172,066 research outputs found
The Data Big Bang and the Expanding Digital Universe: High-Dimensional, Complex and Massive Data Sets in an Inflationary Epoch
Recent and forthcoming advances in instrumentation, and giant new surveys,
are creating astronomical data sets that are not amenable to the methods of
analysis familiar to astronomers. Traditional methods are often inadequate not
merely because of the size in bytes of the data sets, but also because of the
complexity of modern data sets. Mathematical limitations of familiar algorithms
and techniques in dealing with such data sets create a critical need for new
paradigms for the representation, analysis and scientific visualization (as
opposed to illustrative visualization) of heterogeneous, multiresolution data
across application domains. Some of the problems presented by the new data sets
have been addressed by other disciplines such as applied mathematics,
statistics and machine learning and have been utilized by other sciences such
as space-based geosciences. Unfortunately, valuable results pertaining to these
problems are mostly to be found only in publications outside of astronomy. Here
we offer brief overviews of a number of concepts, techniques and developments,
some "old" and some new. These are generally unknown to most of the
astronomical community, but are vital to the analysis and visualization of
complex datasets and images. In order for astronomers to take advantage of the
richness and complexity of the new era of data, and to be able to identify,
adopt, and apply new solutions, the astronomical community needs a certain
degree of awareness and understanding of the new concepts. One of the goals of
this paper is to help bridge the gap between applied mathematics, artificial
intelligence and computer science on the one side and astronomy on the other.Comment: 24 pages, 8 Figures, 1 Table. Accepted for publication: "Advances in
Astronomy, special issue "Robotic Astronomy
Nondeterministic data base for computerized visual perception
A description is given of the knowledge representation data base in the perception subsystem of the Mars robot vehicle prototype. Two types of information are stored. The first is generic information that represents general rules that are conformed to by structures in the expected environments. The second kind of information is a specific description of a structure, i.e., the properties and relations of objects in the specific case being analyzed. The generic knowledge is represented so that it can be applied to extract and infer the description of specific structures. The generic model of the rules is substantially a Bayesian representation of the statistics of the environment, which means it is geared to representation of nondeterministic rules relating properties of, and relations between, objects. The description of a specific structure is also nondeterministic in the sense that all properties and relations may take a range of values with an associated probability distribution
Structural and Photometric Classification of Galaxies - I. Calibration Based on a Nearby Galaxy Sample
In this paper we define an observationally robust, multi-parameter space for
the classification of nearby and distant galaxies. The parameters include
luminosity, color, and the image-structure parameters: size, image
concentration, asymmetry, and surface brightness. Based on an initial
calibration of this parameter space using the ``normal'' Hubble-types surveyed
by Frei et al. (1996), we find that only a subset of the parameters provide
useful classification boundaries for this sample. Interestingly, this subset
does not include distance-dependent scale parameters, such as size or
luminosity. The essential ingredient is the combination of a spectral index
(e.g., color) with parameters of image structure and scale: concentration,
asymmetry, and surface-brightness. We refer to the image structure parameters
(concentration and asymmetry) as indices of ``form.'' We define a preliminary
classification based on spectral index, form, and surface-brightness (a scale)
that successfully separates normal galaxies into three classes. We
intentionally identify these classes with the familiar labels of Early,
Intermediate, and Late. This classification, or others based on the above four
parameters can be used reliably to define comparable samples over a broad range
in redshift. The size and luminosity distribution of such samples will not be
biased by this selection process except through astrophysical correlations
between spectral index, form, and surface-brightness.Comment: to appear in AJ (June, 2000); 34 pages including 4 tables and 12
figure
A systematic comparison of supervised classifiers
Pattern recognition techniques have been employed in a myriad of industrial,
medical, commercial and academic applications. To tackle such a diversity of
data, many techniques have been devised. However, despite the long tradition of
pattern recognition research, there is no technique that yields the best
classification in all scenarios. Therefore, the consideration of as many as
possible techniques presents itself as an fundamental practice in applications
aiming at high accuracy. Typical works comparing methods either emphasize the
performance of a given algorithm in validation tests or systematically compare
various algorithms, assuming that the practical use of these methods is done by
experts. In many occasions, however, researchers have to deal with their
practical classification tasks without an in-depth knowledge about the
underlying mechanisms behind parameters. Actually, the adequate choice of
classifiers and parameters alike in such practical circumstances constitutes a
long-standing problem and is the subject of the current paper. We carried out a
study on the performance of nine well-known classifiers implemented by the Weka
framework and compared the dependence of the accuracy with their configuration
parameter configurations. The analysis of performance with default parameters
revealed that the k-nearest neighbors method exceeds by a large margin the
other methods when high dimensional datasets are considered. When other
configuration of parameters were allowed, we found that it is possible to
improve the quality of SVM in more than 20% even if parameters are set
randomly. Taken together, the investigation conducted in this paper suggests
that, apart from the SVM implementation, Weka's default configuration of
parameters provides an performance close the one achieved with the optimal
configuration
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