77,226 research outputs found
An MDL framework for sparse coding and dictionary learning
The power of sparse signal modeling with learned over-complete dictionaries
has been demonstrated in a variety of applications and fields, from signal
processing to statistical inference and machine learning. However, the
statistical properties of these models, such as under-fitting or over-fitting
given sets of data, are still not well characterized in the literature. As a
result, the success of sparse modeling depends on hand-tuning critical
parameters for each data and application. This work aims at addressing this by
providing a practical and objective characterization of sparse models by means
of the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle -- a well established
information-theoretic approach to model selection in statistical inference. The
resulting framework derives a family of efficient sparse coding and dictionary
learning algorithms which, by virtue of the MDL principle, are completely
parameter free. Furthermore, such framework allows to incorporate additional
prior information to existing models, such as Markovian dependencies, or to
define completely new problem formulations, including in the matrix analysis
area, in a natural way. These virtues will be demonstrated with parameter-free
algorithms for the classic image denoising and classification problems, and for
low-rank matrix recovery in video applications
Applying MDL to Learning Best Model Granularity
The Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle is solidly based on a provably
ideal method of inference using Kolmogorov complexity. We test how the theory
behaves in practice on a general problem in model selection: that of learning
the best model granularity. The performance of a model depends critically on
the granularity, for example the choice of precision of the parameters. Too
high precision generally involves modeling of accidental noise and too low
precision may lead to confusion of models that should be distinguished. This
precision is often determined ad hoc. In MDL the best model is the one that
most compresses a two-part code of the data set: this embodies ``Occam's
Razor.'' In two quite different experimental settings the theoretical value
determined using MDL coincides with the best value found experimentally. In the
first experiment the task is to recognize isolated handwritten characters in
one subject's handwriting, irrespective of size and orientation. Based on a new
modification of elastic matching, using multiple prototypes per character, the
optimal prediction rate is predicted for the learned parameter (length of
sampling interval) considered most likely by MDL, which is shown to coincide
with the best value found experimentally. In the second experiment the task is
to model a robot arm with two degrees of freedom using a three layer
feed-forward neural network where we need to determine the number of nodes in
the hidden layer giving best modeling performance. The optimal model (the one
that extrapolizes best on unseen examples) is predicted for the number of nodes
in the hidden layer considered most likely by MDL, which again is found to
coincide with the best value found experimentally.Comment: LaTeX, 32 pages, 5 figures. Artificial Intelligence journal, To
appea
A MDL-based Model of Gender Knowledge Acquisition
This paper presents an iterative model of\ud
knowledge acquisition of gender information\ud
associated with word endings in\ud
French. Gender knowledge is represented\ud
as a set of rules containing exceptions.\ud
Our model takes noun-gender pairs as input\ud
and constantly maintains a list of\ud
rules and exceptions which is both coherent\ud
with the input data and minimal with\ud
respect to a minimum description length\ud
criterion. This model was compared to\ud
human data at various ages and showed a\ud
good fit. We also compared the kind of\ud
rules discovered by the model with rules\ud
usually extracted by linguists and found\ud
interesting discrepancies
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