Learning Parameter Distributions to Detect Concept Drift in Data Streams

Johannes Haug, Gjergji Kasneci

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; A novel framework for the detection of concept drift in streaming environments

Slides Poster

Data distributions in streaming environments are usually not stationary. In order to maintain a high predictive quality at all times, online learning models need to adapt to distributional changes, which are known as concept drift. The timely and robust identification of concept drift can be difficult, as we never have access to the true distribution of streaming data. In this work, we propose a novel framework for the detection of real concept drift, called ERICS. By treating the parameters of a predictive model as random variables, we show that concept drift corresponds to a change in the distribution of optimal parameters. To this end, we adopt common measures from information theory. The proposed framework is completely model-agnostic. By choosing an appropriate base model, ERICS is also capable to detect concept drift at the input level, which is a significant advantage over existing approaches. An evaluation on several synthetic and real-world data sets suggests that the proposed framework identifies concept drift more effectively and precisely than various existing works.

Similar papers

Algorithm Recommendation for Data Streams

Jáder Martins Camboim De Sá, Andre Luis Debiaso Rossi, Gustavo Enrique De Almeida Prado Alves Batista, Luís Paulo Faina Garcia

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Meta-Learning for Algorithm Selection in Time-Changing Data Streams

Slides Poster Similar

In the last decades, many companies are taking advantage of massive data generation at high frequencies through knowledge discovery to identify valuable information. Machine learning techniques can be employed for knowledge discovery, since they are able to extract patterns from data and induce models to predict future events. However, dynamic and evolving environments generate streams of data that usually are non-stationary. Models induced in these scenarios may perish over time due to seasonality or concept drift. The periodic retraining could help but the fixed algorithm's hypothesis space could no longer be appropriate. An alternative solution is to use meta-learning for periodic algorithm selection in time-changing environments, choosing the bias that best suits the current data. In this paper, we present an enhanced framework for data streams algorithm selection based on MetaStream. Our approach uses meta-learning and incremental learning to actively select the best algorithm for the current concept in a time-changing. Different from previous works, a set of cutting edge meta-features and an incremental learning approach in the meta-level based on LightGBM are used. The results show that this new strategy can improve the recommendation of the best algorithm more accurately in time-changing data.

Separation of Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertainty in Deterministic Deep Neural Networks

Denis Huseljic, Bernhard Sick, Marek Herde, Daniel Kottke

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; AE-DNN: Modeling Uncertainty in Deep Neural Networks

Slides Poster Similar

Despite the success of deep neural networks (DNN) in many applications, their ability to model uncertainty is still significantly limited. For example, in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving, it is crucial to obtain a prediction that reflects different types of uncertainty to address life-threatening situations appropriately. In such cases, it is essential to be aware of the risk (i.e., aleatoric uncertainty) and the reliability (i.e., epistemic uncertainty) that comes with a prediction. We present AE-DNN, a model allowing the separation of aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty while maintaining a proper generalization capability. AE-DNN is based on deterministic DNN, which can determine the respective uncertainty measures in a single forward pass. In analyses with synthetic and image data, we show that our method improves the modeling of epistemic uncertainty while providing an intuitively understandable separation of risk and reliability.

Bayesian Active Learning for Maximal Information Gain on Model Parameters

Kasra Arnavaz, Aasa Feragen, Oswin Krause, Marco Loog

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Bayesian assumptions for Bayesian classification

Slides Poster Similar

The fact that machine learning models, despite their advancements, are still trained on randomly gathered data is proof that a lasting solution to the problem of optimal data gathering has not yet been found. In this paper, we investigate whether a Bayesian approach to the classification problem can provide assumptions under which one is guaranteed to perform at least as good as random sampling. For a logistic regression model, we show that maximal expected information gain on model parameters is a promising criterion for selecting samples, assuming that our classification model is well-matched to the data. Our derived criterion is closely related to the maximum model change. We experiment with data sets which satisfy this assumption to varying degrees to see how sensitive our performance is to the violation of our assumption in practice.

Factor Screening Using Bayesian Active Learning and Gaussian Process Meta-Modelling

Cheng Li, Santu Rana, Andrew William Gill, Dang Nguyen, Sunil Kumar Gupta, Svetha Venkatesh

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Data-Efficient Bayesian Active Learning for Factor Screening in Combat Simulations

Similar

In this paper we propose a data-efficient Bayesian active learning framework for factor screening, which is important when dealing with systems which are expensive to evaluate, such as combat simulations. We use Gaussian Process meta-modelling with the Automatic Relevance Determination covariance kernel, which measures the importance of each factor by the inverse of their associated length-scales in the kernel. This importance measures the degree of non-linearity in the simulation response with respect to the corresponding factor. We initially place a prior over the length-scale values, then use the estimated posterior to select the next datum to simulate which maximises the mutual entropy between the length-scales and the unknown simulation response. Our goal-driven Bayesian active learning strategy ensures that we are data-efficient in discovering the correct values of the length-scales compared to either a random-sampling or uncertainty-sampling based approach. We apply our method to an expensive combat simulation and demonstrate the superiority of our approach.

Aggregating Dependent Gaussian Experts in Local Approximation

Hamed Jalali, Gjergji Kasneci

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; A novel approach for aggregating the Gaussian experts by detecting strong violations of conditional independence

Slides Poster Similar

Distributed Gaussian processes (DGPs) are prominent local approximation methods to scale Gaussian processes (GPs) to large datasets. Instead of a global estimation, they train local experts by dividing the training set into subsets, thus reducing the time complexity. This strategy is based on the conditional independence assumption, which basically means that there is a perfect diversity between the local experts. In practice, however, this assumption is often violated, and the aggregation of experts leads to sub-optimal and inconsistent solutions. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for aggregating the Gaussian experts by detecting strong violations of conditional independence. The dependency between experts is determined by using a Gaussian graphical model, which yields the precision matrix. The precision matrix encodes conditional dependencies between experts and is used to detect strongly dependent experts and construct an improved aggregation. Using both synthetic and real datasets, our experimental evaluations illustrate that our new method outperforms other state-of-the-art (SOTA) DGP approaches while being substantially more time-efficient than SOTA approaches, which build on independent experts.

