Personality cannot be predicted from the power of resting state EEG

In the present study we asked whether it is possible to decode personality traits from resting state EEG data. EEG was recorded from a large sample of subjects (N = 309) who had answered questionnaires measuring personality trait scores of the 5 dimensions as well as the 10 subordinate aspects of the Big Five. Machine learning algorithms were used to build a classifier to predict each personality trait from power spectra of the resting state EEG data. The results indicate that the five dimensions as well as their subordinate aspects could not be predicted from the resting state EEG data. Finally, to demonstrate that this result is not due to systematic algorithmic or implementation mistakes the same methods were used to successfully classify whether the subject had eyes open or eyes closed and whether the subject was male or female. These results indicate that the extraction of personality traits from the power spectra of resting state EEG is extremely noisy, if possible at all.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Seeing Behind the Camera: Identifying the Authorship of a Photograph

We introduce the novel problem of identifying the photographer behind a photograph. To explore the feasibility of current computer vision techniques to address this problem, we created a new dataset of over 180,000 images taken by 41 well-known photographers. Using this dataset, we examined the effectiveness of a variety of features (low and high-level, including CNN features) at identifying the photographer. We also trained a new deep convolutional neural network for this task. Our results show that high-level features greatly outperform low-level features. We provide qualitative results using these learned models that give insight into our method's ability to distinguish between photographers, and allow us to draw interesting conclusions about what specific photographers shoot. We also demonstrate two applications of our method.Comment: Dataset downloadable at http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~chris/photographer To Appear in CVPR 201

Predicting student satisfaction with courses based on log data from a virtual learning environment – a neural network and classification tree model

Student satisfaction with courses in academic institutions is an important issue and is recognized as a form of support in ensuring effective and quality education, as well as enhancing student course experience. This paper investigates whether there is a connection between student satisfaction with courses and log data on student courses in a virtual learning environment. Furthermore, it explores whether a successful classification model for predicting student satisfaction with course can be developed based on course log data and compares the results obtained from implemented methods. The research was conducted at the Faculty of Education in Osijek and included analysis of log data and course satisfaction on a sample of third and fourth year students. Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) with different activation functions and Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural networks as well as classification tree models were developed, trained and tested in order to classify students into one of two categories of course satisfaction. Type I and type II errors, and input variable importance were used for model comparison and classification accuracy. The results indicate that a successful classification model using tested methods can be created. The MLP model provides the highest average classification accuracy and the lowest preference in misclassification of students with a low level of course satisfaction, although a t-test for the difference in proportions showed that the difference in performance between the compared models is not statistically significant. Student involvement in forum discussions is recognized as a valuable predictor of student satisfaction with courses in all observed models

Non-specific filtering of beta-distributed data.

BackgroundNon-specific feature selection is a dimension reduction procedure performed prior to cluster analysis of high dimensional molecular data. Not all measured features are expected to show biological variation, so only the most varying are selected for analysis. In DNA methylation studies, DNA methylation is measured as a proportion, bounded between 0 and 1, with variance a function of the mean. Filtering on standard deviation biases the selection of probes to those with mean values near 0.5. We explore the effect this has on clustering, and develop alternate filter methods that utilize a variance stabilizing transformation for Beta distributed data and do not share this bias.ResultsWe compared results for 11 different non-specific filters on eight Infinium HumanMethylation data sets, selected to span a variety of biological conditions. We found that for data sets having a small fraction of samples showing abnormal methylation of a subset of normally unmethylated CpGs, a characteristic of the CpG island methylator phenotype in cancer, a novel filter statistic that utilized a variance-stabilizing transformation for Beta distributed data outperformed the common filter of using standard deviation of the DNA methylation proportion, or its log-transformed M-value, in its ability to detect the cancer subtype in a cluster analysis. However, the standard deviation filter always performed among the best for distinguishing subgroups of normal tissue. The novel filter and standard deviation filter tended to favour features in different genome contexts; for the same data set, the novel filter always selected more features from CpG island promoters and the standard deviation filter always selected more features from non-CpG island intergenic regions. Interestingly, despite selecting largely non-overlapping sets of features, the two filters did find sample subsets that overlapped for some real data sets.ConclusionsWe found two different filter statistics that tended to prioritize features with different characteristics, each performed well for identifying clusters of cancer and non-cancer tissue, and identifying a cancer CpG island hypermethylation phenotype. Since cluster analysis is for discovery, we would suggest trying both filters on any new data sets, evaluating the overlap of features selected and clusters discovered

A survey on utilization of data mining approaches for dermatological (skin) diseases prediction

