278 research outputs found
Algorithms for Approximate Minimization of the Difference Between Submodular Functions, with Applications
We extend the work of Narasimhan and Bilmes [30] for minimizing set functions
representable as a difference between submodular functions. Similar to [30],
our new algorithms are guaranteed to monotonically reduce the objective
function at every step. We empirically and theoretically show that the
per-iteration cost of our algorithms is much less than [30], and our algorithms
can be used to efficiently minimize a difference between submodular functions
under various combinatorial constraints, a problem not previously addressed. We
provide computational bounds and a hardness result on the mul- tiplicative
inapproximability of minimizing the difference between submodular functions. We
show, however, that it is possible to give worst-case additive bounds by
providing a polynomial time computable lower-bound on the minima. Finally we
show how a number of machine learning problems can be modeled as minimizing the
difference between submodular functions. We experimentally show the validity of
our algorithms by testing them on the problem of feature selection with
submodular cost features.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. A shorter version of this appeared in Proc.
Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), Catalina Islands, 201
The Lov\'asz Hinge: A Novel Convex Surrogate for Submodular Losses
Learning with non-modular losses is an important problem when sets of
predictions are made simultaneously. The main tools for constructing convex
surrogate loss functions for set prediction are margin rescaling and slack
rescaling. In this work, we show that these strategies lead to tight convex
surrogates iff the underlying loss function is increasing in the number of
incorrect predictions. However, gradient or cutting-plane computation for these
functions is NP-hard for non-supermodular loss functions. We propose instead a
novel surrogate loss function for submodular losses, the Lov\'asz hinge, which
leads to O(p log p) complexity with O(p) oracle accesses to the loss function
to compute a gradient or cutting-plane. We prove that the Lov\'asz hinge is
convex and yields an extension. As a result, we have developed the first
tractable convex surrogates in the literature for submodular losses. We
demonstrate the utility of this novel convex surrogate through several set
prediction tasks, including on the PASCAL VOC and Microsoft COCO datasets
Scenario Sampling for Large Supermodular Games
This paper introduces a simulation algorithm for evaluating the
log-likelihood function of a large supermodular binary-action game. Covered
examples include (certain types of) peer effect, technology adoption, strategic
network formation, and multi-market entry games. More generally, the algorithm
facilitates simulated maximum likelihood (SML) estimation of games with large
numbers of players, , and/or many binary actions per player, (e.g.,
games with tens of thousands of strategic actions, ). In such cases
the likelihood of the observed pure strategy combination is typically (i) very
small and (ii) a -fold integral who region of integration has a complicated
geometry. Direct numerical integration, as well as accept-reject Monte Carlo
integration, are computationally impractical in such settings. In contrast, we
introduce a novel importance sampling algorithm which allows for accurate
likelihood simulation with modest numbers of simulation draws.Comment: 40 pages, 2 Figures and an 8 page Appendi
Submodular Point Processes with Applications to Machine Learning
We introduce a class of discrete point processes that we call the Submodular Point Processes (SPPs). These processes are characterized via a submodular (or supermodular) function, and naturally model notions of information, coverage and diversity, as well as cooperation. Unlike Log-submodular and Log-supermodular distributions (Log-SPPs) such as determinantal point processes (DPPs), SPPs are themselves submodular (or supermodular). In this paper, we analyze the computational complexity of probabilistic inference in SPPs. We show that computing the partition function for SPPs (and Log-SPPs), requires exponential complexity in the worst case, and also provide algorithms which approximate SPPs up to polynomial factors. Moreover, for several subclasses of interesting submodular functions that occur in applications, we show how we can provide efficient closed form expressions for the partition functions, and thereby marginals and conditional distributions. We also show how SPPs are closed under mixtures, thus enabling maximum likelihood based strategies for learning mixtures of submodular functions. Finally, we argue how SPPs complement existing Log-SPP distributions, and are a natural model for several applications
Complexity of Discrete Energy Minimization Problems
Discrete energy minimization is widely-used in computer vision and machine
learning for problems such as MAP inference in graphical models. The problem,
in general, is notoriously intractable, and finding the global optimal solution
is known to be NP-hard. However, is it possible to approximate this problem
with a reasonable ratio bound on the solution quality in polynomial time? We
show in this paper that the answer is no. Specifically, we show that general
energy minimization, even in the 2-label pairwise case, and planar energy
minimization with three or more labels are exp-APX-complete. This finding rules
out the existence of any approximation algorithm with a sub-exponential
approximation ratio in the input size for these two problems, including
constant factor approximations. Moreover, we collect and review the
computational complexity of several subclass problems and arrange them on a
complexity scale consisting of three major complexity classes -- PO, APX, and
exp-APX, corresponding to problems that are solvable, approximable, and
inapproximable in polynomial time. Problems in the first two complexity classes
can serve as alternative tractable formulations to the inapproximable ones.
This paper can help vision researchers to select an appropriate model for an
application or guide them in designing new algorithms.Comment: ECCV'16 accepte
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