The eXPose Approach to Crosslier Detection

Antonio Barata, Frank Takes, Hendrik Van Den Herik, Cor Veenman

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; EXPose: Crosslier Detection Based on Supervised Category Modeling

Slides Poster Similar

Transit of wasteful materials within the European Union is highly regulated through a system of permits. Waste processing costs vary greatly depending on the waste category of a permit. Therefore, companies may have a financial incentive to allege transporting waste with erroneous categorisation. Our goal is to assist inspectors in selecting potentially manipulated permits for further investigation, making their task more effective and efficient. Due to data limitations, a supervised learning approach based on historical cases is not possible. Standard unsupervised approaches, such as outlier detection and data quality-assurance techniques, are not suited since we are interested in targeting non-random modifications in both category and category-correlated features. For this purpose we (1) introduce the concept of crosslier: an anomalous instance of a category which lies across other categories; (2) propose eXPose: a novel approach to crosslier detection based on supervised category modelling; and (3) present the crosslier diagram: a visualisation tool specifically designed for domain experts to easily assess crossliers. We compare eXPose against traditional outlier detection methods in various benchmark datasets with synthetic crossliers and show the superior performance of our method in targeting these instances.

3CS Algorithm for Efficient Gaussian Process Model Retrieval

Fabian Berns, Kjeld Schmidt, Ingolf Bracht, Christian Beecks

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Efficient retrieval of Gaussian Process Models for large-scale data using divide-&-conquer-based approach

Slides Poster Similar

Gaussian Process Models (GPMs) have been applied for various pattern recognition tasks due to their analytical tractability, ability to quantify uncertainty for their own results as well as to subsume prominent other regression techniques. Despite these promising prospects their super-quadratic computation time complexity for model selection and evaluation impedes its broader application for more than a few thousand data points. Although there have been many proposals towards Gaussian Processes for large-scale data, those only offer a linearly scaling improvement to a cubical scaling problem. In particular, solutions like the Nystrom approximation or sparse matrices are only taking fractions of the given data into account and subsequently lead to inaccurate models. In this paper, we thus propose a divide-&-conquer-based approach, that allows to efficiently retrieve GPMs for large-scale data. The resulting model is composed of independent pattern representations for non-overlapping segments of the given data and consequently reduces computation time significantly. Our performance analysis indicates that our proposal is able to outperform state-of-the-art algorithms for GPM retrieval with respect to the qualities of efficiency and accuracy.

Multi-annotator Probabilistic Active Learning

Marek Herde, Daniel Kottke, Denis Huseljic, Bernhard Sick

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; MaPAL: Multi-annotator Probabilistic Active Learning

Slides Poster Similar

Classifiers require annotations of instances, i.e., class labels, for training. An annotation process is often costly due to its manual execution through human annotators. Active learning (AL) aims at reducing the annotation costs by selecting instances from which the classifier is expected to learn the most. Many AL strategies assume the availability of a single omniscient annotator. In this article, we overcome this limitation by considering multiple error-prone annotators. We propose a novel AL strategy multi-annotator probabilistic active learning (MaPAL). Due to the nature of learning with error-prone annotators, it must not only select instances but annotators, too. MaPAL builds on a decision-theoretic framework and selects instance-annotator pairs maximizing the classifier's expected performance. Experiments on a variety of data sets demonstrate MaPAL's superior performance compared to five related AL strategies.

Drift Anticipation with Forgetting to Improve Evolving Fuzzy System

Clément Leroy, Eric Anquetil, Nathalie Girard

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; A coherent method to integrate forgetting in Evolving Fuzzy System

Slides Poster Similar

Working with a non-stationary stream of data requires for the analysis system to evolve its model (the parameters as well as the structure) over time. In particular, concept drifts can occur, which makes it necessary to forget knowledge that has become obsolete. However, the forgetting is subjected to the plasticity stability dilemma. It says that increase forgetting improve reactivity of the adaptation to the new data while reducing the robustness of the system. Based on a set of inference rules, Evolving Fuzzy Systems - EFS - have proven to be effective in addressing the data stream learning problem. However tackling the stability plasticity dilemma is still an open question. This paper proposes a coherent method to integrate forgetting in Evolving Fuzzy System, based on the recently introduced notion of concept drift anticipation. The forgetting is applied with two methods: an exponential forgetting of the premise part and a differed directional forgetting of the conclusion part of EFS to preserve the coherence between both parts. The originality of the approach consists in applying the forgetting only in the anticipation module and in keeping the EFS (called principal system) learned without any forgetting. Then, when a drift is detected in the stream, a selection mechanism is proposed to replace the obsolete parameters of the principal system with more suitable parameters of the anticipation module. An evaluation of the proposed methods is carried out on benchmark online datasets, with a comparison with state-of-the-art online classifiers (Learn++.NSE, PENsemble, pclass) as well as with the original system using different forgetting strategies.

Switching Dynamical Systems with Deep Neural Networks

Cesar Ali Ojeda Marin, Kostadin Cvejoski, Bogdan Georgiev, Ramses J. Sanchez

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Variational RNN for Switching Dynamics

Slides Poster Similar

The problem of uncovering different dynamicalregimes is of pivotal importance in time series analysis. Switchingdynamical systems provide a solution for modeling physical phe-nomena whose time series data exhibit different dynamical modes.In this work we propose a novel variational RNN model forswitching dynamics allowing for both non-Markovian and non-linear dynamical behavior between and within dynamic modes.Attention mechanisms are provided to inform the switchingdistribution. We evaluate our model on synthetic and empiricaldatasets of diverse nature and successfully uncover differentdynamical regimes and predict the switching dynamics.

Killing Four Birds with One Gaussian Process: The Relation between Different Test-Time Attacks

Kathrin Grosse, Michael Thomas Smith, Michael Backes

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Security of Gaussian Process Classifiers against Attack Algorithms

Slides Poster Similar

In machine learning (ML) security, attacks like evasion, model stealing or membership inference are generally studied in individually. Previous work has also shown a relationship between some attacks and decision function curvature of the targeted model. Consequently, we study an ML model allowing direct control over the decision surface curvature: Gaussian Process classifiers (GPCs). For evasion, we find that changing GPC's curvature to be robust against one attack algorithm boils down to enabling a different norm or attack algorithm to succeed. This is backed up by our formal analysis showing that static security guarantees are opposed to learning. Concerning intellectual property, we show formally that lazy learning does not necessarily leak all information when applied. In practice, often a seemingly secure curvature can be found. For example, we are able to secure GPC against empirical membership inference by proper configuration. In this configuration, however, the GPC's hyper-parameters are leaked, e.g. model reverse engineering succeeds. We conclude that attacks on classification should not be studied in isolation, but in relation to each other.

