pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Joint Optimization of Deployment and Trajectory in UAV and IRS-Assisted IoT Data Collection System
Authors: Li Dong, Zhibin Liu, Feibo Jiang, Kezhi Wang
Date: 2022-10-27 00:00:00

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be applied in many Internet of Things (IoT) systems, e.g., smart farms, as a data collection platform. However, the UAV-IoT wireless channels may be occasionally blocked by trees or high-rise buildings. An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can be applied to improve the wireless channel quality by smartly reflecting the signal via a large number of low-cost passive reflective elements. This article aims to minimize the energy consumption of the system by jointly optimizing the deployment and trajectory of the UAV. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer-and-nonlinear programming (MINLP), which is challenging to address by the traditional solution, because the solution may easily fall into the local optimal. To address this issue, we propose a joint optimization framework of deployment and trajectory (JOLT), where an adaptive whale optimization algorithm (AWOA) is applied to optimize the deployment of the UAV, and an elastic ring self-organizing map (ERSOM) is introduced to optimize the trajectory of the UAV. Specifically, in AWOA, a variable-length population strategy is applied to find the optimal number of stop points, and a nonlinear parameter a and a partial mutation rule are introduced to balance the exploration and exploitation. In ERSOM, a competitive neural network is also introduced to learn the trajectory of the UAV by competitive learning, and a ring structure is presented to avoid the trajectory intersection. Extensive experiments are carried out to show the effectiveness of the proposed JOLT framework.
Adaptive Model Learning of Neural Networks with UUB Stability for Robot Dynamic Estimation
Authors: Pedram Agand, Mahdi Aliyari Shoorehdeli
Date: 2022-10-26 00:00:00

Since batch algorithms suffer from lack of proficiency in confronting model mismatches and disturbances, this contribution proposes an adaptive scheme based on continuous Lyapunov function for online robot dynamic identification. This paper suggests stable updating rules to drive neural networks inspiring from model reference adaptive paradigm. Network structure consists of three parallel self-driving neural networks which aim to estimate robot dynamic terms individually. Lyapunov candidate is selected to construct energy surface for a convex optimization framework. Learning rules are driven directly from Lyapunov functions to make the derivative negative. Finally, experimental results on 3-DOF Phantom Omni Haptic device demonstrate efficiency of the proposed method.
Exact Gradient Computation for Spiking Neural Networks Through Forward Propagation
Authors: Jane H. Lee, Saeid Haghighatshoar, Amin Karbasi
Date: 2022-10-18 00:00:00

Spiking neural networks (SNN) have recently emerged as alternatives to traditional neural networks, owing to energy efficiency benefits and capacity to better capture biological neuronal mechanisms. However, the classic backpropagation algorithm for training traditional networks has been notoriously difficult to apply to SNN due to the hard-thresholding and discontinuities at spike times. Therefore, a large majority of prior work believes exact gradients for SNN w.r.t. their weights do not exist and has focused on approximation methods to produce surrogate gradients. In this paper, (1) by applying the implicit function theorem to SNN at the discrete spike times, we prove that, albeit being non-differentiable in time, SNNs have well-defined gradients w.r.t. their weights, and (2) we propose a novel training algorithm, called \emph{forward propagation} (FP), that computes exact gradients for SNN. FP exploits the causality structure between the spikes and allows us to parallelize computation forward in time. It can be used with other algorithms that simulate the forward pass, and it also provides insights on why other related algorithms such as Hebbian learning and also recently-proposed surrogate gradient methods may perform well.
Study of the Fractal decomposition based metaheuristic on low-dimensional Black-Box optimization problems
Authors: Arcadi Llanza, Nadiya Shvai, Amir Nakib
Date: 2022-10-16 00:00:00

This paper analyzes the performance of the Fractal Decomposition Algorithm (FDA) metaheuristic applied to low-dimensional continuous optimization problems. This algorithm was originally developed specifically to deal efficiently with high-dimensional continuous optimization problems by building a fractal-based search tree with a branching factor linearly proportional to the number of dimensions. Here, we aim to answer the question of whether FDA could be equally effective for low-dimensional problems. For this purpose, we evaluate the performance of FDA on the Black Box Optimization Benchmark (BBOB) for dimensions 2, 3, 5, 10, 20, and 40. The experimental results show that overall the FDA in its current form does not perform well enough. Among different function groups, FDA shows its best performance on Misc. moderate and Weak structure functions.
Regret Bounds and Experimental Design for Estimate-then-Optimize
Authors: Samuel Tan, Peter I. Frazier
Date: 2022-10-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Experimental Design

