826 research outputs found
Learning vector quantization for proximity data
Hofmann D. Learning vector quantization for proximity data. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2016.Prototype-based classifiers such as learning vector quantization (LVQ) often display intuitive and flexible classification and learning rules. However, classical techniques are restricted to vectorial data only, and hence not suited for more complex data structures. Therefore, a few extensions of diverse LVQ variants to more general data which are characterized based on pairwise similarities or dissimilarities only have been proposed recently in the literature.
In this contribution, we propose a novel extension of LVQ to similarity data which is based on the kernelization of an underlying probabilistic model: kernel robust soft LVQ (KRSLVQ). Relying on the notion of a pseudo-Euclidean embedding of proximity data, we put this specific approach as well as existing alternatives into a general framework which characterizes different fundamental possibilities how to extend LVQ towards proximity data: the main characteristics are given by the choice of the cost function, the interface to the data in terms of similarities or dissimilarities, and the way in which optimization takes place. In particular the latter strategy highlights the difference of popular kernel approaches versus so-called relational approaches.
While KRSLVQ and alternatives lead to state of the art results, these extensions have two drawbacks as compared to their vectorial counterparts: (i) a quadratic training complexity is encountered due to the dependency of the methods on the full proximity matrix; (ii) prototypes are no longer given by vectors but they are represented in terms of an implicit linear combination of data, i.e. interpretability of the prototypes is lost.
We investigate different techniques to deal with these challenges: We consider a speed-up of training by means of low rank approximations of the Gram matrix by its Nyström approximation. In benchmarks, this strategy is successful if the considered data are intrinsically low-dimensional. We propose a quick check to efficiently test this property prior to training.
We extend KRSLVQ by sparse approximations of the prototypes: instead of the full coefficient vectors, few exemplars which represent the prototypes can be directly inspected by practitioners in the same way as data. We compare different paradigms based on which to infer a sparse approximation: sparsity priors while training, geometric approaches including orthogonal matching pursuit and core techniques, and heuristic approximations based on the coefficients or proximities.
We demonstrate the performance of these LVQ techniques for benchmark data, reaching state of the art results. We discuss the behavior of the methods to enhance performance and interpretability as concerns quality, sparsity, and representativity, and we propose different measures how to quantitatively evaluate the performance of the approaches.
We would like to point out that we had the possibility to present our findings in international publication organs including three journal articles [6, 9, 2], four conference papers [8, 5, 7, 1] and two workshop contributions [4, 3].
References
[1] A. Gisbrecht, D. Hofmann, and B. Hammer. Discriminative dimensionality reduction mappings. Advances in Intelligent Data Analysis, 7619: 126–138, 2012.
[2] B. Hammer, D. Hofmann, F.-M. Schleif, and X. Zhu. Learning vector quantization for (dis-)similarities. Neurocomputing, 131: 43–51, 2014.
[3] D. Hofmann. Sparse approximations for kernel robust soft lvq. Mittweida Workshop on Computational Intelligence, 2013.
[4] D. Hofmann, A. Gisbrecht, and B. Hammer. Discriminative probabilistic prototype based models in kernel space. New Challenges in Neural Computation, TR Machine Learning Reports, 2012.
[5] D. Hofmann, A. Gisbrecht, and B. Hammer. Efficient approximations of kernel robust soft lvq. Workshop on Self-Organizing Maps, 198: 183–192, 2012.
[6] D. Hofmann, A. Gisbrecht, and B. Hammer. Efficient approximations of robust soft learning vector quantization for non-vectorial data. Neurocomputing, 147: 96–106, 2015.
[7] D. Hofmann and B. Hammer. Kernel robust soft learning vector quantization. Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition, 7477: 14–23, 2012.
[8] D. Hofmann and B. Hammer. Sparse approximations for kernel learning vector quantization. European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, 549–554, 2013.
[9] D. Hofmann, F.-M. Schleif, B. Paaßen, and B. Hammer. Learning interpretable kernelized prototype-based models. Neurocomputing, 141: 84–96, 2014
Tree Edit Distance Learning via Adaptive Symbol Embeddings
Metric learning has the aim to improve classification accuracy by learning a
distance measure which brings data points from the same class closer together
and pushes data points from different classes further apart. Recent research
has demonstrated that metric learning approaches can also be applied to trees,
such as molecular structures, abstract syntax trees of computer programs, or
syntax trees of natural language, by learning the cost function of an edit
distance, i.e. the costs of replacing, deleting, or inserting nodes in a tree.
