Lazy training of radial basis neural networks

Proceeding of: 16th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN 2006. Athens, Greece, September 10-14, 2006Usually, training data are not evenly distributed in the input space. This makes non-local methods, like Neural Networks, not very accurate in those cases. On the other hand, local methods have the problem of how to know which are the best examples for each test pattern. In this work, we present a way of performing a trade off between local and non-local methods. On one hand a Radial Basis Neural Network is used like learning algorithm, on the other hand a selection of the training patterns is used for each query. Moreover, the RBNN initialization algorithm has been modified in a deterministic way to eliminate any initial condition influence. Finally, the new method has been validated in two time series domains, an artificial and a real world one.This article has been financed by the Spanish founded research MEC project OPLINK::UC3M, Ref: TIN2005-08818-C04-0

Learning radial basis neural networks in a lazy way: A comparative study

Lazy learning methods have been used to deal with problems in which the learning examples are not evenly distributed in the input space. They are based on the selection of a subset of training patterns when a new query is received. Usually, that selection is based on the k closest neighbors and it is a static selection, because the number of patterns selected does not depend on the input space region in which the new query is placed. In this paper, a lazy strategy is applied to train radial basis neural networks. That strategy incorporates a dynamic selection of patterns, and that selection is based on two different kernel functions, the Gaussian and the inverse function. This lazy learning method is compared with the classical lazy machine learning methods and with eagerly trained radial basis neural networks.Publicad

Time series forecasting by means of evolutionary algorithms

IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium. Long Beach, CA, 26-30 March 2007Many physical and artificial phenomena can be described by time series. The prediction of such phenomenon could be as complex as interesting. There are many time series forecasting methods, but most of them only look for general rules to predict the whole series. The main problem is that time series usually have local behaviours that don't allow forecasting the time series by general rules. In this paper, a new method for finding local prediction rules is presented. Those local prediction rules can attain a better general prediction accuracy. The method presented in this paper is based on the evolution of a rule system encoded following a Michigan approach. For testing this method, several time series domains have been used: a widely known artificial one, the Mackey-Glass time series, and two real world ones, the Venice Lagon and the sunspot time series

Theoretical Interpretations and Applications of Radial Basis Function Networks

Medical applications usually used Radial Basis Function Networks just as Artificial Neural Networks. However, RBFNs are Knowledge-Based Networks that can be interpreted in several way: Artificial Neural Networks, Regularization Networks, Support Vector Machines, Wavelet Networks, Fuzzy Controllers, Kernel Estimators, Instanced-Based Learners. A survey of their interpretations and of their corresponding learning algorithms is provided as well as a brief survey on dynamic learning algorithms. RBFNs' interpretations can suggest applications that are particularly interesting in medical domains

A lazy learning approach for building classification models

In this paper, we propose a lazy learning strategy for building classification learning models. Instead of learning the models with the whole training data set before observing the new instance, a selection of patterns is made depending on the new query received and a classification model is learnt with those selected patterns. The selection of patterns is not homogeneous, in the sense that the number of selected patterns depends on the position of the query instance in the input space. That selection is made using a weighting function to give more importance to the training patterns that are more similar to the query instance. Our intention is to provide a lazy learning mechanism suited to any machine learning classification algorithm. For this reason, we study two different methods to avoid fixing any parameter. Experimental results show that classification rates of traditional machine learning algorithms based on trees, rules, or functions can be improved when they are learnt with the lazy learning approach proposed.This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science under contract TIN2008-06491-C04-03 (MSTAR project).Publicad

Identifying Real Estate Opportunities using Machine Learning

The real estate market is exposed to many fluctuations in prices because of existing correlations with many variables, some of which cannot be controlled or might even be unknown. Housing prices can increase rapidly (or in some cases, also drop very fast), yet the numerous listings available online where houses are sold or rented are not likely to be updated that often. In some cases, individuals interested in selling a house (or apartment) might include it in some online listing, and forget about updating the price. In other cases, some individuals might be interested in deliberately setting a price below the market price in order to sell the home faster, for various reasons. In this paper, we aim at developing a machine learning application that identifies opportunities in the real estate market in real time, i.e., houses that are listed with a price substantially below the market price. This program can be useful for investors interested in the housing market. We have focused in a use case considering real estate assets located in the Salamanca district in Madrid (Spain) and listed in the most relevant Spanish online site for home sales and rentals. The application is formally implemented as a regression problem that tries to estimate the market price of a house given features retrieved from public online listings. For building this application, we have performed a feature engineering stage in order to discover relevant features that allows for attaining a high predictive performance. Several machine learning algorithms have been tested, including regression trees, k-nearest neighbors, support vector machines and neural networks, identifying advantages and handicaps of each of them.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures, 5 table