Naturally Constrained Online Expectation Maximization

Daniela Pamplona, Antoine Manzanera

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Constrained Online Expectation-Maximization for Probabilistic Principal Components Analysis

Slides Poster Similar

With the rise of big data sets, learning algorithms must be adapted to piece-wise mechanisms in order to tackle time and memory costs of large scale calculations. Furthermore, for most learning embedded systems the input data are fed in a sequential and contingent manner: one by one, and possibly class by class. Thus, learning algorithms should not only run online but cope with time-varying, non-independent, and non-balanced training data for the system's entire life. Online Expectation-Maximization is a well-known algorithm for learning probabilistic models in real-time, due to its simplicity and convergence properties. However, these properties are only valid in the case of large, independent and identically distributed (iid) samples. In this paper, we propose to constraint the online Expectation-Maximization on the Fisher distance between the parameters. After the presentation of the algorithm, we make a thorough study of its use in Probabilistic Principal Components Analysis. First, we derive the update rules, then we analyse the effect of the constraint on major problems of online and sequential learning: convergence, forgetting and interference. Furthermore we use several algorithmic protocols: iid {\em vs} sequential data, and constraint parameters updated step-wise {\em vs} class-wise. Our results show that this constraint increases the convergence rate of online Expectation-Maximization, decreases forgetting and slightly introduces transfer learning.

Probabilistic Latent Factor Model for Collaborative Filtering with Bayesian Inference

Jiansheng Fang, Xiaoqing Zhang, Yan Hu, Yanwu Xu, Ming Yang, Jiang Liu

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Bayesian Latent Factor Model for Collaborative Filtering

Slides Similar

Latent Factor Model (LFM) is one of the most successful methods for Collaborative filtering (CF) in the recommendation system, in which both users and items are projected into a joint latent factor space. Base on matrix factorization applied usually in pattern recognition, LFM models user-item interactions as inner products of factor vectors of user and item in that space and can be efficiently solved by least square methods with optimal estimation. However, such optimal estimation methods are prone to overfitting due to the extreme sparsity of user-item interactions. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian treatment for LFM, named Bayesian Latent Factor Model (BLFM). Based on observed user-item interactions, we build a probabilistic factor model in which the regularization is introduced via placing prior constraint on latent factors, and the likelihood function is established over observations and parameters. Then we draw samples of latent factors from the posterior distribution with Variational Inference (VI) to predict expected value. We further make an extension to BLFM, called BLFMBias, incorporating user-dependent and item-dependent biases into the model for enhancing performance. Extensive experiments on the movie rating dataset show the effectiveness of our proposed models by compared with several strong baselines.

Active Sampling for Pairwise Comparisons via Approximate Message Passing and Information Gain Maximization

Aliaksei Mikhailiuk, Clifford Wilmot, Maria Perez-Ortiz, Dingcheng Yue, Rafal Mantiuk

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; ASAP: An Active Sampling Algorithm for Pairwise Comparison Data

Slides Similar

Pairwise comparison data arise in many domains with subjective assessment experiments, for example in image and video quality assessment. In these experiments observers are asked to express a preference between two conditions. However, many pairwise comparison protocols require a large number of comparisons to infer accurate scores, which may be unfeasible when each comparison is time-consuming (e.g. videos) or expensive (e.g. medical imaging). This motivates the use of an active sampling algorithm that chooses only the most informative pairs for comparison. In this paper we propose ASAP, an active sampling algorithm based on approximate message passing and expected information gain maximization. Unlike most existing methods, which rely on partial updates of the posterior distribution, we are able to perform full updates and therefore much improve the accuracy of the inferred scores. The algorithm relies on three techniques for reducing computational cost: inference based on approximate message passing, selective evaluations of the information gain, and selecting pairs in a batch that forms a minimum spanning tree of the inverse of information gain. We demonstrate, with real and synthetic data, that ASAP offers the highest accuracy of inferred scores compared to the existing methods. We also provide an open-source GPU implementation of ASAP for large-scale experiments.

Conditional-UNet: A Condition-Aware Deep Model for Coherent Human Activity Recognition from Wearables

Liming Zhang, Wenbin Zhang, Nathalie Japkowicz

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Coherent Human Activity Recognition from Multi-Channel Time Series Data

Slides Poster Similar

Recognizing human activities from multi-channel time series data collected from wearable sensors is ever more practical in real-world applications. For those applications, a challenge comes from coherent activities and body movements, like moving head during walking or sitting, because signals of different movements are mixed and interfered with each other. A basic multi-label classification is typically assuming independence within multiple activities, which is over-simplified and reduces modeling power even using those state-of-the-art deep methods. In this paper, we investigate this new problem, so-called ``Coherent Human Activity Recognition (Co-HAR)'', which keeps the complete conditional dependency of multiple labels. Additionally, we consider such Co-HAR as a dense labelling problem that classifies each sample on a time step with multiple coherent labels to provide high-fidelity and duration-varied support to high-precision applications. To explicitly model conditional dependency, a novel condition-aware deep architecture ``Conditional-UNet'' is developed to allow multiple dense labeling for Co-HAR. We also contribute a first-of-its-kind Co-HAR dataset for head gesture recognition in coherence with a user's walking or sitting to research communities. Experiments on this dataset show that our model outperforms existing deep methods, and especially achieve up to 92% accuracy on head gesture classification in coherence.

Deep Transformation Models: Tackling Complex Regression Problems with Neural Network Based Transformation Models

Beate Sick, Torsten Hothorn, Oliver Dürr

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; A Deep Transformation Model for Probabilistic Regression

Slides Poster Similar

We present a deep transformation model for probabilistic regression. Deep learning is known for outstandingly accurate predictions on complex data but in regression tasks it is predominantly used to just predict a single number. This ignores the non-deterministic character of most tasks. Especially if crucial decisions are based on the predictions, like in medical applications, it is essential to quantify the prediction uncertainty. The presented deep learning transformation model estimates the whole conditional probability distribution, which is the most thorough way to capture uncertainty about the outcome. We combine ideas from a statistical transformation model (most likely transformation) with recent transformation models from deep learning (normalizing flows) to predict complex outcome distributions. The core of the method is a parameterized transformation function which can be trained with the usual maximum likelihood framework using gradient descent. The method can be combined with existing deep learning architectures. For small machine learning benchmark datasets, we report state of the art performance for most dataset and partly even outperform it. Our method works for complex input data, which we demonstrate by employing a CNN architecture on image data.

