pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Stochastic geometry to generalize the Mondrian Process
Authors: Eliza O'Reilly, Ngoc Tran
Date: 2020-02-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Bayesian Optimization, BIG-bench Machine Learning, Density Estimation

The stable under iterated tessellation (STIT) process is a stochastic process that produces a recursive partition of space with cut directions drawn independently from a distribution over the sphere. The case of random axis-aligned cuts is known as the Mondrian process. Random forests and Laplace kernel approximations built from the Mondrian process have led to efficient online learning methods and Bayesian optimization. In this work, we utilize tools from stochastic geometry to resolve some fundamental questions concerning STIT processes in machine learning. First, we show that a STIT process with cut directions drawn from a discrete distribution can be efficiently simulated by lifting to a higher dimensional axis-aligned Mondrian process. Second, we characterize all possible kernels that stationary STIT processes and their mixtures can approximate. We also give a uniform convergence rate for the approximation error of the STIT kernels to the targeted kernels, generalizing the work of [3] for the Mondrian case. Third, we obtain consistency results for STIT forests in density estimation and regression. Finally, we give a formula for the density estimator arising from an infinite STIT random forest. This allows for precise comparisons between the Mondrian forest, the Mondrian kernel and the Laplace kernel in density estimation. Our paper calls for further developments at the novel intersection of stochastic geometry and machine learning.
Fragmentation Coagulation Based Mixed Membership Stochastic Blockmodel
Authors: Zheng Yu, Xuhui Fan, Marcin Pietrasik, Marek Reformat
Date: 2020-01-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Clustering

The Mixed-Membership Stochastic Blockmodel~(MMSB) is proposed as one of the state-of-the-art Bayesian relational methods suitable for learning the complex hidden structure underlying the network data. However, the current formulation of MMSB suffers from the following two issues: (1), the prior information~(e.g. entities' community structural information) can not be well embedded in the modelling; (2), community evolution can not be well described in the literature. Therefore, we propose a non-parametric fragmentation coagulation based Mixed Membership Stochastic Blockmodel (fcMMSB). Our model performs entity-based clustering to capture the community information for entities and linkage-based clustering to derive the group information for links simultaneously. Besides, the proposed model infers the network structure and models community evolution, manifested by appearances and disappearances of communities, using the discrete fragmentation coagulation process (DFCP). By integrating the community structure with the group compatibility matrix we derive a generalized version of MMSB. An efficient Gibbs sampling scheme with Polya Gamma (PG) approach is implemented for posterior inference. We validate our model on synthetic and real world data.
Radioactive data: tracing through training
Authors: Alexandre Sablayrolles, Matthijs Douze, Cordelia Schmid, Hervé Jégou
Date: 2020-02-03 00:00:00
Proceeding: ICML 2020 1
Tasks: Data Augmentation, Data Poisoning

We want to detect whether a particular image dataset has been used to train a model. We propose a new technique, \emph{radioactive data}, that makes imperceptible changes to this dataset such that any model trained on it will bear an identifiable mark. The mark is robust to strong variations such as different architectures or optimization methods. Given a trained model, our technique detects the use of radioactive data and provides a level of confidence (p-value). Our experiments on large-scale benchmarks (Imagenet), using standard architectures (Resnet-18, VGG-16, Densenet-121) and training procedures, show that we can detect usage of radioactive data with high confidence (p<10^-4) even when only 1% of the data used to trained our model is radioactive. Our method is robust to data augmentation and the stochasticity of deep network optimization. As a result, it offers a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than data poisoning and backdoor methods.
On the Information Bottleneck Problems: Models, Connections, Applications and Information Theoretic Views
Authors: Abdellatif Zaidi, Inaki Estella Aguerri, Shlomo Shamai
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Representation Learning, Variational Inference

This tutorial paper focuses on the variants of the bottleneck problem taking an information theoretic perspective and discusses practical methods to solve it, as well as its connection to coding and learning aspects. The intimate connections of this setting to remote source-coding under logarithmic loss distortion measure, information combining, common reconstruction, the Wyner-Ahlswede-Korner problem, the efficiency of investment information, as well as, generalization, variational inference, representation learning, autoencoders, and others are highlighted. We discuss its extension to the distributed information bottleneck problem with emphasis on the Gaussian model and highlight the basic connections to the uplink Cloud Radio Access Networks (CRAN) with oblivious processing. For this model, the optimal trade-offs between relevance (i.e., information) and complexity (i.e., rates) in the discrete and vector Gaussian frameworks is determined. In the concluding outlook, some interesting problems are mentioned such as the characterization of the optimal inputs ("features") distributions under power limitations maximizing the "relevance" for the Gaussian information bottleneck, under "complexity" constraints.
Hypercomplex-Valued Recurrent Correlation Neural Networks
Authors: Marcos Eduardo Valle, Rodolfo Anibal Lobo
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00