However, learning such costs directly may yield an edit distance which violates
metric axioms, is challenging to interpret, and may not generalize well. In
this contribution, we propose a novel metric learning approach for trees which
we call embedding edit distance learning (BEDL) and which learns an edit
distance indirectly by embedding the tree nodes as vectors, such that the
Euclidean distance between those vectors supports class discrimination. We
learn such embeddings by reducing the distance to prototypical trees from the
same class and increasing the distance to prototypical trees from different
classes. In our experiments, we show that BEDL improves upon the
state-of-the-art in metric learning for trees on six benchmark data sets,
ranging from computer science over biomedical data to a natural-language
processing data set containing over 300,000 nodes.Comment: Paper at the International Conference of Machine Learning (2018),
2018-07-10 to 2018-07-15 in Stockholm, Swede
Dissimilarity-based learning for complex data
Mokbel B. Dissimilarity-based learning for complex data. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2016.Rapid advances of information technology have entailed an ever increasing amount of digital data, which raises the demand for powerful data mining and machine learning tools. Due to modern methods for gathering, preprocessing, and storing information, the collected data become more and more complex: a simple vectorial representation, and comparison in terms of the Euclidean distance is often no longer appropriate to capture relevant aspects in the data. Instead, problem-adapted similarity or dissimilarity measures refer directly to the given encoding scheme, allowing to treat information constituents in a relational manner.
This thesis addresses several challenges of complex data sets and their representation in the context of machine learning. The goal is to investigate possible remedies, and propose corresponding improvements of established methods, accompanied by examples from various application domains. The main scientific contributions are the following:
(I) Many well-established machine learning techniques are restricted to vectorial input data only. Therefore, we propose the extension of two popular prototype-based clustering and classification algorithms to non-negative symmetric dissimilarity matrices.
(II) Some dissimilarity measures incorporate a fine-grained parameterization, which allows to configure the comparison scheme with respect to the given data and the problem at hand. However, finding adequate parameters can be hard or even impossible for human users, due to the intricate effects of parameter changes and the lack of detailed prior knowledge. Therefore, we propose to integrate a metric learning scheme into a dissimilarity-based classifier, which can automatically adapt the parameters of a sequence alignment measure according to the given classification task.
(III) A valuable instrument to make complex data sets accessible are dimensionality reduction techniques, which can provide an approximate low-dimensional embedding of the given data set, and, as a special case, a planar map to visualize the data's neighborhood structure. To assess the reliability of such an embedding, we propose the extension of a well-known quality measure to enable a fine-grained, tractable quantitative analysis, which can be integrated into a visualization. This tool can also help to compare different dissimilarity measures (and parameter settings), if ground truth is not available.
(IV) All techniques are demonstrated on real-world examples from a variety of application domains, including bioinformatics, motion capturing, music, and education
Advances in dissimilarity-based data visualisation
Gisbrecht A. Advances in dissimilarity-based data visualisation. Bielefeld: Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld; 2015
Prototype generation on structural data using dissimilarity space representation
Data reduction techniques play a key role in instance-based classification to lower the amount of data to be processed. Among the different existing approaches, prototype selection (PS) and prototype generation (PG) are the most representative ones. These two families differ in the way the reduced set is obtained from the initial one: While the former aims at selecting the most representative elements from the set, the latter creates new data out of it. Although PG is considered to delimit more efficiently decision boundaries, the operations required are not so well defined in scenarios involving structural data such as strings, trees, or graphs. This work studies the possibility of using dissimilarity space (DS) methods as an intermediate process for mapping the initial structural representation to a statistical one, thereby allowing the use of PG methods. A comparative experiment over string data is carried out in which our proposal is faced to PS methods on the original space. Results show that the proposed strategy is able to achieve significantly similar results to PS in the initial space, thus standing as a clear alternative to the classic approach, with some additional advantages derived from the DS representation.This work was partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de EducaciĂłn, Cultura y Deporte through a FPU fellowship (AP2012–0939), Vicerrectorado de InvestigaciĂłn, Desarrollo e InnovaciĂłn de la Universidad de Alicante through FPU program (UAFPU2014–5883), and the Spanish Ministerio de EconomĂa y Competitividad through Project TIMuL (No. TIN2013-48152-C2-1-R supported by EU FEDER funds)
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