2,606 research outputs found
Augmented neural networks and problem-structure based heuristics for the bin-packing problem
In this paper, we apply the Augmented-neural-networks (AugNN) approach for solving the classical bin-packing problem (BPP). AugNN is a metaheuristic that combines a priority- rule heuristic with the iterative search approach of neural networks to generate good solutions fast. This is the first time this approach has been applied to the BPP. We also propose a decomposition approach for solving harder BPP, in which sub problems are solved using a combination of AugNN approach and heuristics that exploit the problem structure. We discuss the characteristics of problems on which such problem-structure based heuristics could be applied. We empirically show the effectiveness of the AugNN and the decomposition approach on many benchmark problems in the literature. For the 1210 benchmark problems tested, 917 problems were solved to optimality and the average gap between the obtained solution and the upper bound for all the problems was reduced to under 0.66% and computation time averaged below 33 seconds per problem. We also discuss the computational complexity of our approach
The min-conflicts heuristic: Experimental and theoretical results
This paper describes a simple heuristic method for solving large-scale constraint satisfaction and scheduling problems. Given an initial assignment for the variables in a problem, the method operates by searching through the space of possible repairs. The search is guided by an ordering heuristic, the min-conflicts heuristic, that attempts to minimize the number of constraint violations after each step. We demonstrate empirically that the method performs orders of magnitude better than traditional backtracking techniques on certain standard problems. For example, the one million queens problem can be solved rapidly using our approach. We also describe practical scheduling applications where the method has been successfully applied. A theoretical analysis is presented to explain why the method works so well on certain types of problems and to predict when it is likely to be most effective
Training Neural Networks with Stochastic Hessian-Free Optimization
Hessian-free (HF) optimization has been successfully used for training deep
autoencoders and recurrent networks. HF uses the conjugate gradient algorithm
to construct update directions through curvature-vector products that can be
computed on the same order of time as gradients. In this paper we exploit this
property and study stochastic HF with gradient and curvature mini-batches
independent of the dataset size. We modify Martens' HF for these settings and
integrate dropout, a method for preventing co-adaptation of feature detectors,
to guard against overfitting. Stochastic Hessian-free optimization gives an
intermediary between SGD and HF that achieves competitive performance on both
classification and deep autoencoder experiments.Comment: 11 pages, ICLR 201
Scalable Data Augmentation for Deep Learning
Scalable Data Augmentation (SDA) provides a framework for training deep
learning models using auxiliary hidden layers. Scalable MCMC is available for
network training and inference. SDA provides a number of computational
advantages over traditional algorithms, such as avoiding backtracking, local
modes and can perform optimization with stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in
TensorFlow. Standard deep neural networks with logit, ReLU and SVM activation
functions are straightforward to implement. To illustrate our architectures and
methodology, we use P\'{o}lya-Gamma logit data augmentation for a number of
standard datasets. Finally, we conclude with directions for future research
Backtracking Spatial Pyramid Pooling (SPP)-based Image Classifier for Weakly Supervised Top-down Salient Object Detection
Top-down saliency models produce a probability map that peaks at target
locations specified by a task/goal such as object detection. They are usually
trained in a fully supervised setting involving pixel-level annotations of
objects. We propose a weakly supervised top-down saliency framework using only
binary labels that indicate the presence/absence of an object in an image.
First, the probabilistic contribution of each image region to the confidence of
a CNN-based image classifier is computed through a backtracking strategy to
produce top-down saliency. From a set of saliency maps of an image produced by
fast bottom-up saliency approaches, we select the best saliency map suitable
for the top-down task. The selected bottom-up saliency map is combined with the
top-down saliency map. Features having high combined saliency are used to train
a linear SVM classifier to estimate feature saliency. This is integrated with
combined saliency and further refined through a multi-scale
superpixel-averaging of saliency map. We evaluate the performance of the
proposed weakly supervised topdown saliency and achieve comparable performance
with fully supervised approaches. Experiments are carried out on seven
challenging datasets and quantitative results are compared with 40 closely
related approaches across 4 different applications.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure
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