Appropriate, accessible and appealing probabilistic graphical models

Appropriate - Many multivariate probabilistic models either use independent distributions or dependent Gaussian distributions. Yet, many real-world datasets contain count-valued or non-negative skewed data, e.g. bag-of-words text data and biological sequencing data. Thus, we develop novel probabilistic graphical models for use on count-valued and non-negative data including Poisson graphical models and multinomial graphical models. We develop one generalization that allows for triple-wise or k-wise graphical models going beyond the normal pairwise formulation. Furthermore, we also explore Gaussian-copula graphical models and derive closed-form solutions for the conditional distributions and marginal distributions (both before and after conditioning). Finally, we derive mixture and admixture, or topic model, generalizations of these graphical models to introduce more power and interpretability. Accessible - Previous multivariate models, especially related to text data, often have complex dependencies without a closed form and require complex inference algorithms that have limited theoretical justification. For example, hierarchical Bayesian models often require marginalizing over many latent variables. We show that our novel graphical models (even the k-wise interaction models) have simple and intuitive estimation procedures based on node-wise regressions that likely have similar theoretical guarantees as previous work in graphical models. For the copula-based graphical models, we show that simple approximations could still provide useful models; these copula models also come with closed-form conditional and marginal distributions, which make them amenable to exploratory inspection and manipulation. The parameters of these models are easy to interpret and thus may be accessible to a wide audience. Appealing - High-level visualization and interpretation of graphical models with even 100 variables has often been difficult even for a graphical model expert---despite visualization being one of the original motivators for graphical models. This difficulty is likely due to the lack of collaboration between graphical model experts and visualization experts. To begin bridging this gap, we develop a novel "what if?" interaction that manipulates and leverages the probabilistic power of graphical models. Our approach defines: the probabilistic mechanism via conditional probability; the query language to map text input to a conditional probability query; and the formal underlying probabilistic model. We then propose to visualize these query-specific probabilistic graphical models by combining the intuitiveness of force-directed layouts with the beauty and readability of word clouds, which pack many words into valuable screen space while ensuring words do not overlap via pixel-level collision detection. Although both the force-directed layout and the pixel-level packing problems are challenging in their own right, we approximate both simultaneously via adaptive simulated annealing starting from careful initialization. For visualizing mixture distributions, we also design a meaningful mapping from the properties of the mixture distribution to a color in the perceptually uniform CIELUV color space. Finally, we demonstrate our approach via illustrative visualizations of several real-world datasets.Computer Science

User-centered design criteria in automobile design with a case study of automobile dashboard design

Thesis(Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Industrial Design, Izmir, 2006Includes bibliographical references (pages: 100-102)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxi,102 leavesOur era provides us enormous changes and unforeseen advancements in technology, which lead to specific changes in economic and socio-cultural values. As a result of this shift, consumer.s need and expectations have changed into a search for new experiences. Companies, in search of satisfying the new expectations of this era.sconsumer, aspire to be innovative. To achieve this, they are concentrate on the user as the main source of innovation and design their products taking into consideration ergonomic, user needs and functionality. Automotive Industries is the one of the most developed and changed industries. Nowadays, especially interior of the automobile has changed with significant development. This paper describes and discusses the approach development aspects, and evoluation phases of a new generation interior design of automobile. The primary interest in the driver.s environment is the relationship between the driver.s seat, steering wheel and dashboard location. These are the workstation components that the driver required to stay in constand contact with, and the location of these control dictates the driver.s posture. Consequently, this study mainly aims to explore the role of user-centered design criterias for design phase and the role of ergonomic and human factors for automobile dashboard design

Vertex sparsification and universal rounding algorithms

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-129).Suppose we are given a gigantic communication network, but are only interested in a small number of nodes (clients). There are many routing problems we could be asked to solve for our clients. Is there a much smaller network - that we could write down on a sheet of paper and put in our pocket - that approximately preserves all the relevant communication properties of the original network? As we will demonstrate, the answer to this question is YES, and we call this smaller network a vertex sparsifier. In fact, if we are asked to solve a sequence of optimization problems characterized by cuts or flows, we can compute a good vertex sparsifier ONCE and discard the original network. We can run our algorithms (or approximation algorithms) on the vertex sparsifier as a proxy - and still recover approximately optimal solutions in the original network. This novel pattern saves both space (because the network we store is much smaller) and time (because our algorithms run on a much smaller graph). Additionally, we apply these ideas to obtain a master theorem for graph partitioning problems - as long as the integrality gap of a standard linear programming relaxation is bounded on trees, then the integrality gap is at most a logarithmic factor larger for general networks. This result implies optimal bounds for many well studied graph partitioning problems as a special case, and even yields optimal bounds for more challenging problems that had not been studied before. Morally, these results are all based on the idea that even though the structure of optimal solutions can be quite complicated, these solution values can be approximated by crude (even linear) functions.by Ankur Moitra.Ph.D

Vertex sparsification and universal rounding algorithms

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-129).Suppose we are given a gigantic communication network, but are only interested in a small number of nodes (clients). There are many routing problems we could be asked to solve for our clients. Is there a much smaller network - that we could write down on a sheet of paper and put in our pocket - that approximately preserves all the relevant communication properties of the original network? As we will demonstrate, the answer to this question is YES, and we call this smaller network a vertex sparsifier. In fact, if we are asked to solve a sequence of optimization problems characterized by cuts or flows, we can compute a good vertex sparsifier ONCE and discard the original network. We can run our algorithms (or approximation algorithms) on the vertex sparsifier as a proxy - and still recover approximately optimal solutions in the original network. This novel pattern saves both space (because the network we store is much smaller) and time (because our algorithms run on a much smaller graph). Additionally, we apply these ideas to obtain a master theorem for graph partitioning problems - as long as the integrality gap of a standard linear programming relaxation is bounded on trees, then the integrality gap is at most a logarithmic factor larger for general networks. This result implies optimal bounds for many well studied graph partitioning problems as a special case, and even yields optimal bounds for more challenging problems that had not been studied before. Morally, these results are all based on the idea that even though the structure of optimal solutions can be quite complicated, these solution values can be approximated by crude (even linear) functions.by Ankur Moitra.Ph.D