A multi-resolution, non-parametric, Bayesian framework for identification of spatially-varying model parameters

This paper proposes a hierarchical, multi-resolution framework for the identification of model parameters and their spatially variability from noisy measurements of the response or output. Such parameters are frequently encountered in PDE-based models and correspond to quantities such as density or pressure fields, elasto-plastic moduli and internal variables in solid mechanics, conductivity fields in heat diffusion problems, permeability fields in fluid flow through porous media etc. The proposed model has all the advantages of traditional Bayesian formulations such as the ability to produce measures of confidence for the inferences made and providing not only predictive estimates but also quantitative measures of the predictive uncertainty. In contrast to existing approaches it utilizes a parsimonious, non-parametric formulation that favors sparse representations and whose complexity can be determined from the data. The proposed framework in non-intrusive and makes use of a sequence of forward solvers operating at various resolutions. As a result, inexpensive, coarse solvers are used to identify the most salient features of the unknown field(s) which are subsequently enriched by invoking solvers operating at finer resolutions. This leads to significant computational savings particularly in problems involving computationally demanding forward models but also improvements in accuracy. It is based on a novel, adaptive scheme based on Sequential Monte Carlo sampling which is embarrassingly parallelizable and circumvents issues with slow mixing encountered in Markov Chain Monte Carlo schemes

Stochastic expansions using continuous dictionaries: L\'{e}vy adaptive regression kernels

This article describes a new class of prior distributions for nonparametric function estimation. The unknown function is modeled as a limit of weighted sums of kernels or generator functions indexed by continuous parameters that control local and global features such as their translation, dilation, modulation and shape. L\'{e}vy random fields and their stochastic integrals are employed to induce prior distributions for the unknown functions or, equivalently, for the number of kernels and for the parameters governing their features. Scaling, shape, and other features of the generating functions are location-specific to allow quite different function properties in different parts of the space, as with wavelet bases and other methods employing overcomplete dictionaries. We provide conditions under which the stochastic expansions converge in specified Besov or Sobolev norms. Under a Gaussian error model, this may be viewed as a sparse regression problem, with regularization induced via the L\'{e}vy random field prior distribution. Posterior inference for the unknown functions is based on a reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. We compare the L\'{e}vy Adaptive Regression Kernel (LARK) method to wavelet-based methods using some of the standard test functions, and illustrate its flexibility and adaptability in nonstationary applications.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AOS889 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Multilingual Part-of-Speech Tagging: Two Unsupervised Approaches

We demonstrate the effectiveness of multilingual learning for unsupervised part-of-speech tagging. The central assumption of our work is that by combining cues from multiple languages, the structure of each becomes more apparent. We consider two ways of applying this intuition to the problem of unsupervised part-of-speech tagging: a model that directly merges tag structures for a pair of languages into a single sequence and a second model which instead incorporates multilingual context using latent variables. Both approaches are formulated as hierarchical Bayesian models, using Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling techniques for inference. Our results demonstrate that by incorporating multilingual evidence we can achieve impressive performance gains across a range of scenarios. We also found that performance improves steadily as the number of available languages increases

Contributions to probabilistic non-negative matrix factorization - Maximum marginal likelihood estimation and Markovian temporal models

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) has become a popular dimensionality reductiontechnique, and has found applications in many different fields, such as audio signal processing,hyperspectral imaging, or recommender systems. In its simplest form, NMF aims at finding anapproximation of a non-negative data matrix (i.e., with non-negative entries) as the product of twonon-negative matrices, called the factors. One of these two matrices can be interpreted as adictionary of characteristic patterns of the data, and the other one as activation coefficients ofthese patterns. This low-rank approximation is traditionally retrieved by optimizing a measure of fitbetween the data matrix and its approximation. As it turns out, for many choices of measures of fit,the problem can be shown to be equivalent to the joint maximum likelihood estimation of thefactors under a certain statistical model describing the data. This leads us to an alternativeparadigm for NMF, where the learning task revolves around probabilistic models whoseobservation density is parametrized by the product of non-negative factors. This general framework, coined probabilistic NMF, encompasses many well-known latent variable models ofthe literature, such as models for count data. In this thesis, we consider specific probabilistic NMFmodels in which a prior distribution is assumed on the activation coefficients, but the dictionary remains a deterministic variable. The objective is then to maximize the marginal likelihood in thesesemi-Bayesian NMF models, i.e., the integrated joint likelihood over the activation coefficients.This amounts to learning the dictionary only; the activation coefficients may be inferred in asecond step if necessary. We proceed to study in greater depth the properties of this estimation process. In particular, two scenarios are considered. In the first one, we assume the independence of the activation coefficients sample-wise. Previous experimental work showed that dictionarieslearned with this approach exhibited a tendency to automatically regularize the number of components, a favorable property which was left unexplained. In the second one, we lift thisstandard assumption, and consider instead Markov structures to add statistical correlation to themodel, in order to better analyze temporal data