43,093 research outputs found
Learning probability distributions generated by finite-state machines
We review methods for inference of probability distributions generated by probabilistic automata and related models for sequence generation. We focus on methods that can be proved to learn in the inference
in the limit and PAC formal models. The methods we review are state merging and state splitting methods for probabilistic deterministic automata and the recently developed spectral method for nondeterministic probabilistic automata. In both cases, we derive them from a high-level algorithm described in terms of the Hankel matrix of the distribution to be learned, given as an oracle, and then describe how to adapt that algorithm to account for the error introduced by a finite sample.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Information Recovery from Pairwise Measurements
A variety of information processing tasks in practice involve recovering
objects from single-shot graph-based measurements, particularly those taken
over the edges of some measurement graph . This paper concerns the
situation where each object takes value over a group of different values,
and where one is interested to recover all these values based on observations
of certain pairwise relations over . The imperfection of
measurements presents two major challenges for information recovery: 1)
: a (dominant) portion of measurements are
corrupted; 2) : a significant fraction of pairs are
unobservable, i.e. can be highly sparse.
Under a natural random outlier model, we characterize the , that is, the critical threshold of non-corruption rate
below which exact information recovery is infeasible. This accommodates a very
general class of pairwise relations. For various homogeneous random graph
models (e.g. Erdos Renyi random graphs, random geometric graphs, small world
graphs), the minimax recovery rate depends almost exclusively on the edge
sparsity of the measurement graph irrespective of other graphical
metrics. This fundamental limit decays with the group size at a square root
rate before entering a connectivity-limited regime. Under the Erdos Renyi
random graph, a tractable combinatorial algorithm is proposed to approach the
limit for large (), while order-optimal recovery is
enabled by semidefinite programs in the small regime.
The extended (and most updated) version of this work can be found at
(http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01369).Comment: This version is no longer updated -- please find the latest version
at (arXiv:1504.01369
- …