the agents’ true utilities are hidden, and the algorithm only has access to ordi-<lb>nal preference information. Our model is motivated by the fact that in many settings, agents<lb>cannot express the numerical values of their utility for different outcomes, but are still able<lb>to rank the outcomes in their order of preference. Specifically, we study problems where the<lb>ground truth exists in the form of a weighted graph of agent utilities, but the algorithm can<lb>only elicit the agents’ private information in the form of a preference ordering for each agent<lb>induced by the underlying weights. Against this backdrop, we design truthful algorithms to<lb>approximate the true optimum solution with respect to the hidden weights. Our techniques<lb>yield universally truthful algorithms for a number of graph problems: a 1.76-approximation<lb>algorithm for Max-Weight Matching, 2-approximation algorithm for Max k-matching, a 6-<lb>approximation algorithm for Densest k-subgraph, and a 2-approximation algorithm for Max<lb>Traveling Salesman as long as the hidden weights constitute a metric. We also provide im-<lb>proved approximation algorithms for such problems when the agents are not able to lie about<lb>their preferences. Our results are the first non-trivial truthful approximation algorithms for<lb>these problems, and indicate that in many situations, we can design robust algorithms even<lb>when the agents may lie and only provide ordinal information instead of precise utilities.
Truthful Mechanisms for Matching and Clustering in an Ordinal World

In this paper, we investigate whether “big-data” is more valuable than “precise” data for the problem of energy disaggregation: the process of breaking down aggregate energy usage on a per-appliance basis. Existing techniques for disaggregation rely on energy metering at a resolution of 1 minute or higher, but most power meters today only provide a reading once per month, and at most once every 15 minutes. In this paper, we propose a new technique called Neighborhood NILM that leverages data from ‘neighbouring’ homes to disaggregate energy given only a single energy reading per month. The key intuition behind our approach is that ‘similar’ homes have ‘similar’ energy consumption on a per-appliance basis. Neighborhood NILM matches every home with a set of ‘neighbours’ that have direct submetering infrastructure, i.e. power meters on individual circuits or loads. Many such homes already exist. Then, it estimates the appliance-level energy consumption of the target home to be the average of its K neighbours. We evaluate this approach using 25 homes and results show that our approach gives comparable or better disaggregation in comparison to state-of-the-art accuracy reported in the literature that depend on manual model training, high frequency power metering, or both. Results show that Neighbourhood NILM can achieve 83% and 79% accuracy disaggregating fridge and heating/cooling loads, compared to 74% and 73% for a technique called FHMM. Furthermore, it achieves up to 64% accuracy on washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, and lighting loads, which is higher than previously reported results. Many existing techniques are not able to disaggregate these loads at all. These results indicate a potentially substantial advantage to installing submetering infrastructure in a select few homes rather than installing new high-frequency smart metering infrastructure in all homes.

Neighbourhood NILM: A Big-data Approach to Household Energy Disaggregation