Patent ID: 7720830

Claim:
A method performed by a computing device with a processor and memory for labeling observations, the method comprising: receiving observations having hierarchical relationships represented by a graph having vertices representing observations and edges representing relationships, a collection of related vertices being a clique, a clique being a subset of vertices of the graph in which each pair of distinct vertices in the subset is joined by an edge; storing the received observations in the memory determining by the computing device a labeling for the observations using a conditional random fields technique that factors in the hierarchical relationships, a conditional probability p of label y given observation x of the conditional random fields technique being represented as follows: p ( y ⁢  x ) = 1 Z ⁡ ( x ) ⁢ exp ⁡ ( ∑ v , k ⁢ ⁢ μ k ⁢ g k ( v , y  v , x ) + ∑ e , k ⁢ ⁢ λ k ⁢ f k ( e , y  e , x ) + ∑ t , k ⁢ ⁢ γ k ⁢ h k ( t , y  t , x ) ) where v represents a vertex clique, e represents an edge clique, and t represents a triangle clique, y| v , y| e , and y| t represent components of label y, Z is a normalization factor, g k , f k , and h k represent feature functions, and μ k , λ k , and γ k represent weights of the feature functions; and storing by the computing device the labeling for the observations.