In practical applications, data is used to make decisions in two steps: estimation and optimization. First, a machine learning model estimates parameters for a structural model relating decisions to outcomes. Second, a decision is chosen to optimize the structural model's predicted outcome as if its parameters were correctly estimated. Due to its flexibility and simple implementation, this ``estimate-then-optimize'' approach is often used for data-driven decision-making. Errors in the estimation step can lead estimate-then-optimize to sub-optimal decisions that result in regret, i.e., a difference in value between the decision made and the best decision available with knowledge of the structural model's parameters. We provide a novel bound on this regret for smooth and unconstrained optimization problems. Using this bound, in settings where estimated parameters are linear transformations of sub-Gaussian random vectors, we provide a general procedure for experimental design to minimize the regret resulting from estimate-then-optimize. We demonstrate our approach on simple examples and a pandemic control application.
Strategic Geosteeering Workflow with Uncertainty Quantification and Deep Learning: A Case Study on the Goliat Field
Authors: Muzammil Hussain Rammay, Sergey Alyaev, David Selvåg Larsen, Reidar Brumer Bratvold, Craig Saint
Date: 2022-10-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Uncertainty Quantification

The real-time interpretation of the logging-while-drilling data allows us to estimate the positions and properties of the geological layers in an anisotropic subsurface environment. Robust real-time estimations capturing uncertainty can be very useful for efficient geosteering operations. However, the model errors in the prior conceptual geological models and forward simulation of the measurements can be significant factors in the unreliable estimations of the profiles of the geological layers. The model errors are specifically pronounced when using a deep-neural-network (DNN) approximation which we use to accelerate and parallelize the simulation of the measurements. This paper presents a practical workflow consisting of offline and online phases. The offline phase includes DNN training and building of an uncertain prior near-well geo-model. The online phase uses the flexible iterative ensemble smoother (FlexIES) to perform real-time assimilation of extra-deep electromagnetic data accounting for the model errors in the approximate DNN model. We demonstrate the proposed workflow on a case study for a historic well in the Goliat Field (Barents Sea). The median of our probabilistic estimation is on-par with proprietary inversion despite the approximate DNN model and regardless of the number of layers in the chosen prior. By estimating the model errors, FlexIES automatically quantifies the uncertainty in the layers' boundaries and resistivities, which is not standard for proprietary inversion.
A Double Machine Learning Trend Model for Citizen Science Data
Authors: Daniel Fink, Alison Johnston, Matt Strimas-Mackey, Tom Auer, Wesley M. Hochachka, Shawn Ligocki, Lauren Oldham Jaromczyk, Orin Robinson, Chris Wood, Steve Kelling, Amanda D. Rodewald
Date: 2022-10-27 00:00:00

1. Citizen and community-science (CS) datasets have great potential for estimating interannual patterns of population change given the large volumes of data collected globally every year. Yet, the flexible protocols that enable many CS projects to collect large volumes of data typically lack the structure necessary to keep consistent sampling across years. This leads to interannual confounding, as changes to the observation process over time are confounded with changes in species population sizes. 2. Here we describe a novel modeling approach designed to estimate species population trends while controlling for the interannual confounding common in citizen science data. The approach is based on Double Machine Learning, a statistical framework that uses machine learning methods to estimate population change and the propensity scores used to adjust for confounding discovered in the data. Additionally, we develop a simulation method to identify and adjust for residual confounding missed by the propensity scores. Using this new method, we can produce spatially detailed trend estimates from citizen science data. 3. To illustrate the approach, we estimated species trends using data from the CS project eBird. We used a simulation study to assess the ability of the method to estimate spatially varying trends in the face of real-world confounding. Results showed that the trend estimates distinguished between spatially constant and spatially varying trends at a 27km resolution. There were low error rates on the estimated direction of population change (increasing/decreasing) and high correlations on the estimated magnitude. 4. The ability to estimate spatially explicit trends while accounting for confounding in citizen science data has the potential to fill important information gaps, helping to estimate population trends for species, regions, or seasons without rigorous monitoring data.
Toroidal Probabilistic Spherical Discriminant Analysis
Authors: Anna Silnova, Niko Brümmer, Albert Swart, Lukáš Burget
Date: 2022-10-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Form, Speaker Recognition

In speaker recognition, where speech segments are mapped to embeddings on the unit hypersphere, two scoring back-ends are commonly used, namely cosine scoring and PLDA. We have recently proposed PSDA, an analog to PLDA that uses Von Mises-Fisher distributions instead of Gaussians. In this paper, we present toroidal PSDA (T-PSDA). It extends PSDA with the ability to model within and between-speaker variabilities in toroidal submanifolds of the hypersphere. Like PLDA and PSDA, the model allows closed-form scoring and closed-form EM updates for training. On VoxCeleb, we find T-PSDA accuracy on par with cosine scoring, while PLDA accuracy is inferior. On NIST SRE'21 we find that T-PSDA gives large accuracy gains compared to both cosine scoring and PLDA.
Bayesian Inference of Transition Matrices from Incomplete Graph Data with a Topological Prior
Authors: Vincenzo Perri, Luka V. Petrovic, Ingo Scholtes
Date: 2022-10-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Bayesian Inference, Graph Learning