Recurrent correlation neural networks (RCNNs), introduced by Chiueh and Goodman as an improved version of the bipolar correlation-based Hopfield neural network, can be used to implement high-capacity associative memories. In this paper, we extend the bipolar RCNNs for processing hypercomplex-valued data. Precisely, we present the mathematical background for a broad class of hypercomplex-valued RCNNs. Then, we provide the necessary conditions which ensure that a hypercomplex-valued RCNN always settles at an equilibrium using either synchronous or asynchronous update modes. Examples with bipolar, complex, hyperbolic, quaternion, and octonion-valued RCNNs are given to illustrate the theoretical results. Finally, computational experiments confirm the potential application of hypercomplex-valued RCNNs as associative memories designed for the storage and recall of gray-scale images.
On Implicit Regularization in $β$-VAEs
Authors: Abhishek Kumar, Ben Poole
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Variational Inference

While the impact of variational inference (VI) on posterior inference in a fixed generative model is well-characterized, its role in regularizing a learned generative model when used in variational autoencoders (VAEs) is poorly understood. We study the regularizing effects of variational distributions on learning in generative models from two perspectives. First, we analyze the role that the choice of variational family plays in imparting uniqueness to the learned model by restricting the set of optimal generative models. Second, we study the regularization effect of the variational family on the local geometry of the decoding model. This analysis uncovers the regularizer implicit in the $\beta$-VAE objective, and leads to an approximation consisting of a deterministic autoencoding objective plus analytic regularizers that depend on the Hessian or Jacobian of the decoding model, unifying VAEs with recent heuristics proposed for training regularized autoencoders. We empirically verify these findings, observing that the proposed deterministic objective exhibits similar behavior to the $\beta$-VAE in terms of objective value and sample quality.
Improving the Detection of Burnt Areas in Remote Sensing using Hyper-features Evolved by M3GP
Authors: João E. Batista, Sara Silva
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00

One problem found when working with satellite images is the radiometric variations across the image and different images. Intending to improve remote sensing models for the classification of burnt areas, we set two objectives. The first is to understand the relationship between feature spaces and the predictive ability of the models, allowing us to explain the differences between learning and generalization when training and testing in different datasets. We find that training on datasets built from more than one image provides models that generalize better. These results are explained by visualizing the dispersion of values on the feature space. The second objective is to evolve hyper-features that improve the performance of different classifiers on a variety of test sets. We find the hyper-features to be beneficial, and obtain the best models with XGBoost, even if the hyper-features are optimized for a different method.
Last Iterate is Slower than Averaged Iterate in Smooth Convex-Concave Saddle Point Problems
Authors: Noah Golowich, Sarath Pattathil, Constantinos Daskalakis, Asuman Ozdaglar
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00

In this paper we study the smooth convex-concave saddle point problem. Specifically, we analyze the last iterate convergence properties of the Extragradient (EG) algorithm. It is well known that the ergodic (averaged) iterates of EG converge at a rate of $O(1/T)$ (Nemirovski, 2004). In this paper, we show that the last iterate of EG converges at a rate of $O(1/\sqrt{T})$. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to provide a convergence rate guarantee for the last iterate of EG for the smooth convex-concave saddle point problem. Moreover, we show that this rate is tight by proving a lower bound of $\Omega(1/\sqrt{T})$ for the last iterate. This lower bound therefore shows a quadratic separation of the convergence rates of ergodic and last iterates in smooth convex-concave saddle point problems.
Optimizing Loss Functions Through Multivariate Taylor Polynomial Parameterization
Authors: Santiago Gonzalez, Risto Miikkulainen
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00

Metalearning of deep neural network (DNN) architectures and hyperparameters has become an increasingly important area of research. Loss functions are a type of metaknowledge that is crucial to effective training of DNNs, however, their potential role in metalearning has not yet been fully explored. Whereas early work focused on genetic programming (GP) on tree representations, this paper proposes continuous CMA-ES optimization of multivariate Taylor polynomial parameterizations. This approach, TaylorGLO, makes it possible to represent and search useful loss functions more effectively. In MNIST, CIFAR-10, and SVHN benchmark tasks, TaylorGLO finds new loss functions that outperform functions previously discovered through GP, as well as the standard cross-entropy loss, in fewer generations. These functions serve to regularize the learning task by discouraging overfitting to the labels, which is particularly useful in tasks where limited training data is available. The results thus demonstrate that loss function optimization is a productive new avenue for metalearning.
Simultaneous Skull Conductivity and Focal Source Imaging from EEG Recordings with the help of Bayesian Uncertainty Modelling
Authors: Alexandra Koulouri, Ville Rimpilainen
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00
Tasks: EEG, Electroencephalogram (EEG)

