1,120 research outputs found
Learning loopy graphical models with latent variables: Efficient methods and guarantees
The problem of structure estimation in graphical models with latent variables
is considered. We characterize conditions for tractable graph estimation and
develop efficient methods with provable guarantees. We consider models where
the underlying Markov graph is locally tree-like, and the model is in the
regime of correlation decay. For the special case of the Ising model, the
number of samples required for structural consistency of our method scales
as , where p is the
number of variables, is the minimum edge potential, is
the depth (i.e., distance from a hidden node to the nearest observed nodes),
and is a parameter which depends on the bounds on node and edge
potentials in the Ising model. Necessary conditions for structural consistency
under any algorithm are derived and our method nearly matches the lower bound
on sample requirements. Further, the proposed method is practical to implement
and provides flexibility to control the number of latent variables and the
cycle lengths in the output graph.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-AOS1070 the Annals of
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
High-dimensional structure estimation in Ising models: Local separation criterion
We consider the problem of high-dimensional Ising (graphical) model
selection. We propose a simple algorithm for structure estimation based on the
thresholding of the empirical conditional variation distances. We introduce a
novel criterion for tractable graph families, where this method is efficient,
based on the presence of sparse local separators between node pairs in the
underlying graph. For such graphs, the proposed algorithm has a sample
complexity of , where is the number of
variables, and is the minimum (absolute) edge potential in the
model. We also establish nonasymptotic necessary and sufficient conditions for
structure estimation.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-AOS1009 the Annals of
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
SFO: A Toolbox for Submodular Function Optimization
In recent years, a fundamental problem structure has emerged as very useful in a variety of machine learning applications: Submodularity is an intuitive diminishing returns property, stating that adding an element to a smaller set helps more than adding it to a larger set. Similarly to convexity, submodularity allows one to efficiently find provably (near-) optimal solutions for large problems. We present SFO, a toolbox for use in MATLAB or Octave that implements algorithms for minimization and maximization of submodular functions. A tutorial script illustrates the application of submodularity to machine learning and AI problems such as feature selection, clustering, inference and optimized information gathering
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