799 research outputs found
The Burbea-Rao and Bhattacharyya centroids
We study the centroid with respect to the class of information-theoretic
Burbea-Rao divergences that generalize the celebrated Jensen-Shannon divergence
by measuring the non-negative Jensen difference induced by a strictly convex
and differentiable function. Although those Burbea-Rao divergences are
symmetric by construction, they are not metric since they fail to satisfy the
triangle inequality. We first explain how a particular symmetrization of
Bregman divergences called Jensen-Bregman distances yields exactly those
Burbea-Rao divergences. We then proceed by defining skew Burbea-Rao
divergences, and show that skew Burbea-Rao divergences amount in limit cases to
compute Bregman divergences. We then prove that Burbea-Rao centroids are
unique, and can be arbitrarily finely approximated by a generic iterative
concave-convex optimization algorithm with guaranteed convergence property. In
the second part of the paper, we consider the Bhattacharyya distance that is
commonly used to measure overlapping degree of probability distributions. We
show that Bhattacharyya distances on members of the same statistical
exponential family amount to calculate a Burbea-Rao divergence in disguise.
Thus we get an efficient algorithm for computing the Bhattacharyya centroid of
a set of parametric distributions belonging to the same exponential families,
improving over former specialized methods found in the literature that were
limited to univariate or "diagonal" multivariate Gaussians. To illustrate the
performance of our Bhattacharyya/Burbea-Rao centroid algorithm, we present
experimental performance results for -means and hierarchical clustering
methods of Gaussian mixture models.Comment: 13 page
Numerical Methods for Solving Convection-Diffusion Problems
Convection-diffusion equations provide the basis for describing heat and mass
transfer phenomena as well as processes of continuum mechanics. To handle flows
in porous media, the fundamental issue is to model correctly the convective
transport of individual phases. Moreover, for compressible media, the pressure
equation itself is just a time-dependent convection-diffusion equation.
For different problems, a convection-diffusion equation may be be written in
various forms. The most popular formulation of convective transport employs the
divergent (conservative) form. In some cases, the nondivergent (characteristic)
form seems to be preferable. The so-called skew-symmetric form of convective
transport operators that is the half-sum of the operators in the divergent and
nondivergent forms is of great interest in some applications.
Here we discuss the basic classes of discretization in space: finite
difference schemes on rectangular grids, approximations on general polyhedra
(the finite volume method), and finite element procedures. The key properties
of discrete operators are studied for convective and diffusive transport. We
emphasize the problems of constructing approximations for convection and
diffusion operators that satisfy the maximum principle at the discrete level
--- they are called monotone approximations.
Two- and three-level schemes are investigated for transient problems.
Unconditionally stable explicit-implicit schemes are developed for
convection-diffusion problems. Stability conditions are obtained both in
finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces and in Banach spaces depending on the form in
which the convection-diffusion equation is written
Total Jensen divergences: Definition, Properties and k-Means++ Clustering
We present a novel class of divergences induced by a smooth convex function
called total Jensen divergences. Those total Jensen divergences are invariant
by construction to rotations, a feature yielding regularization of ordinary
Jensen divergences by a conformal factor. We analyze the relationships between
this novel class of total Jensen divergences and the recently introduced total
Bregman divergences. We then proceed by defining the total Jensen centroids as
average distortion minimizers, and study their robustness performance to
outliers. Finally, we prove that the k-means++ initialization that bypasses
explicit centroid computations is good enough in practice to guarantee
probabilistically a constant approximation factor to the optimal k-means
clustering.Comment: 27 page
Transforming triangulations on non planar-surfaces
We consider whether any two triangulations of a polygon or a point set on a
non-planar surface with a given metric can be transformed into each other by a
sequence of edge flips. The answer is negative in general with some remarkable
exceptions, such as polygons on the cylinder, and on the flat torus, and
certain configurations of points on the cylinder.Comment: 19 pages, 17 figures. This version has been accepted in the SIAM
Journal on Discrete Mathematics. Keywords: Graph of triangulations,
triangulations on surfaces, triangulations of polygons, edge fli
Aspects of Unstructured Grids and Finite-Volume Solvers for the Euler and Navier-Stokes Equations
One of the major achievements in engineering science has been the development of computer algorithms for solving nonlinear differential equations such as the Navier-Stokes equations. In the past, limited computer resources have motivated the development of efficient numerical schemes in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) utilizing structured meshes. The use of structured meshes greatly simplifies the implementation of CFD algorithms on conventional computers. Unstructured grids on the other hand offer an alternative to modeling complex geometries. Unstructured meshes have irregular connectivity and usually contain combinations of triangles, quadrilaterals, tetrahedra, and hexahedra. The generation and use of unstructured grids poses new challenges in CFD. The purpose of this note is to present recent developments in the unstructured grid generation and flow solution technology
Dense point sets have sparse Delaunay triangulations
The spread of a finite set of points is the ratio between the longest and
shortest pairwise distances. We prove that the Delaunay triangulation of any
set of n points in R^3 with spread D has complexity O(D^3). This bound is tight
in the worst case for all D = O(sqrt{n}). In particular, the Delaunay
triangulation of any dense point set has linear complexity. We also generalize
this upper bound to regular triangulations of k-ply systems of balls, unions of
several dense point sets, and uniform samples of smooth surfaces. On the other
hand, for any n and D=O(n), we construct a regular triangulation of complexity
Omega(nD) whose n vertices have spread D.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figures. Full version of SODA 2002 paper. Also available
at http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/~jeffe/pubs/screw.htm
Complexity of projected images of convex subdivisions
AbstractLet S be a subdivision of Rd into n convex regions. We consider the combinatorial complexity of the image of the (k - 1)-skeleton of S orthogonally projected into a k-dimensional subspace. We give an upper bound of the complexity of the projected image by reducing it to the complexity of an arrangement of polytopes. If k = d − 1, we construct a subdivision whose projected image has Ω(n⌊(3d−2)/2⌋) complexity, which is tight when d ⩽ 4. We also investigate the number of topological changes of the projected image when a three-dimensional subdivision is rotated about a line parallel to the projection plane
- …