Becoming the Expert - Interactive Multi-Class Machine Teaching

Compared to machines, humans are extremely good at classifying images into categories, especially when they possess prior knowledge of the categories at hand. If this prior information is not available, supervision in the form of teaching images is required. To learn categories more quickly, people should see important and representative images first, followed by less important images later - or not at all. However, image-importance is individual-specific, i.e. a teaching image is important to a student if it changes their overall ability to discriminate between classes. Further, students keep learning, so while image-importance depends on their current knowledge, it also varies with time. In this work we propose an Interactive Machine Teaching algorithm that enables a computer to teach challenging visual concepts to a human. Our adaptive algorithm chooses, online, which labeled images from a teaching set should be shown to the student as they learn. We show that a teaching strategy that probabilistically models the student's ability and progress, based on their correct and incorrect answers, produces better 'experts'. We present results using real human participants across several varied and challenging real-world datasets.Comment: CVPR 201

Machine learning for internet of things classification using network traffic parameters

With the growth of the internet of things (IoT) smart objects, managing these objects becomes a very important challenge, to know the total number of interconnected objects on a heterogeneous network, and if they are functioning correctly; the use of IoT objects can have advantages in terms of comfort, efficiency, and cost. In this context, the identification of IoT objects is the first step to help owners manage them and ensure the security of their IoT environments such as smart homes, smart buildings, or smart cities. In this paper, to meet the need for IoT object identification, we have deployed an intelligent environment to collect all network traffic traces based on a diverse list of IoT in real-time conditions. In the exploratory phase of this traffic, we have developed learning models capable of identifying and classifying connected IoT objects in our environment. We have applied the six supervised machine learning algorithms: support vector machine, decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), k-nearest neighbors, naive Bayes, and stochastic gradient descent classifier. Finally, the experimental results indicate that the DT and RF models proved to be the most effective and demonstrate an accuracy of 97.72% on the analysis of network traffic data and more particularly information contained in network protocols. Most IoT objects are identified and classified with an accuracy of 99.21%

A spatially distributed model for foreground segmentation

Foreground segmentation is a fundamental first processing stage for vision systems which monitor real-world activity. In this paper we consider the problem of achieving robust segmentation in scenes where the appearance of the background varies unpredictably over time. Variations may be caused by processes such as moving water, or foliage moved by wind, and typically degrade the performance of standard per-pixel background models. Our proposed approach addresses this problem by modeling homogeneous regions of scene pixels as an adaptive mixture of Gaussians in color and space. Model components are used to represent both the scene background and moving foreground objects. Newly observed pixel values are probabilistically classified, such that the spatial variance of the model components supports correct classification even when the background appearance is significantly distorted. We evaluate our method over several challenging video sequences, and compare our results with both per-pixel and Markov Random Field based models. Our results show the effectiveness of our approach in reducing incorrect classifications

The proximity of a field plot and land-use choice: implications for land consolidation

Traditional methods in agricultural economics and agricultural engineering have yielded mixed results when specifying the costs of an unfavourable parcel structure. Concepts related to travel costs and the production function are frequently applied when the costs of farming distant parcels are examined. However, farmers’ perspective regarding preferences for land use is ignored or partly overlapped by predictions made by researchers. Based on applied econometric models fitted to stated preference data, we revealed that the proximity of a field plot is a relevant factor affecting land-use decisions. One-fourth of landowners would change the use of a field plot if the condition of distance was changed. Landowners would continue farming a field plot if its distance from the farm compound was reduced, being willing to accept on average €79 less in net income per ha per year. The effect of a greater proximity of field plots to the farm compound following land consolidation was heterogeneous, particularly depending on the farm size and its location.land use options, distance factor, land consolidation, choice experiment, multinomial logit model, random parameters model., Land Economics/Use,