Temporal Pattern Detection in Time-Varying Graphical Models

Federico Tomasi, Veronica Tozzo, Annalisa Barla

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; A dynamical network inference model that leverages on kernels to consider general temporal patterns

Slides Poster Similar

Graphical models allow to describe the interplay among variables of a system through a compact representation, suitable when relations evolve over time. For example, in a biological setting, genes interact differently depending on external environmental or metabolic factors. To incorporate this dynamics a viable strategy is to estimate a sequence of temporally related graphs assuming similarity among samples in different time points. While adjacent time points may direct the analysis towards a robust estimate of the underlying graph, the resulting model will not incorporate long-term or recurrent temporal relationships. In this work we propose a dynamical network inference model that leverages on kernels to consider general temporal patterns (such as circadian rhythms or seasonality). We show how our approach may also be exploited when the recurrent patterns are unknown, by coupling the network inference with a clustering procedure that detects possibly non-consecutive similar networks. Such clusters are then used to build similarity kernels. The convexity of the functional is determined by whether we impose or infer the kernel. In the first case, the optimisation algorithm exploits efficiently proximity operators with closed-form solutions. In the other case, we resort to an alternating minimisation procedure which jointly learns the temporal kernel and the underlying network. Extensive analysis on synthetic data shows the efficacy of our models compared to state-of-the-art methods. Finally, we applied our approach on two real-world applications to show how considering long-term patterns is fundamental to have insights on the behaviour of a complex system.

RNN Training along Locally Optimal Trajectories via Frank-Wolfe Algorithm

Yun Yue, Ming Li, Venkatesh Saligrama, Ziming Zhang

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Frank-Wolfe Algorithm for Efficient Training of RNNs

Slides Poster Similar

We propose a novel and efficient training method for RNNs by iteratively seeking a local minima on the loss surface within a small region, and leverage this directional vector for the update, in an outer-loop. We propose to utilize the Frank-Wolfe (FW) algorithm in this context. Although, FW implicitly involves normalized gradients, which can lead to a slow convergence rate, we develop a novel RNN training method that, surprisingly, even with the additional cost, the overall training cost is empirically observed to be lower than back-propagation. Our method leads to a new Frank-Wolfe method, that is in essence an SGD algorithm with a restart scheme. We prove that under certain conditions our algorithm has a sublinear convergence rate of $O(1/\epsilon)$ for $\epsilon$ error. We then conduct empirical experiments on several benchmark datasets including those that exhibit long-term dependencies, and show significant performance improvement. We also experiment with deep RNN architectures and show efficient training performance. Finally, we demonstrate that our training method is robust to noisy data.

Assortative-Constrained Stochastic Block Models

Daniel Gribel, Thibaut Vidal, Michel Gendreau

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Constrained Stochastic Block Models for Assortative Communities in Neural Networks

Slides Poster Similar

Stochastic block models (SBMs) are often used to find assortative community structures in networks, such that the probability of connections within communities is higher than in between communities. However, classic SBMs are not limited to assortative structures. In this study, we discuss the implications of this model-inherent indifference towards assortativity or disassortativity, and show that it can lead to undesirable outcomes in datasets which are known to be assortative but which contain a reduced amount of information. To circumvent these issues, we propose a constrained SBM that imposes strong assortativity constraints, along with efficient algorithmic solutions. These constraints significantly boost community-detection capabilities in regimes which are close to the detectability threshold. They also permit to identify structurally-different communities in networks representing cerebral-cortex activity regions.

Personalized Models in Human Activity Recognition Using Deep Learning

Hamza Amrani, Daniela Micucci, Paolo Napoletano

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Incremental Learning for Personalized Human Activity Recognition

Slides Poster Similar

Current sensor-based human activity recognition techniques that rely on a user-independent model struggle to generalize to new users and on to changes that a person may make over time to his or her way of carrying out activities. Incremental learning is a technique that allows to obtain personalized models which may improve the performance on the classifiers thanks to a continuous learning based on user data. Finally, deep learning techniques have been proven to be more effective with respect to traditional ones in the generation of user-independent models. The aim of our work is therefore to put together deep learning techniques with incremental learning in order to obtain personalized models that perform better with respect to user-independent model and personalized model obtained using traditional machine learning techniques. The experimentation was done by comparing the results obtained by a technique in the state of the art with those obtained by two neural networks (ResNet and a simplified CNN) on three datasets. The experimentation showed that neural networks adapt faster to a new user than the baseline.

Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Raw Eye Tracking Data Segmentation, Generation, and Reconstruction

Wolfgang Fuhl, Yao Rong, Enkelejda Kasneci

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Semantic Segmentation of Eye Tracking Data with Fully Convolutional Neural Networks

Slides Poster Similar

In this paper, we use fully convolutional neural networks for the semantic segmentation of eye tracking data. We also use these networks for reconstruction, and in conjunction with a variational auto-encoder to generate eye movement data. The first improvement of our approach is that no input window is necessary, due to the use of fully convolutional networks and therefore any input size can be processed directly. The second improvement is that the used and generated data is raw eye tracking data (position X, Y and time) without preprocessing. This is achieved by pre-initializing the filters in the first layer and by building the input tensor along the z axis. We evaluated our approach on three publicly available datasets and compare the results to the state of the art.

Hierarchical Routing Mixture of Experts

Wenbo Zhao, Yang Gao, Shahan Ali Memon, Bhiksha Raj, Rita Singh

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; A Binary Tree-structured Hierarchical Routing Mixture of Experts for Regression

Slides Poster Similar

In regression tasks the distribution of the data is often too complex to be fitted by a single model. In contrast, partition-based models are developed where data is divided and fitted by local models. These models partition the input space and do not leverage the input-output dependency of multimodal-distributed data, and strong local models are needed to make good predictions. Addressing these problems, we propose a binary tree-structured hierarchical routing mixture of experts (HRME) model that has classifiers as non-leaf node experts and simple regression models as leaf node experts. The classifier nodes jointly soft-partition the input-output space based on the natural separateness of multimodal data. This enables simple leaf experts to be effective for prediction. Further, we develop a probabilistic framework for the HRME model, and propose a recursive Expectation-Maximization (EM) based algorithm to learn both the tree structure and the expert models. Experiments on a collection of regression tasks validate the effectiveness of our method compared to a variety of other regression models.

