Bayesian Agglomerative Clustering with Coalescents

We introduce a new Bayesian model for hierarchical clustering based on a prior over trees called Kingman's coalescent. We develop novel greedy and sequential Monte Carlo inferences which operate in a bottom-up agglomerative fashion. We show experimentally the superiority of our algorithms over others, and demonstrate our approach in document clustering and phylolinguistics.Comment: NIPS 200

The Infinite Hierarchical Factor Regression Model

We propose a nonparametric Bayesian factor regression model that accounts for uncertainty in the number of factors, and the relationship between factors. To accomplish this, we propose a sparse variant of the Indian Buffet Process and couple this with a hierarchical model over factors, based on Kingman's coalescent. We apply this model to two problems (factor analysis and factor regression) in gene-expression data analysis