278 research outputs found
Retrospective Higher-Order Markov Processes for User Trails
Users form information trails as they browse the web, checkin with a
geolocation, rate items, or consume media. A common problem is to predict what
a user might do next for the purposes of guidance, recommendation, or
prefetching. First-order and higher-order Markov chains have been widely used
methods to study such sequences of data. First-order Markov chains are easy to
estimate, but lack accuracy when history matters. Higher-order Markov chains,
in contrast, have too many parameters and suffer from overfitting the training
data. Fitting these parameters with regularization and smoothing only offers
mild improvements. In this paper we propose the retrospective higher-order
Markov process (RHOMP) as a low-parameter model for such sequences. This model
is a special case of a higher-order Markov chain where the transitions depend
retrospectively on a single history state instead of an arbitrary combination
of history states. There are two immediate computational advantages: the number
of parameters is linear in the order of the Markov chain and the model can be
fit to large state spaces. Furthermore, by providing a specific structure to
the higher-order chain, RHOMPs improve the model accuracy by efficiently
utilizing history states without risks of overfitting the data. We demonstrate
how to estimate a RHOMP from data and we demonstrate the effectiveness of our
method on various real application datasets spanning geolocation data, review
sequences, and business locations. The RHOMP model uniformly outperforms
higher-order Markov chains, Kneser-Ney regularization, and tensor
factorizations in terms of prediction accuracy
Discriminative Link Prediction using Local Links, Node Features and Community Structure
A link prediction (LP) algorithm is given a graph, and has to rank, for each
node, other nodes that are candidates for new linkage. LP is strongly motivated
by social search and recommendation applications. LP techniques often focus on
global properties (graph conductance, hitting or commute times, Katz score) or
local properties (Adamic-Adar and many variations, or node feature vectors),
but rarely combine these signals. Furthermore, neither of these extremes
exploit link densities at the intermediate level of communities. In this paper
we describe a discriminative LP algorithm that exploits two new signals. First,
a co-clustering algorithm provides community level link density estimates,
which are used to qualify observed links with a surprise value. Second, links
in the immediate neighborhood of the link to be predicted are not interpreted
at face value, but through a local model of node feature similarities. These
signals are combined into a discriminative link predictor. We evaluate the new
predictor using five diverse data sets that are standard in the literature. We
report on significant accuracy boosts compared to standard LP methods
(including Adamic-Adar and random walk). Apart from the new predictor, another
contribution is a rigorous protocol for benchmarking and reporting LP
algorithms, which reveals the regions of strengths and weaknesses of all the
predictors studied here, and establishes the new proposal as the most robust.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
The Role of Eye Gaze in Security and Privacy Applications: Survey and Future HCI Research Directions
For the past 20 years, researchers have investigated the use of eye tracking in security applications. We present a holistic view on gaze-based security applications. In particular, we canvassed the literature and classify the utility of gaze in security applications into a) authentication, b) privacy protection, and c) gaze monitoring during security critical tasks. This allows us to chart several research directions, most importantly 1) conducting field studies of implicit and explicit gaze-based authentication due to recent advances in eye tracking, 2) research on gaze-based privacy protection and gaze monitoring in security critical tasks which are under-investigated yet very promising areas, and 3) understanding the privacy implications of pervasive eye tracking. We discuss the most promising opportunities and most pressing challenges of eye tracking for security that will shape research in gaze-based security applications for the next decade
How can innovation economics benefit from complex network analysis?
There is a deficit in economics of theories and empirical data on complex networks, though mathematicians, physicists, biologists, computer scientists, and sociologists are actively engaged in their study. This paper offers a focused review of prominent concepts in contemporary thinking in network research that may motivate further theoretical research and stimulate interest of economists. Possible avenues for modelling innovation, considered the driving force behind economic change, have been explored. A transition is needed from the analysis in economics of the transaction to the explicit examination of market structure and how it processes, or is processed by, innovation.Network; statistics; economy; innovation; modelling
- …