Automatically Mining Relevant Variable Interactions Via Sparse Bayesian Learning

Ryoichiro Yafune, Daisuke Sakuma, Yasuo Tabei, Noritaka Saito, Hiroto Saigo

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Sparse Bayes for Interpretable Non-linear Prediction

Slides Poster Similar

With the rapid increase in the availability of large amount of data, prediction is becoming increasingly popular, and has widespread through our daily life. However, powerful non- linear prediction methods such as deep learning and SVM suffer from interpretability problem, making it hard to use in domains where the reason for decision making is required. In this paper, we develop an interpretable non-linear model called itemset Sparse Bayes (iSB), which builds a Bayesian probabilistic model, while simultaneously considering variable interactions. In order to suppress the resulting large number of variables, sparsity is imposed on regression weights by a sparsity inducing prior. As a subroutine to search for variable interactions, itemset enumeration algorithm is employed with a novel bounding condition. In computational experiments using real-world dataset, the proposed method performed better than decision tree by 10% in terms of r-squared . We also demonstrated the advantage of our method in Bayesian optimization setting, in which the proposed approach could successfully find the maximum of an unknown function faster than Gaussian process. The interpretability of iSB is naturally inherited to Bayesian optimization, thereby gives us a clue to understand which variables interactions are important in optimizing an unknown function.

PIF: Anomaly detection via preference embedding

Filippo Leveni, Luca Magri, Giacomo Boracchi, Cesare Alippi

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; PIF: Anomaly Detection with Preference Embedding for Structured Patterns

Slides Poster Similar

We address the problem of detecting anomalies with respect to structured patterns. To this end, we conceive a novel anomaly detection method called PIF, that combines the advantages of adaptive isolation methods with the flexibility of preference embedding. Specifically, we propose to embed the data in a high dimensional space where an efficient tree-based method, PI-FOREST, is employed to compute an anomaly score. Experiments on synthetic and real datasets demonstrate that PIF favorably compares with state-of-the-art anomaly detection techniques, and confirm that PI-FOREST is better at measuring arbitrary distances and isolate points in the preference space.

Uncertainty Guided Recognition of Tiny Craters on the Moon

Thorsten Wilhelm, Christian Wöhler

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Accurately Detecting Tiny Craters in Remote Sensed Images Using Deep Neural Networks

Slides Poster Similar

Accurately detecting craters in remotely sensed images is an important task when analysing the properties of planetary bodies. Commonly, only large craters in the range of several kilometres are detected. In this work we provide the first example of automatically detecting tiny craters in the range of several meters with the help of a deep neural network by using only a small set of annotated craters. Additionally, we propose a novel way to group overlapping detections and replace the commonly used non-maximum suppression with a probabilistic treatment. As a result, we receive valuable uncertainty estimates of the detections and the aggregated detections are shown to be vastly superior.

Categorizing the Feature Space for Two-Class Imbalance Learning

Rosa Sicilia, Ermanno Cordelli, Paolo Soda

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Efficient Ensemble of Classifiers for Minority Class Inference

Slides Poster Similar

Class imbalance limits the performance of most learning algorithms, resulting in a low recognition rate for samples belonging to the minority class. Although there are different strategies to address this problem, methods that generate ensemble of classifiers have proven to be effective in several applications. This paper presents a new strategy to construct the training set of each classifier in the ensemble by exploiting information in the feature space that can give rise to unreliable classifications, which are determined by a novel algorithm here introduced. The performance of our proposal is compared against multiple standard ensemble approaches on 25 publicly available datasets, showing promising results.

Explainable Online Validation of Machine Learning Models for Practical Applications

Wolfgang Fuhl, Yao Rong, Thomas Motz, Michael Scheidt, Andreas Markus Hartel, Andreas Koch, Enkelejda Kasneci

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; A Reformulation of Regression and Classification for Machine Learning Algorithm Validation

Slides Poster Similar

We present a reformulation of the regression and classification, which aims to validate the result of a machine learning algorithm. Our reformulation simplifies the original problem and validates the result of the machine learning algorithm using the training data. Since the validation of machine learning algorithms must always be explainable, we perform our experiments with the kNN algorithm as well as with an algorithm based on conditional probabilities, which is proposed in this work. For the evaluation of our approach, three publicly available data sets were used and three classification and two regression problems were evaluated. The presented algorithm based on conditional probabilities is also online capable and requires only a fraction of memory compared to the kNN algorithm.

Detecting Anomalies from Video-Sequences: A Novel Descriptor

Giulia Orrù, Davide Ghiani, Maura Pintor, Gian Luca Marcialis, Fabio Roli

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Trit-based Measurement of Group Dynamics for Crowd Behavior Analysis and Anomaly Detection

Slides Poster Similar

We present a novel descriptor for crowd behavior analysis and anomaly detection. The goal is to measure by appropriate patterns the speed of formation and disintegration of groups in the crowd. This descriptor is inspired by the concept of one-dimensional local binary patterns: in our case, such patterns depend on the number of group observed in a time window. An appropriate measurement unit, named "trit" (trinary digit), represents three possible dynamic states of groups on a certain frame. Our hypothesis is that abrupt variations of the groups' number may be due to an anomalous event that can be accordingly detected, by translating these variations on temporal trit-based sequence of strings which are significantly different from the one describing the "no-anomaly" one. Due to the peculiarity of the rationale behind this work, relying on the number of groups, three different methods of people group's extraction are compared. Experiments are carried out on the Motion-Emotion benchmark data set. Reported results point out in which cases the trit-based measurement of group dynamics allows us to detect the anomaly. Besides the promising performance of our approach, we show how it is correlated with the anomaly typology and the camera's perspective to the crowd's flow (frontal, lateral).

Relative Feature Importance

Gunnar König, Christoph Molnar, Bernd Bischl, Moritz Grosse-Wentrup

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Relative Feature Importance for Interpretable Machine Learning

Slides Similar

Interpretable Machine Learning (IML) methods are used to gain insight into the relevance of a feature of interest for the performance of a model. Commonly used IML methods differ in whether they consider features of interest in isolation, e.g., Permutation Feature Importance (PFI), or in relation to all remaining feature variables, e.g., Conditional Feature Importance (CFI). As such, the perturbation mechanisms inherent to PFI and CFI represent extreme reference points. We introduce Relative Feature Importance (RFI), a generalization of PFI and CFI that allows for a more nuanced feature importance computation beyond the PFI versus CFI dichotomy. With RFI, the importance of a feature relative to any other subset of features can be assessed, including variables that were not available at training time. We derive general interpretation rules for RFI based on a detailed theoretical analysis of the implications of relative feature relevance, and demonstrate the method's usefulness on simulated examples.