The electroencephalography (EEG) source imaging problem is very sensitive to the electrical modelling of the skull of the patient under examination. Unfortunately, the currently available EEG devices and their embedded software do not take this into account; instead, it is common to use a literature-based skull conductivity parameter. In this paper, we propose a statistical method based on the Bayesian approximation error approach to compensate for source imaging errors due to the unknown skull conductivity and, simultaneously, to compute a low-order estimate for the actual skull conductivity value. By using simulated EEG data that corresponds to focal source activity, we demonstrate the potential of the method to reconstruct the underlying focal sources and low-order errors induced by the unknown skull conductivity. Subsequently, the estimated errors are used to approximate the skull conductivity. The results indicate clear improvements in the source localization accuracy and feasible skull conductivity estimates.
Data Augmentation for Histopathological Images Based on Gaussian-Laplacian Pyramid Blending
Authors: Steve Tsham Mpinda Ataky, Jonathan de Matos, Alceu de S. Britto Jr., Luiz E. S. Oliveira, Alessandro L. Koerich
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00
Tasks: Data Augmentation

Data imbalance is a major problem that affects several machine learning (ML) algorithms. Such a problem is troublesome because most of the ML algorithms attempt to optimize a loss function that does not take into account the data imbalance. Accordingly, the ML algorithm simply generates a trivial model that is biased toward predicting the most frequent class in the training data. In the case of histopathologic images (HIs), both low-level and high-level data augmentation (DA) techniques still present performance issues when applied in the presence of inter-patient variability; whence the model tends to learn color representations, which is related to the staining process. In this paper, we propose a novel approach capable of not only augmenting HI dataset but also distributing the inter-patient variability by means of image blending using the Gaussian-Laplacian pyramid. The proposed approach consists of finding the Gaussian pyramids of two images of different patients and finding the Laplacian pyramids thereof. Afterwards, the left-half side and the right-half side of different HIs are joined in each level of the Laplacian pyramid, and from the joint pyramids, the original image is reconstructed. This composition combines the stain variation of two patients, avoiding that color differences mislead the learning process. Experimental results on the BreakHis dataset have shown promising gains vis-a-vis the majority of DA techniques presented in the literature.
Regret Minimization in Partially Observable Linear Quadratic Control
Authors: Sahin Lale, Kamyar Azizzadenesheli, Babak Hassibi, Anima Anandkumar
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00

We study the problem of regret minimization in partially observable linear quadratic control systems when the model dynamics are unknown a priori. We propose ExpCommit, an explore-then-commit algorithm that learns the model Markov parameters and then follows the principle of optimism in the face of uncertainty to design a controller. We propose a novel way to decompose the regret and provide an end-to-end sublinear regret upper bound for partially observable linear quadratic control. Finally, we provide stability guarantees and establish a regret upper bound of $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(T^{2/3})$ for ExpCommit, where $T$ is the time horizon of the problem.
Physics-Guided Deep Neural Networks for Power Flow Analysis
Authors: Xinyue Hu, Haoji Hu, Saurabh Verma, Zhi-Li Zhang
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00

Solving power flow (PF) equations is the basis of power flow analysis, which is important in determining the best operation of existing systems, performing security analysis, etc. However, PF equations can be out-of-date or even unavailable due to system dynamics and uncertainties, making traditional numerical approaches infeasible. To address these concerns, researchers have proposed data-driven approaches to solve the PF problem by learning the mapping rules from historical system operation data. Nevertheless, prior data-driven approaches suffer from poor performance and generalizability, due to overly simplified assumptions of the PF problem or ignorance of physical laws governing power systems. In this paper, we propose a physics-guided neural network to solve the PF problem, with an auxiliary task to rebuild the PF model. By encoding different granularity of Kirchhoff's laws and system topology into the rebuilt PF model, our neural-network based PF solver is regularized by the auxiliary task and constrained by the physical laws. The simulation results show that our physics-guided neural network methods achieve better performance and generalizability compared to existing unconstrained data-driven approaches. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the weight matrices of our physics-guided neural networks embody power system physics by showing their similarities with the bus admittance matrices.
Scalable bundling via dense product embeddings
Authors: Madhav Kumar, Dean Eckles, Sinan Aral
Date: 2020-01-31 00:00:00