Many network analysis and graph learning techniques are based on models of random walks which require to infer transition matrices that formalize the underlying stochastic process in an observed graph. For weighted graphs, it is common to estimate the entries of such transition matrices based on the relative weights of edges. However, we are often confronted with incomplete data, which turns the construction of the transition matrix based on a weighted graph into an inference problem. Moreover, we often have access to additional information, which capture topological constraints of the system, i.e. which edges in a weighted graph are (theoretically) possible and which are not, e.g. transportation networks, where we have access to passenger trajectories as well as the physical topology of connections, or a set of social interactions with the underlying social structure. Combining these two different sources of information to infer transition matrices is an open challenge, with implications on the downstream network analysis tasks. Addressing this issue, we show that including knowledge on such topological constraints can improve the inference of transition matrices, especially for small datasets. We derive an analytically tractable Bayesian method that uses repeated interactions and a topological prior to infer transition matrices data-efficiently. We compare it against commonly used frequentist and Bayesian approaches both in synthetic and real-world datasets, and we find that it recovers the transition probabilities with higher accuracy and that it is robust even in cases when the knowledge of the topological constraint is partial. Lastly, we show that this higher accuracy improves the results for downstream network analysis tasks like cluster detection and node ranking, which highlights the practical relevance of our method for analyses of various networked systems.
Mean-field neural networks: learning mappings on Wasserstein space
Authors: Huyên Pham, Xavier Warin
Date: 2022-10-27 00:00:00

We study the machine learning task for models with operators mapping between the Wasserstein space of probability measures and a space of functions, like e.g. in mean-field games/control problems. Two classes of neural networks, based on bin density and on cylindrical approximation, are proposed to learn these so-called mean-field functions, and are theoretically supported by universal approximation theorems. We perform several numerical experiments for training these two mean-field neural networks, and show their accuracy and efficiency in the generalization error with various test distributions. Finally, we present different algorithms relying on mean-field neural networks for solving time-dependent mean-field problems, and illustrate our results with numerical tests for the example of a semi-linear partial differential equation in the Wasserstein space of probability measures.
Optimal Sub-sampling to Boost Power of Kernel Sequential Change-point Detection
Authors: Song Wei, Chaofan Huang
Date: 2022-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Change Point Detection

We present a novel scheme to boost detection power for kernel maximum mean discrepancy based sequential change-point detection procedures. Our proposed scheme features an optimal sub-sampling of the history data before the detection procedure, in order to tackle the power loss incurred by the random sub-sample from the enormous history data. We apply our proposed scheme to both Scan $B$ and Kernel Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) procedures, and improved performance is observed from extensive numerical experiments.
High-dimensional Measurement Error Models for Lipschitz Loss
Authors: Xin Ma, Suprateek Kundu
Date: 2022-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Functional Connectivity, Gender Classification, quantile regression, regression, Vocal Bursts Intensity Prediction

Recently emerging large-scale biomedical data pose exciting opportunities for scientific discoveries. However, the ultrahigh dimensionality and non-negligible measurement errors in the data may create difficulties in estimation. There are limited methods for high-dimensional covariates with measurement error, that usually require knowledge of the noise distribution and focus on linear or generalized linear models. In this work, we develop high-dimensional measurement error models for a class of Lipschitz loss functions that encompasses logistic regression, hinge loss and quantile regression, among others. Our estimator is designed to minimize the $L_1$ norm among all estimators belonging to suitable feasible sets, without requiring any knowledge of the noise distribution. Subsequently, we generalize these estimators to a Lasso analog version that is computationally scalable to higher dimensions. We derive theoretical guarantees in terms of finite sample statistical error bounds and sign consistency, even when the dimensionality increases exponentially with the sample size. Extensive simulation studies demonstrate superior performance compared to existing methods in classification and quantile regression problems. An application to a gender classification task based on brain functional connectivity in the Human Connectome Project data illustrates improved accuracy under our approach, and the ability to reliably identify significant brain connections that drive gender differences.
Convolutive Block-Matching Segmentation Algorithm with Application to Music Structure Analysis
Authors: Axel Marmoret, Jérémy E. Cohen, Frédéric Bimbot
Date: 2022-10-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Retrieval