Decision Snippet Features

Pascal Welke, Fouad Alkhoury, Christian Bauckhage, Stefan Wrobel

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Decision Snippet Features for Interpretability

Slides Poster Similar

Decision trees excel at interpretability of their prediction results. To achieve required prediction accuracies, however, often large ensembles of decision trees -- random forests -- are considered, reducing interpretability due to large size. Additionally, their size slows down inference on modern hardware and restricts their applicability in low-memory embedded devices. We introduce \emph{Decision Snippet Features}, which are obtained from small subtrees that appear frequently in trained random forests. We subsequently show that linear models on top of these features achieve comparable and sometimes even better predictive performance than the original random forest, while reducing the model size by up to two orders of magnitude.

One Step Clustering Based on A-Contrario Framework for Detection of Alterations in Historical Violins

Alireza Rezaei, Sylvie Le Hégarat-Mascle, Emanuel Aldea, Piercarlo Dondi, Marco Malagodi

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; A-Contrario Clustering for the Detection of Altered Violins using UVIFL Images

Slides Poster Similar

Preventive conservation is an important practice in Cultural Heritage. The constant monitoring of the state of conservation of an artwork helps us reduce the risk of damage and number of interventions necessary. In this work, we propose a probabilistic approach for the detection of alterations on the surface of historical violins based on an a-contrario framework. Our method is a one step NFA clustering solution which considers grey-level and spatial density information in one background model. The proposed method is robust to noise and avoids parameter tuning and any assumption about the quantity of the worn out areas. We have used as input UV induced fluorescence (UVIFL) images for considering details not perceivable with visible light. Tests were conducted on image sequences included in the ``Violins UVIFL imagery'' dataset. Results illustrate the ability of the algorithm to distinguish the worn area from the surrounding regions. Comparisons with the state of the art clustering methods shows improved overall precision and recall.

Seasonal Inhomogeneous Nonconsecutive Arrival Process Search and Evaluation

Kimberly Holmgren, Paul Gibby, Joseph Zipkin

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; SINAPSE: Fitting a Sparse Time Series Model to Seasonal Data

Slides Poster Similar

Time series often exhibit seasonal patterns, and identification of these patterns is essential to understanding the data and predicting future behavior. Most methods train on large datasets and can fail to predict far past the training data. This limitation becomes more pronounced when data is sparse. This paper presents a method to fit a model to seasonal time series data that maintains predictive power when data is limited. This method, called \textit{SINAPSE}, combines statistical model fitting with an information criteria to search for disjoint, and possibly nonconsecutive, regimes underlying the data, allowing for a sparse representation resistant to overfitting.

On Resource-Efficient Bayesian Network Classifiers and Deep Neural Networks

Wolfgang Roth, Günther Schindler, Holger Fröning, Franz Pernkopf

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Quantization-Aware Bayesian Network Classifiers for Small-Scale Scenarios

Slides Poster Similar

We present two methods to reduce the complexity of Bayesian network (BN) classifiers. First, we introduce quantization-aware training using the straight-through gradient estimator to quantize the parameters of BNs to few bits. Second, we extend a recently proposed differentiable tree-augmented naive Bayes (TAN) structure learning approach to also consider the model size. Both methods are motivated by recent developments in the deep learning community, and they provide effective means to trade off between model size and prediction accuracy, which is demonstrated in extensive experiments. Furthermore, we contrast quantized BN classifiers with quantized deep neural networks (DNNs) for small-scale scenarios which have hardly been investigated in the literature. We show Pareto optimal models with respect to model size, number of operations, and test error and find that both model classes are viable options.

Learning Natural Thresholds for Image Ranking

Somayeh Keshavarz, Quang Nhat Tran, Richard Souvenir

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Image Representation Learning and Label Discretization for Natural Image Ranking

Slides Poster Similar

For image ranking tasks with naturally continuous output, such as age and scenicness estimation, it is common to discretize the label range and apply methods from (ordered) classification analysis. In this paper, we propose a data-driven approach for simultaneous representation learning and label discretization. Compared to arbitrarily selecting thresholds, we seek to learn thresholds and image representations by minimizing a novel loss function in an end-to-end model. We demonstrate our combined approach on a variety of image ranking tasks and demonstrate that it outperforms task-specific methods. Additionally, our learned partitioning scheme can be transferred to improve methods that rely on discretization.

Model Decay in Long-Term Tracking

Efstratios Gavves, Ran Tao, Deepak Gupta, Arnold Smeulders

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Model Bias in Long-Term Tracking

Slides Poster Similar

To account for appearance variations, tracking models need to be updated during the course of inference. However, updating the tracker model with adverse bounding box predictions adds an unavoidable bias term to the learning. This bias term, which we refer to as model decay, offsets the learning and causes tracking drift. While its adverse affect might not be visible in short-term tracking, accumulation of this bias over a long-term can eventually lead to a permanent loss of the target. In this paper, we look at the problem of model bias from a mathematical perspective. Further, we briefly examine the effect of various sources of tracking error on model decay, using a correlation filter (ECO) and a Siamese (SINT) tracker. Based on observations and insights, we propose simple additions that help to reduce model decay in long-term tracking. The proposed tracker is evaluated on four long-term and one short-term tracking benchmarks, demonstrating superior accuracy and robustness, even on 30 minute long videos.

An Invariance-Guided Stability Criterion for Time Series Clustering Validation

Florent Forest, Alex Mourer, Mustapha Lebbah, Hanane Azzag, Jérôme Lacaille

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; An invariance-guided method for clustering model selection in time series data

Slides Poster Similar

Time series clustering is a challenging task due to the specificities of this type of data. Temporal correlation and invariance to transformations such as shifting, warping or noise prevent the use of standard data mining methods. Time series clustering has been mostly studied under the angle of finding efficient algorithms and distance metrics adapted to the specific nature of time series data. Much less attention has been devoted to the general problem of model selection. Clustering stability has emerged as a universal and model-agnostic principle for clustering model selection. This principle can be stated as follows: an algorithm should find a structure in the data that is resilient to perturbation by sampling or noise. We propose to apply stability analysis to time series by leveraging prior knowledge on the nature and invariances of the data. These invariances determine the perturbation process used to assess stability. Based on a recently introduced criterion combining between-cluster and within-cluster stability, we propose an invariance-guided method for model selection, applicable to a wide range of clustering algorithms. Experiments conducted on artificial and benchmark data sets demonstrate the ability of our criterion to discover structure and select the correct number of clusters, whenever data invariances are known beforehand.