Due to recent technology advances, large volumes of medical data is obtained. These data contain valuable information. Therefore data mining techniques can be used to extract useful patterns. This paper is intended to introduce data mining and its various techniques and a survey of the available literature on medical data mining. We emphasize mainly on the application of data mining on skin diseases. A categorization has been provided based on the different data mining techniques. The utility of the various data mining methodologies is highlighted. Generally association mining is suitable for extracting rules. It has been used especially in cancer diagnosis. Classification is a robust method in medical mining. In this paper, we have summarized the different uses of classification in dermatology. It is one of the most important methods for diagnosis of erythemato-squamous diseases. There are different methods like Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms and fuzzy classifiaction in this topic. Clustering is a useful method in medical images mining. The purpose of clustering techniques is to find a structure for the given data by finding similarities between data according to data characteristics. Clustering has some applications in dermatology. Besides introducing different mining methods, we have investigated some challenges which exist in mining skin data

Predicting Pilot Misperception of Runway Excursion Risk Through Machine Learning Algorithms of Recorded Flight Data

The research used predictive models to determine pilot misperception of runway excursion risk associated with unstable approaches. The Federal Aviation Administration defined runway excursion as a veer-off or overrun of the runway surface. The Federal Aviation Administration also defined a stable approach as an aircraft meeting the following criteria: (a) on target approach airspeed, (b) correct attitude, (c) landing configuration, (d) nominal descent angle/rate, and (e) on a straight flight path to the runway touchdown zone. Continuing an unstable approach to landing was defined as Unstable Approach Risk Misperception in this research. A review of the literature revealed that an unstable approach followed by the failure to execute a rejected landing was a common contributing factor in runway excursions. Flight Data Recorder data were archived and made available by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for public use. These data were collected over a four-year period from the flight data recorders of a fleet of 35 regional jets operating in the National Airspace System. The archived data were processed and explored for evidence of unstable approaches and to determine whether or not a rejected landing was executed. Once identified, those data revealing evidence of unstable approaches were processed for the purposes of building predictive models. SAS™ Enterprise MinerR was used to explore the data, as well as to build and assess predictive models. The advanced machine learning algorithms utilized included: (a) support vector machine, (b) random forest, (c) gradient boosting, (d) decision tree, (e) logistic regression, and (f) neural network. The models were evaluated and compared to determine the best prediction model. Based on the model comparison, the decision tree model was determined to have the highest predictive value. The Flight Data Recorder data were then analyzed to determine predictive accuracy of the target variable and to determine important predictors of the target variable, Unstable Approach Risk Misperception. Results of the study indicated that the predictive accuracy of the best performing model, decision tree, was 99%. Findings indicated that six variables stood out in the prediction of Unstable Approach Risk Misperception: (1) glideslope deviation, (2) selected approach speed deviation (3) localizer deviation, (4) flaps not extended, (5) drift angle, and (6) approach speed deviation. These variables were listed in order of importance based on results of the decision tree predictive model analysis. The results of the study are of interest to aviation researchers as well as airline pilot training managers. It is suggested that the ability to predict the probability of pilot misperception of runway excursion risk could influence the development of new pilot simulator training scenarios and strategies. The research aids avionics providers in the development of predictive runway excursion alerting display technologies

Finding Faulty Functions From the Traces of Field Failures

Corrective maintenance, which rectifies field faults, consumes 30-60% time of software maintenance. Literature indicates that 50% to 90% of the field failures are rediscoveries of previous faults, and that 20% of the code is responsible for 80% of the faults. Despite this, identification of the location of the field failures in system code remains challenging and consumes substantial (30-40%) time of corrective maintenance. Prior fault discovery techniques for field traces require many pass-fail traces, discover only crashing failures, or identify faulty coarse grain code such as files as the source of faults. This thesis (which is in the integrated article format) first describes a novel technique (F007) that focuses on identifying finer grain faulty code (faulty functions) from only the failing traces of deployed software. F007 works by training the decision trees on the function-call level failed traces of previous faults of a program. When a new failed trace arrives, F007 then predicts a ranked list of faulty functions based on the probability of fault proneness obtained via the decision trees. Second, this thesis describes a novel strategy, F007-plus, that trains F007 on the failed traces of mutants (artificial faults) and previous faults. F007-plus facilitates F007 in discovering new faulty functions that could not be discovered because they were not faulty in the traces of previously known actual faults. F007 (including F007-plus) was evaluated on the Siemens suite, Space program, four UNIX utilities, and a large commercial application of size approximately 20 millions LOC. F007 (including the use of F007-plus) was able to identify faulty functions in approximately 90% of the failed traces by reviewing approximately less than 10% of the code (i.e., by reviewing only the first few functions in the ranked list). These results, in fact, lead to an emerging theory that a faulty function can be identified by using prior traces of at least one fault in that function. Thus, F007 and F007-plus can correctly identify faulty functions in the failed traces of the majority (80%-90%) of the field failures by using the knowledge of faults in a small percentage (20%) of functions