67,329 research outputs found
Proximal Multitask Learning over Networks with Sparsity-inducing Coregularization
In this work, we consider multitask learning problems where clusters of nodes
are interested in estimating their own parameter vector. Cooperation among
clusters is beneficial when the optimal models of adjacent clusters have a good
number of similar entries. We propose a fully distributed algorithm for solving
this problem. The approach relies on minimizing a global mean-square error
criterion regularized by non-differentiable terms to promote cooperation among
neighboring clusters. A general diffusion forward-backward splitting strategy
is introduced. Then, it is specialized to the case of sparsity promoting
regularizers. A closed-form expression for the proximal operator of a weighted
sum of -norms is derived to achieve higher efficiency. We also provide
conditions on the step-sizes that ensure convergence of the algorithm in the
mean and mean-square error sense. Simulations are conducted to illustrate the
effectiveness of the strategy
High-performance Kernel Machines with Implicit Distributed Optimization and Randomization
In order to fully utilize "big data", it is often required to use "big
models". Such models tend to grow with the complexity and size of the training
data, and do not make strong parametric assumptions upfront on the nature of
the underlying statistical dependencies. Kernel methods fit this need well, as
they constitute a versatile and principled statistical methodology for solving
a wide range of non-parametric modelling problems. However, their high
computational costs (in storage and time) pose a significant barrier to their
widespread adoption in big data applications.
We propose an algorithmic framework and high-performance implementation for
massive-scale training of kernel-based statistical models, based on combining
two key technical ingredients: (i) distributed general purpose convex
optimization, and (ii) the use of randomization to improve the scalability of
kernel methods. Our approach is based on a block-splitting variant of the
Alternating Directions Method of Multipliers, carefully reconfigured to handle
very large random feature matrices, while exploiting hybrid parallelism
typically found in modern clusters of multicore machines. Our implementation
supports a variety of statistical learning tasks by enabling several loss
functions, regularization schemes, kernels, and layers of randomized
approximations for both dense and sparse datasets, in a highly extensible
framework. We evaluate the ability of our framework to learn models on data
from applications, and provide a comparison against existing sequential and
parallel libraries.Comment: Work presented at MMDS 2014 (June 2014) and JSM 201
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