Low-Cost Lipschitz-Independent Adaptive Importance Sampling of Stochastic Gradients

Huikang Liu, Xiaolu Wang, Jiajin Li, Man-Cho Anthony So

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Adaptive Importance Sampling for Stochastic Gradient Descent

Slides Similar

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) usually samples training data based on the uniform distribution, which may not be a good choice because of the high variance of its stochastic gradient. Thus, importance sampling methods are considered in the literature to improve the performance. Most previous work on SGD-based methods with importance sampling requires the knowledge of Lipschitz constants of all component gradients, which are in general difficult to estimate. In this paper, we study an adaptive importance sampling method for common SGD-based methods by exploiting the local first-order information without knowing any Lipschitz constants. In particular, we periodically changes the sampling distribution by only utilizing the gradient norms in the past few iterations. We prove that our adaptive importance sampling non-asymptotically reduces the variance of the stochastic gradients in SGD, and thus better convergence bounds than that for vanilla SGD can be obtained. We extend this sampling method to several other widely used stochastic gradient algorithms including SGD with momentum and ADAM. Experiments on common convex learning problems and deep neural networks illustrate notably enhanced performance using the adaptive sampling strategy.

Understanding Integrated Gradients with SmoothTaylor for Deep Neural Network Attribution

Gary Shing Wee Goh, Sebastian Lapuschkin, Leander Weber, Wojciech Samek, Alexander Binder

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; SmoothGrad: bridging Integrated Gradients and SmoothGrad from the Taylor's theorem perspective

Slides Similar

Integrated Gradients as an attribution method for deep neural network models offers simple implementability. However, it suffers from noisiness of explanations which affects the ease of interpretability. The SmoothGrad technique is proposed to solve the noisiness issue and smoothen the attribution maps of any gradient-based attribution method. In this paper, we present SmoothTaylor as a novel theoretical concept bridging Integrated Gradients and SmoothGrad, from the Taylor's theorem perspective. We apply the methods to the image classification problem, using the ILSVRC2012 ImageNet object recognition dataset, and a couple of pretrained image models to generate attribution maps. These attribution maps are empirically evaluated using quantitative measures for sensitivity and noise level. We further propose adaptive noising to optimize for the noise scale hyperparameter value. From our experiments, we find that the SmoothTaylor approach together with adaptive noising is able to generate better quality saliency maps with lesser noise and higher sensitivity to the relevant points in the input space as compared to Integrated Gradients.

Memetic Evolution of Training Sets with Adaptive Radial Basis Kernels for Support Vector Machines

Jakub Nalepa, Wojciech Dudzik, Michal Kawulok

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Memetic Algorithm for Evolving Support Vector Machines with Adaptive Kernels

Slides Poster Similar

Support vector machines (SVMs) are a supervised learning technique that can be applied in both binary and multi-class classification and regression tasks. SVMs seamlessly handle continuous and categorical variables. Their training is, however, both time- and memory-costly for large training data, and selecting an incorrect kernel function or its hyperparameters leads to suboptimal decision hyperplanes. In this paper, we introduce a memetic algorithm for evolving SVM training sets with adaptive radial basis function kernels to not only make the deployment of SVMs easier for emerging big data applications, but also to improve their generalization abilities over the unseen data. We build upon two observations: first, only a small subset of all training vectors, called the support vectors, contribute to the position of the decision boundary, hence the other vectors can be removed from the training set without deteriorating the performance of the model. Second, selecting different kernel hyperparameters for different training vectors may help better reflect the subtle characteristics of the space while determining the hyperplane. The experiments over almost 100 benchmark and synthetic sets showed that our algorithm delivers models outperforming both SVMs optimized using state-of-the-art evolutionary techniques, and other supervised learners.

Electroencephalography Signal Processing Based on Textural Features for Monitoring the Driver’s State by a Brain-Computer Interface

Giulia Orrù, Marco Micheletto, Fabio Terranova, Gian Luca Marcialis

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; One-dimensional Local Binary Pattern Algorithm for Estimating Driver Vigilance in a Brain-Computer Interface System

Slides Poster Similar

In this study we investigate a textural processing method of electroencephalography (EEG) signal as an indicator to estimate the driver's vigilance in a hypothetical Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) system. The novelty of the solution proposed relies on employing the one-dimensional Local Binary Pattern (1D-LBP) algorithm for feature extraction from pre-processed EEG data. From the resulting feature vector, the classification is done according to three vigilance classes: awake, tired and drowsy. The claim is that the class transitions can be detected by describing the variations of the micro-patterns' occurrences along the EEG signal. The 1D-LBP is able to describe them by detecting mutual variations of the signal temporarily "close" as a short bit-code. Our analysis allows to conclude that the 1D-LBP adoption has led to significant performance improvement. Moreover, capturing the class transitions from the EEG signal is effective, although the overall performance is not yet good enough to develop a BCI for assessing the driver's vigilance in real environments.

Confidence Calibration for Deep Renal Biopsy Immunofluorescence Image Classification

Federico Pollastri, Juan Maroñas, Federico Bolelli, Giulia Ligabue, Roberto Paredes, Riccardo Magistroni, Costantino Grana

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; A Probabilistic Convolutional Neural Network for Immunofluorescence Classification in Renal Biopsy

Slides Poster Similar

With this work we tackle immunofluorescence classification in renal biopsy, employing state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Networks. In this setting, the aim of the probabilistic model is to assist an expert practitioner towards identifying the location pattern of antibody deposits within a glomerulus. Since modern neural networks often provide overconfident outputs, we stress the importance of having a reliable prediction, demonstrating that Temperature Scaling, a recently introduced re-calibration technique, can be successfully applied to immunofluorescence classification in renal biopsy. Experimental results demonstrate that the designed model yields good accuracy on the specific task, and that Temperature Scaling is able to provide reliable probabilities, which are highly valuable for such a task given the low inter-rater agreement.

Improving Gravitational Wave Detection with 2D Convolutional Neural Networks

Siyu Fan, Yisen Wang, Yuan Luo, Alexander Michael Schmitt, Shenghua Yu

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Two-dimensional Convolutional Neural Networks for Gravitational Wave Detection from Time Series with Background Noise

Poster Similar

Sensitive gravitational wave (GW) detectors such as that of Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) realize the direct observation of GW signals that confirm Einstein's general theory of relativity. However, it remains challenges to quickly detect faint GW signals from a large number of time series with background noise under unknown probability distributions. Traditional methods such as matched-filtering in general assume Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and are far from being real-time due to its high computational complexity. To avoid these weaknesses, one-dimensional (1D) Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are introduced to achieve fast online detection in milliseconds but do not have enough consideration on the trade-off between the frequency and time features, which will be revisited in this paper through data pre-processing and subsequent two-dimensional (2D) CNNs during offline training to improve the online detection sensitivity. In this work, the input data is pre-processed to form a 2D spectrum by Short-time Fourier transform (STFT), where frequency features are extracted without learning. Then, carrying out two 1D convolutions across time and frequency axes respectively, and concatenating the time-amplitude and frequency-amplitude feature maps with equal proportion subsequently, the frequency and time features are treated equally as the input of our following two-dimensional CNNs. The simulation of our above ideas works on a generated data set with uniformly varying SNR (2-17), which combines the GW signal generated by PYCBC and the background noise sampled directly from LIGO. Satisfying the real-time online detection requirement without noise distribution assumption, the experiments of this paper demonstrate better performance in average compared to that of 1D CNNs, especially in the cases of lower SNR (4-9).

