49 research outputs found
Generalization Guarantees for a Binary Classification Framework for Two-Stage Multiple Kernel Learning
We present generalization bounds for the TS-MKL framework for two stage
multiple kernel learning. We also present bounds for sparse kernel learning
formulations within the TS-MKL framework
Supervised Learning with Similarity Functions
We address the problem of general supervised learning when data can only be
accessed through an (indefinite) similarity function between data points.
Existing work on learning with indefinite kernels has concentrated solely on
binary/multi-class classification problems. We propose a model that is generic
enough to handle any supervised learning task and also subsumes the model
previously proposed for classification. We give a "goodness" criterion for
similarity functions w.r.t. a given supervised learning task and then adapt a
well-known landmarking technique to provide efficient algorithms for supervised
learning using "good" similarity functions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of
our model on three important super-vised learning problems: a) real-valued
regression, b) ordinal regression and c) ranking where we show that our method
guarantees bounded generalization error. Furthermore, for the case of
real-valued regression, we give a natural goodness definition that, when used
in conjunction with a recent result in sparse vector recovery, guarantees a
sparse predictor with bounded generalization error. Finally, we report results
of our learning algorithms on regression and ordinal regression tasks using
non-PSD similarity functions and demonstrate the effectiveness of our
algorithms, especially that of the sparse landmark selection algorithm that
achieves significantly higher accuracies than the baseline methods while
offering reduced computational costs.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of NIPS 2012, 30 page
On Translation Invariant Kernels and Screw Functions
We explore the connection between Hilbertian metrics and positive definite
kernels on the real line. In particular, we look at a well-known
characterization of translation invariant Hilbertian metrics on the real line
by von Neumann and Schoenberg (1941). Using this result we are able to give an
alternate proof of Bochner's theorem for translation invariant positive
definite kernels on the real line (Rudin, 1962)
On Estimating the First Frequency Moment of Data Streams
Estimating the first moment of a data stream defined as F_1 = \sum_{i \in
\{1, 2, \ldots, n\}} \abs{f_i} to within -relative error with
high probability is a basic and influential problem in data stream processing.
A tight space bound of is known from the work of
[Kane-Nelson-Woodruff-SODA10]. However, all known algorithms for this problem
require per-update stream processing time of , with the
only exception being the algorithm of [Ganguly-Cormode-RANDOM07] that requires
per-update processing time of albeit with sub-optimal
space . In this paper, we present an algorithm for
estimating that achieves near-optimality in both space and update
processing time. The space requirement is and the per-update processing time is .Comment: 12 page
Random Feature Maps for Dot Product Kernels
Approximating non-linear kernels using feature maps has gained a lot of
interest in recent years due to applications in reducing training and testing
times of SVM classifiers and other kernel based learning algorithms. We extend
this line of work and present low distortion embeddings for dot product kernels
into linear Euclidean spaces. We base our results on a classical result in
harmonic analysis characterizing all dot product kernels and use it to define
randomized feature maps into explicit low dimensional Euclidean spaces in which
the native dot product provides an approximation to the dot product kernel with
high confidence.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the 15th International Conference on
Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS 2012). This version corrects
a minor error with Lemma 10. Acknowledgements : Devanshu Bhimwa
Non-convex Optimization for Machine Learning
A vast majority of machine learning algorithms train their models and perform
inference by solving optimization problems. In order to capture the learning
and prediction problems accurately, structural constraints such as sparsity or
low rank are frequently imposed or else the objective itself is designed to be
a non-convex function. This is especially true of algorithms that operate in
high-dimensional spaces or that train non-linear models such as tensor models
and deep networks.
The freedom to express the learning problem as a non-convex optimization
problem gives immense modeling power to the algorithm designer, but often such
problems are NP-hard to solve. A popular workaround to this has been to relax
non-convex problems to convex ones and use traditional methods to solve the
(convex) relaxed optimization problems. However this approach may be lossy and
nevertheless presents significant challenges for large scale optimization.
On the other hand, direct approaches to non-convex optimization have met with
resounding success in several domains and remain the methods of choice for the
practitioner, as they frequently outperform relaxation-based techniques -
popular heuristics include projected gradient descent and alternating
minimization. However, these are often poorly understood in terms of their
convergence and other properties.
This monograph presents a selection of recent advances that bridge a
long-standing gap in our understanding of these heuristics. The monograph will
lead the reader through several widely used non-convex optimization techniques,
as well as applications thereof. The goal of this monograph is to both,
introduce the rich literature in this area, as well as equip the reader with
the tools and techniques needed to analyze these simple procedures for
non-convex problems.Comment: The official publication is available from now publishers via
http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/220000005
Robust Regression via Hard Thresholding
We study the problem of Robust Least Squares Regression (RLSR) where several
response variables can be adversarially corrupted. More specifically, for a
data matrix X \in R^{p x n} and an underlying model w*, the response vector is
generated as y = X'w* + b where b \in R^n is the corruption vector supported
over at most C.n coordinates. Existing exact recovery results for RLSR focus
solely on L1-penalty based convex formulations and impose relatively strict
model assumptions such as requiring the corruptions b to be selected
independently of X.
In this work, we study a simple hard-thresholding algorithm called TORRENT
which, under mild conditions on X, can recover w* exactly even if b corrupts
the response variables in an adversarial manner, i.e. both the support and
entries of b are selected adversarially after observing X and w*. Our results
hold under deterministic assumptions which are satisfied if X is sampled from
any sub-Gaussian distribution. Finally unlike existing results that apply only
to a fixed w*, generated independently of X, our results are universal and hold
for any w* \in R^p.
Next, we propose gradient descent-based extensions of TORRENT that can scale
efficiently to large scale problems, such as high dimensional sparse recovery
and prove similar recovery guarantees for these extensions. Empirically we find
TORRENT, and more so its extensions, offering significantly faster recovery
than the state-of-the-art L1 solvers. For instance, even on moderate-sized
datasets (with p = 50K) with around 40% corrupted responses, a variant of our
proposed method called TORRENT-HYB is more than 20x faster than the best L1
solver.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figure
Surrogate Functions for Maximizing Precision at the Top
The problem of maximizing precision at the top of a ranked list, often dubbed
Precision@k (prec@k), finds relevance in myriad learning applications such as
ranking, multi-label classification, and learning with severe label imbalance.
However, despite its popularity, there exist significant gaps in our
understanding of this problem and its associated performance measure.
The most notable of these is the lack of a convex upper bounding surrogate
for prec@k. We also lack scalable perceptron and stochastic gradient descent
algorithms for optimizing this performance measure. In this paper we make key
contributions in these directions. At the heart of our results is a family of
truly upper bounding surrogates for prec@k. These surrogates are motivated in a
principled manner and enjoy attractive properties such as consistency to prec@k
under various natural margin/noise conditions.
These surrogates are then used to design a class of novel perceptron
algorithms for optimizing prec@k with provable mistake bounds. We also devise
scalable stochastic gradient descent style methods for this problem with
provable convergence bounds. Our proofs rely on novel uniform convergence
bounds which require an in-depth analysis of the structural properties of
prec@k and its surrogates. We conclude with experimental results comparing our
algorithms with state-of-the-art cutting plane and stochastic gradient
algorithms for maximizing [email protected]: To appear in the the proceedings of the 32nd International Conference
on Machine Learning (ICML 2015