Music Structure Analysis (MSA) consists of representing a song in sections (such as ``chorus'', ``verse'', ``solo'' etc), and can be seen as the retrieval of a simplified organization of the song. This work presents a new algorithm, called Convolutive Block-Matching (CBM) algorithm, devoted to MSA. In particular, the CBM algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm, applying on autosimilarity matrices, a standard tool in MSA. In this work, autosimilarity matrices are computed from the feature representation of an audio signal, and time is sampled on the barscale. We study three different similarity functions for the computation of autosimilarity matrices. We report that the proposed algorithm achieves a level of performance competitive to that of supervised State-of-the-Art methods on 3 among 4 metrics, while being unsupervised.
Taxonomic Recommendations of Real Estate Properties with Textual Attribute Information
Authors: Zachary Harrison, Anish Khazane
Date: 2022-10-27 00:00:00
Tasks: Attribute

In this extended abstract, we present an end to end approach for building a taxonomy of home attribute terms that enables hierarchical recommendations of real estate properties. We cover the methodology for building a real-estate taxonomy, metrics for measuring this structure's quality, and then conclude with a production use-case of making recommendations from search keywords at different levels of topical similarity.
Deep Latent Mixture Model for Recommendation
Authors: Jun Zhang, Ping Li, Wei Wang
Date: 2022-10-27 00:00:00
Tasks: model

Recent advances in neural networks have been successfully applied to many tasks in online recommendation applications. We propose a new framework called cone latent mixture model which makes use of hand-crafted state being able to factor distinct dependencies among multiple related documents. Specifically, it uses discriminative optimization techniques in order to generate effective multi-level knowledge bases, and uses online discriminative learning techniques in order to leverage these features. And for this joint model which uses confidence estimates for each topic and is able to learn a discriminatively trained jointly to automatically extracted salient features where discriminative training is only uses features and then is able to accurately trained.
Constrained Approximate Similarity Search on Proximity Graph
Authors: Weijie Zhao, Shulong Tan, Ping Li
Date: 2022-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Quantization, Recommendation Systems

Search engines and recommendation systems are built to efficiently display relevant information from those massive amounts of candidates. Typically a three-stage mechanism is employed in those systems: (i) a small collection of items are first retrieved by (e.g.,) approximate near neighbor search algorithms; (ii) then a collection of constraints are applied on the retrieved items; (iii) a fine-grained ranking neural network is employed to determine the final recommendation. We observe a major defect of the original three-stage pipeline: Although we only target to retrieve $k$ vectors in the final recommendation, we have to preset a sufficiently large $s$ ($s > k$) for each query, and ``hope'' the number of survived vectors after the filtering is not smaller than $k$. That is, at least $k$ vectors in the $s$ similar candidates satisfy the query constraints. In this paper, we investigate this constrained similarity search problem and attempt to merge the similarity search stage and the filtering stage into one single search operation. We introduce AIRSHIP, a system that integrates a user-defined function filtering into the similarity search framework. The proposed system does not need to build extra indices nor require prior knowledge of the query constraints. We propose three optimization strategies: (1) starting point selection, (2) multi-direction search, and (3) biased priority queue selection. Experimental evaluations on both synthetic and real data confirm the effectiveness of the proposed AIRSHIP algorithm. We focus on constrained graph-based approximate near neighbor (ANN) search in this study, in part because graph-based ANN is known to achieve excellent performance. We believe it is also possible to develop constrained hashing-based ANN or constrained quantization-based ANN.
Fine-Grained Session Recommendations in E-commerce using Deep Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Diddigi Raghu Ram Bharadwaj, Lakshya Kumar, Saif Jawaid, Sreekanth Vempati
Date: 2022-10-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Product Recommendation, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL), Sequential Decision Making

Sustaining users' interest and keeping them engaged in the platform is very important for the success of an e-commerce business. A session encompasses different activities of a user between logging into the platform and logging out or making a purchase. User activities in a session can be classified into two groups: Known Intent and Unknown intent. Known intent activity pertains to the session where the intent of a user to browse/purchase a specific product can be easily captured. Whereas in unknown intent activity, the intent of the user is not known. For example, consider the scenario where a user enters the session to casually browse the products over the platform, similar to the window shopping experience in the offline setting. While recommending similar products is essential in the former, accurately understanding the intent and recommending interesting products is essential in the latter setting in order to retain a user. In this work, we focus primarily on the unknown intent setting where our objective is to recommend a sequence of products to a user in a session to sustain their interest, keep them engaged and possibly drive them towards purchase. We formulate this problem in the framework of the Markov Decision Process (MDP), a popular mathematical framework for sequential decision making and solve it using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) techniques. However, training the next product recommendation is difficult in the RL paradigm due to large variance in browse/purchase behavior of the users. Therefore, we break the problem down into predicting various product attributes, where a pattern/trend can be identified and exploited to build accurate models. We show that the DRL agent provides better performance compared to a greedy strategy.