MD-kNN: An Instance-Based Approach for Multi-Dimensional Classification

Bin-Bin Jia, Min-Ling Zhang

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; MD-kNN: Adapting Instance-based Techniques for Multi-dimensional Classification

Slides Poster Similar

Multi-dimensional classification (MDC) deals with the problem where each instance is associated with multiple class variables, each of which corresponds to a specific class space. One of the mainstream solutions for MDC is to adapt traditional machine learning techniques to deal with MDC data. In this paper, a first attempt towards adapting instance-based techniques for MDC is investigated, and a new approach named MD-kNN is proposed. Specifically, MD-kNN identifies unseen instance's k nearest neighbors and obtains its corresponding kNN counting statistics for each class space, based on which maximum a posteriori (MAP) inference is made for each pair of class spaces. After that, the class label w.r.t. each class space is determined by synergizing predictions from the learned classifiers via consulting empirical kNN accuracy. Comparative studies over ten benchmark data sets clearly validate MD-kNN's effectiveness.

Video Episode Boundary Detection with Joint Episode-Topic Model

Shunyao Wang, Ye Tian, Ruidong Wang, Yang Du, Han Yan, Ruilin Yang, Jian Ma

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Unsupervised Video Episode Boundary Detection for Bullet Screen Comment Video

Slides Poster Similar

Social online video has emerged as one of the most popular application, where "bullet screen comment" is one of the favorite features of Asian users. User behavior report finds that most people are used to quickly navigate and locate his concerned video clip according to its corresponding video labels. Traditional scene segmentation algorithms are mostly based on the analysis of frames, which cannot automatically generate labels. Since time-synchronized comments can reflect the episode of current moment, this paper proposed an unsupervised video episode boundary detection model (VEBD) for bullet screen comment video. It could not only automatically identify each episode boundary, but also detect the topic for video tagging. Specifically, a Joint Episode-Topic model is first constructed to detect the hidden topic in initial partitioned time slices. Then, based on the detected topics, temporal and semantic relevancy between adjacent time slices are measured to refine the boundary detection accuracy. Experiments based on real data show that our model outperforms the existing algorithms in both boundary detection and semantic tagging quality.

A Bayesian Approach to Reinforcement Learning of Vision-Based Vehicular Control

Zahra Gharaee, Karl Holmquist, Linbo He, Michael Felsberg

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Bayesian Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving

Slides Poster Similar

In this paper, we present a state-of-the-art reinforcement learning method for autonomous driving. Our approach employs temporal difference learning in a Bayesian framework to learn vehicle control signals from sensor data. The agent has access to images from a forward facing camera, which are pre-processed to generate semantic segmentation maps. We trained our system using both ground truth and estimated semantic segmentation input. Based on our observations from a large set of experiments, we conclude that training the system on ground truth input data leads to better performance than training the system on estimated input even if estimated input is used for evaluation. The system is trained and evaluated in a realistic simulated urban environment using the CARLA simulator. The simulator also contains a benchmark that allows for comparing to other systems and methods. The required training time of the system is shown to be lower and the performance on the benchmark superior to competing approaches.

Adaptive Matching of Kernel Means

Miao Cheng, Xinge You

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Adaptive Matching of Kernel Means for Knowledge Discovery and Feature Learning

Slides Poster Similar

As a promising step, the performance of data analysis and feature learning are able to be improved if certain pattern matching mechanism is available. One of the feasible solutions can refer to the importance estimation of instances, and consequently, kernel mean matching (KMM) has become an important method for knowledge discovery and novelty detection in general. Furthermore, the existing KMM methods have focused on concrete learning frameworks. In this work, a novel approach to adaptive matching of kernel means is proposed, and selected data with high importance are adopted to achieve calculation efficiency with optimization. In addition, scalable learning can be conducted in proposed method as a generalized solution with appended data. The experimental results on a wide variety of real-world data sets demonstrate the proposed method is able to give outstanding performance compared with several state-of-the-art methods, while calculation efficiency can be preserved.

Expectation-Maximization for Scheduling Problems in Satellite Communication

Werner Bailer, Martin Winter, Johannes Ebert, Joel Flavio, Karin Plimon

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; Unsupervised Machine Learning for Satellite Communication Using Expectation-Maximization

Slides Poster Similar

In this paper we address unsupervised machine learning for two use cases in satellite communication, which are scheduling problems: (i) Ka-band frequency plan optimization and (ii) dynamic configuration of an active antenna array satellite. We apply approaches based on the Expectation-Maximization (EM) framework to both of them. We compare against baselines of currently deployed solutions, and show that they can be significantly outperformed by the EM-based approach. In addition, the approaches can be applied incrementally, thus supporting fast adaptation to small changes in the input configuration.

A Multilinear Sampling Algorithm to Estimate Shapley Values

Ramin Okhrati, Aldo Lipani

Responsive image

Auto-TLDR; A sampling method for Shapley values for multilayer Perceptrons

Slides Poster Similar

Shapley values are great analytical tools in game theory to measure the importance of a player in a game. Due to their axiomatic and desirable properties such as efficiency, they have become popular for feature importance analysis in data science and machine learning. However, the time complexity to compute Shapley values based on the original formula is exponential, and as the number of features increases, this becomes infeasible. Castro et al. [1] developed a sampling algorithm, to estimate Shapley values. In this work, we propose a new sampling method based on a multilinear extension technique as applied in game theory. The aim is to provide a more efficient (sampling) method for estimating Shapley values. Our method is applicable to any machine learning model, in particular for either multiclass classifications or regression problems. We apply the method to estimate Shapley values for multilayer Perceptrons (MLPs) and through experimentation on two datasets, we demonstrate that our method provides more accurate estimations of the Shapley values by reducing the variance of the sampling statistics