10,244 research outputs found
Network Model Selection Using Task-Focused Minimum Description Length
Networks are fundamental models for data used in practically every
application domain. In most instances, several implicit or explicit choices
about the network definition impact the translation of underlying data to a
network representation, and the subsequent question(s) about the underlying
system being represented. Users of downstream network data may not even be
aware of these choices or their impacts. We propose a task-focused network
model selection methodology which addresses several key challenges. Our
approach constructs network models from underlying data and uses minimum
description length (MDL) criteria for selection. Our methodology measures
efficiency, a general and comparable measure of the network's performance of a
local (i.e. node-level) predictive task of interest. Selection on efficiency
favors parsimonious (e.g. sparse) models to avoid overfitting and can be
applied across arbitrary tasks and representations. We show stability,
sensitivity, and significance testing in our methodology
Network Model Selection for Task-Focused Attributed Network Inference
Networks are models representing relationships between entities. Often these
relationships are explicitly given, or we must learn a representation which
generalizes and predicts observed behavior in underlying individual data (e.g.
attributes or labels). Whether given or inferred, choosing the best
representation affects subsequent tasks and questions on the network. This work
focuses on model selection to evaluate network representations from data,
focusing on fundamental predictive tasks on networks. We present a modular
methodology using general, interpretable network models, task neighborhood
functions found across domains, and several criteria for robust model
selection. We demonstrate our methodology on three online user activity
datasets and show that network model selection for the appropriate network task
vs. an alternate task increases performance by an order of magnitude in our
experiments
The ornithological diaries of Helmut Sick (1910 - 1991)
On the 10th of January 2010 Helmut Sick, the German-Brazilian explorer of neotropical birds would have had his 100th anniversary. He made his PhD under supervision of Erwin Stresemann in 1937 about the structure of bird feathers. 1939 he joined a three months expedition to Brazil but was so fascinated about the bird life that he stayed much longer and in 1952 he became citizen of Brazil. Helmut Sick was director at the National Museum Boa Vista and was professor for zoology an the State University in Rio. He became member of the Academia Brasileira de Ciências und honorary citizen of Rio de Janeiro. His probably most important book were the two volumes of „Ornitologia brasiliera, uma introduÇão“, which has been revised in 1993 in an English version “Birds in Brazil. A natural history“. Over 68 years Helmut Sick conducted an ornithological diary with very detailed, sometimes even artistic descriptions of his observations. His notes between 1923 and 1938 comprise 12 diary books with 80 pages each. The authors secured the material and looked through it. Here a short description of the contents is given. A publication list and more material are available online (see bottom of the text). Helmut Sick died in a traffic accident on 5th March 1991 in Rio de Janeiro
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