Transforming Graph Representations for Statistical Relational Learning

Relational data representations have become an increasingly important topic due to the recent proliferation of network datasets (e.g., social, biological, information networks) and a corresponding increase in the application of statistical relational learning (SRL) algorithms to these domains. In this article, we examine a range of representation issues for graph-based relational data. Since the choice of relational data representation for the nodes, links, and features can dramatically affect the capabilities of SRL algorithms, we survey approaches and opportunities for relational representation transformation designed to improve the performance of these algorithms. This leads us to introduce an intuitive taxonomy for data representation transformations in relational domains that incorporates link transformation and node transformation as symmetric representation tasks. In particular, the transformation tasks for both nodes and links include (i) predicting their existence, (ii) predicting their label or type, (iii) estimating their weight or importance, and (iv) systematically constructing their relevant features. We motivate our taxonomy through detailed examples and use it to survey and compare competing approaches for each of these tasks. We also discuss general conditions for transforming links, nodes, and features. Finally, we highlight challenges that remain to be addressed

kLog: A Language for Logical and Relational Learning with Kernels

We introduce kLog, a novel approach to statistical relational learning. Unlike standard approaches, kLog does not represent a probability distribution directly. It is rather a language to perform kernel-based learning on expressive logical and relational representations. kLog allows users to specify learning problems declaratively. It builds on simple but powerful concepts: learning from interpretations, entity/relationship data modeling, logic programming, and deductive databases. Access by the kernel to the rich representation is mediated by a technique we call graphicalization: the relational representation is first transformed into a graph --- in particular, a grounded entity/relationship diagram. Subsequently, a choice of graph kernel defines the feature space. kLog supports mixed numerical and symbolic data, as well as background knowledge in the form of Prolog or Datalog programs as in inductive logic programming systems. The kLog framework can be applied to tackle the same range of tasks that has made statistical relational learning so popular, including classification, regression, multitask learning, and collective classification. We also report about empirical comparisons, showing that kLog can be either more accurate, or much faster at the same level of accuracy, than Tilde and Alchemy. kLog is GPLv3 licensed and is available at http://klog.dinfo.unifi.it along with tutorials

Transfer Learning across Networks for Collective Classification

This paper addresses the problem of transferring useful knowledge from a source network to predict node labels in a newly formed target network. While existing transfer learning research has primarily focused on vector-based data, in which the instances are assumed to be independent and identically distributed, how to effectively transfer knowledge across different information networks has not been well studied, mainly because networks may have their distinct node features and link relationships between nodes. In this paper, we propose a new transfer learning algorithm that attempts to transfer common latent structure features across the source and target networks. The proposed algorithm discovers these latent features by constructing label propagation matrices in the source and target networks, and mapping them into a shared latent feature space. The latent features capture common structure patterns shared by two networks, and serve as domain-independent features to be transferred between networks. Together with domain-dependent node features, we thereafter propose an iterative classification algorithm that leverages label correlations to predict node labels in the target network. Experiments on real-world networks demonstrate that our proposed algorithm can successfully achieve knowledge transfer between networks to help improve the accuracy of classifying nodes in the target network.Comment: Published in the proceedings of IEEE ICDM 201

HitFraud: A Broad Learning Approach for Collective Fraud Detection in Heterogeneous Information Networks

On electronic game platforms, different payment transactions have different levels of risk. Risk is generally higher for digital goods in e-commerce. However, it differs based on product and its popularity, the offer type (packaged game, virtual currency to a game or subscription service), storefront and geography. Existing fraud policies and models make decisions independently for each transaction based on transaction attributes, payment velocities, user characteristics, and other relevant information. However, suspicious transactions may still evade detection and hence we propose a broad learning approach leveraging a graph based perspective to uncover relationships among suspicious transactions, i.e., inter-transaction dependency. Our focus is to detect suspicious transactions by capturing common fraudulent behaviors that would not be considered suspicious when being considered in isolation. In this paper, we present HitFraud that leverages heterogeneous information networks for collective fraud detection by exploring correlated and fast evolving fraudulent behaviors. First, a heterogeneous information network is designed to link entities of interest in the transaction database via different semantics. Then, graph based features are efficiently discovered from the network exploiting the concept of meta-paths, and decisions on frauds are made collectively on test instances. Experiments on real-world payment transaction data from Electronic Arts demonstrate that the prediction performance is effectively boosted by HitFraud with fast convergence where the computation of meta-path based features is largely optimized. Notably, recall can be improved up to 7.93% and F-score 4.62% compared to baselines.Comment: ICDM 201