Bundling, the practice of jointly selling two or more products at a discount, is a widely used strategy in industry and a well examined concept in academia. Historically, the focus has been on theoretical studies in the context of monopolistic firms and assumed product relationships, e.g., complementarity in usage. We develop a new machine-learning-driven methodology for designing bundles in a large-scale, cross-category retail setting. We leverage historical purchases and consideration sets created from clickstream data to generate dense continuous representations of products called embeddings. We then put minimal structure on these embeddings and develop heuristics for complementarity and substitutability among products. Subsequently, we use the heuristics to create multiple bundles for each product and test their performance using a field experiment with a large retailer. We combine the results from the experiment with product embeddings using a hierarchical model that maps bundle features to their purchase likelihood, as measured by the add-to-cart rate. We find that our embeddings-based heuristics are strong predictors of bundle success, robust across product categories, and generalize well to the retailer's entire assortment.
An Equivalence between Bayesian Priors and Penalties in Variational Inference
Authors: Pierre Wolinski, Guillaume Charpiat, Yann Ollivier
Date: 2020-02-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Variational Inference

In machine learning, it is common to optimize the parameters of a probabilistic model, modulated by an ad hoc regularization term that penalizes some values of the parameters. Regularization terms appear naturally in Variational Inference, a tractable way to approximate Bayesian posteriors: the loss to optimize contains a Kullback--Leibler divergence term between the approximate posterior and a Bayesian prior. We fully characterize the regularizers that can arise according to this procedure, and provide a systematic way to compute the prior corresponding to a given penalty. Such a characterization can be used to discover constraints over the penalty function, so that the overall procedure remains Bayesian.
Variable-lag Granger Causality and Transfer Entropy for Time Series Analysis
Authors: Chainarong Amornbunchornvej, Elena Zheleva, Tanya Berger-Wolf
Date: 2020-02-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Causal Inference, Dynamic Time Warping, Leadership Inference, Time Series, Time Series Analysis

Granger causality is a fundamental technique for causal inference in time series data, commonly used in the social and biological sciences. Typical operationalizations of Granger causality make a strong assumption that every time point of the effect time series is influenced by a combination of other time series with a fixed time delay. The assumption of fixed time delay also exists in Transfer Entropy, which is considered to be a non-linear version of Granger causality. However, the assumption of the fixed time delay does not hold in many applications, such as collective behavior, financial markets, and many natural phenomena. To address this issue, we develop Variable-lag Granger causality and Variable-lag Transfer Entropy, generalizations of both Granger causality and Transfer Entropy that relax the assumption of the fixed time delay and allow causes to influence effects with arbitrary time delays. In addition, we propose methods for inferring both variable-lag Granger causality and Transfer Entropy relations. In our approaches, we utilize an optimal warping path of Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) to infer variable-lag causal relations. We demonstrate our approaches on an application for studying coordinated collective behavior and other real-world casual-inference datasets and show that our proposed approaches perform better than several existing methods in both simulated and real-world datasets. Our approaches can be applied in any domain of time series analysis. The software of this work is available in the R-CRAN package: VLTimeCausality.
Learning to Detect Malicious Clients for Robust Federated Learning
Authors: Suyi Li, Yong Cheng, Wei Wang, Yang Liu, Tianjian Chen
Date: 2020-02-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Federated Learning, image-classification, Image Classification, Model Poisoning, Sentiment Analysis

Federated learning systems are vulnerable to attacks from malicious clients. As the central server in the system cannot govern the behaviors of the clients, a rogue client may initiate an attack by sending malicious model updates to the server, so as to degrade the learning performance or enforce targeted model poisoning attacks (a.k.a. backdoor attacks). Therefore, timely detecting these malicious model updates and the underlying attackers becomes critically important. In this work, we propose a new framework for robust federated learning where the central server learns to detect and remove the malicious model updates using a powerful detection model, leading to targeted defense. We evaluate our solution in both image classification and sentiment analysis tasks with a variety of machine learning models. Experimental results show that our solution ensures robust federated learning that is resilient to both the Byzantine attacks and the targeted model poisoning attacks.
Pop Music Transformer: Beat-based Modeling and Generation of Expressive Pop Piano Compositions
Authors: Yu-Siang Huang, Yi-Hsuan Yang
Date: 2020-02-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Music Modeling

A great number of deep learning based models have been recently proposed for automatic music composition. Among these models, the Transformer stands out as a prominent approach for generating expressive classical piano performance with a coherent structure of up to one minute. The model is powerful in that it learns abstractions of data on its own, without much human-imposed domain knowledge or constraints. In contrast with this general approach, this paper shows that Transformers can do even better for music modeling, when we improve the way a musical score is converted into the data fed to a Transformer model. In particular, we seek to impose a metrical structure in the input data, so that Transformers can be more easily aware of the beat-bar-phrase hierarchical structure in music. The new data representation maintains the flexibility of local tempo changes, and provides hurdles to control the rhythmic and harmonic structure of music. With this approach, we build a Pop Music Transformer that composes Pop piano music with better rhythmic structure than existing Transformer models.