LOCALLY REGULARIZED LINEAR REGRESSION IN THE VALUATION OF REAL ESTATE

Regression methods are used for the valuation of real estate in the comparative approach. The basis for the valuation is a data set of similar properties, for which sales transactions were concluded within a short period of time. Large and standardized databases, which meet the requirements of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, are created in Poland and used by the banks involved in mortgage lending, for example. We assume that in the case of large data sets of transactions, it is more advantageous to build local regression models than a global model. Additionally, we propose a local feature selection via regularization. The empirical research carried out on three data sets from real estate market confirmed the effectiveness of this approach. We paid special attention to the model quality assessment using cross-validation for estimation of the residual standard error

A Spatio-Temporal Probabilistic Framework for Dividing and Predicting Facial Action Units

This thesis proposed a probabilistic approach to divide the Facial Action Units (AUs) based on the physiological relations and their strengths among the facial muscle groups. The physiological relations and their strengths were captured using a Static Bayesian Network (SBN) from given databases. A data driven spatio-temporal probabilistic scoring function was introduced to divide the AUs into : (i) frequently occurred and strongly connected AUs (FSAUs) and (ii) infrequently occurred and weakly connected AUs (IWAUs). In addition, a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) based predictive mechanism was implemented to predict the IWAUs from FSAUs. The combined spatio-temporal modeling enabled a framework to predict a full set of AUs in real-time. Empirical analyses were performed to illustrate the efficacy and utility of the proposed approach. Four different datasets of varying degrees of complexity and diversity were used for performance validation and perturbation analysis. Empirical results suggest that the IWAUs can be robustly predicted from the FSAUs in real-time and was found to be robust against noise

Efficient smile detection by Extreme Learning Machine

Smile detection is a specialized task in facial expression analysis with applications such as photo selection, user experience analysis, and patient monitoring. As one of the most important and informative expressions, smile conveys the underlying emotion status such as joy, happiness, and satisfaction. In this paper, an efficient smile detection approach is proposed based on Extreme Learning Machine (ELM). The faces are first detected and a holistic flow-based face registration is applied which does not need any manual labeling or key point detection. Then ELM is used to train the classifier. The proposed smile detector is tested with different feature descriptors on publicly available databases including real-world face images. The comparisons against benchmark classifiers including Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) suggest that the proposed ELM based smile detector in general performs better and is very efficient. Compared to state-of-the-art smile detector, the proposed method achieves competitive results without preprocessing and manual registration

Neural network ensembles: Evaluation of aggregation algorithms

Ensembles of artificial neural networks show improved generalization capabilities that outperform those of single networks. However, for aggregation to be effective, the individual networks must be as accurate and diverse as possible. An important problem is, then, how to tune the aggregate members in order to have an optimal compromise between these two conflicting conditions. We present here an extensive evaluation of several algorithms for ensemble construction, including new proposals and comparing them with standard methods in the literature. We also discuss a potential problem with sequential aggregation algorithms: the non-frequent but damaging selection through their heuristics of particularly bad ensemble members. We introduce modified algorithms that cope with this problem by allowing individual weighting of aggregate members. Our algorithms and their weighted modifications are favorably tested against other methods in the literature, producing a sensible improvement in performance on most of the standard statistical databases used as benchmarks.Comment: 35 pages, 2 figures, In press AI Journa

Application of association rules to determine building typological classes for seismic damage predictions at regional scale. The case study of Basel

Assessing seismic vulnerability at large scales requires accurate attribution of individual buildings to more general typological classes that are representative of the seismic behavior of the buildings sharing same attributes. One-by-one evaluation of all buildings is a time-and-money demanding process. Detailed individual evaluations are only suitable for strategic buildings, such as hospitals and other buildings with a central role in the emergency post-earthquake phase. For other buildings simplified approaches are needed. The definition of a taxonomy that contains the most widespread typological classes as well as performing the attribution of the appropriate class to each building are central issues for reliable seismic assessment at large scales. A fast, yet accurate, survey process is needed to attribute a correct class to each building composing the urban system. Even surveying buildings with the goal to determine classes is not as time demanding as detailed evaluations of each building, this process still requires large amounts of time and qualified personnel. However, nowadays several databases are available and provide useful information. In this paper, attributes that are available in such public databases are used to perform class attribution at large scales based on previous data-mining on a small subset of an entire city. The association-rule learning (ARL) is used to find links between building attributes and typological classes. Accuracy of wide spreading these links learned on <250 buildings of a specific district is evaluated in terms of class attribution and seismic vulnerability prediction. By considering only three attributes available on public databases (i.e., period of construction, number of floors, and shape of the roof) the time needed to provide seismic vulnerability scenarios at city scale is significantly reduced, while accuracy is reduced by <5%

Database Learning: Toward a Database that Becomes Smarter Every Time

In today's databases, previous query answers rarely benefit answering future queries. For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, we change this paradigm in an approximate query processing (AQP) context. We make the following observation: the answer to each query reveals some degree of knowledge about the answer to another query because their answers stem from the same underlying distribution that has produced the entire dataset. Exploiting and refining this knowledge should allow us to answer queries more analytically, rather than by reading enormous amounts of raw data. Also, processing more queries should continuously enhance our knowledge of the underlying distribution, and hence lead to increasingly faster response times for future queries. We call this novel idea---learning from past query answers---Database Learning. We exploit the principle of maximum entropy to produce answers, which are in expectation guaranteed to be more accurate than existing sample-based approximations. Empowered by this idea, we build a query engine on top of Spark SQL, called Verdict. We conduct extensive experiments on real-world query traces from a large customer of a major database vendor. Our results demonstrate that Verdict supports 73.7% of these queries, speeding them up by up to 23.0x for the same accuracy level compared to existing AQP systems.Comment: This manuscript is an extended report of the work published in ACM SIGMOD conference 201

A Review of Atrial Fibrillation Detection Methods as a Service

Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is a common heart arrhythmia that often goes undetected, and even if it is detected, managing the condition may be challenging. In this paper, we review how the RR interval and Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals, incorporated into a monitoring system, can be useful to track AF events. Were such an automated system to be implemented, it could be used to help manage AF and thereby reduce patient morbidity and mortality. The main impetus behind the idea of developing a service is that a greater data volume analyzed can lead to better patient outcomes. Based on the literature review, which we present herein, we introduce the methods that can be used to detect AF efficiently and automatically via the RR interval and ECG signals. A cardiovascular disease monitoring service that incorporates one or multiple of these detection methods could extend event observation to all times, and could therefore become useful to establish any AF occurrence. The development of an automated and efficient method that monitors AF in real time would likely become a key component for meeting public health goals regarding the reduction of fatalities caused by the disease. Yet, at present, significant technological and regulatory obstacles remain, which prevent the development of any proposed system. Establishment of the scientific foundation for monitoring is important to provide effective service to patients and healthcare professionals