Data complexity measured by principal graphs

How to measure the complexity of a finite set of vectors embedded in a multidimensional space? This is a non-trivial question which can be approached in many different ways. Here we suggest a set of data complexity measures using universal approximators, principal cubic complexes. Principal cubic complexes generalise the notion of principal manifolds for datasets with non-trivial topologies. The type of the principal cubic complex is determined by its dimension and a grammar of elementary graph transformations. The simplest grammar produces principal trees. We introduce three natural types of data complexity: 1) geometric (deviation of the data's approximator from some "idealized" configuration, such as deviation from harmonicity); 2) structural (how many elements of a principal graph are needed to approximate the data), and 3) construction complexity (how many applications of elementary graph transformations are needed to construct the principal object starting from the simplest one). We compute these measures for several simulated and real-life data distributions and show them in the "accuracy-complexity" plots, helping to optimize the accuracy/complexity ratio. We discuss various issues connected with measuring data complexity. Software for computing data complexity measures from principal cubic complexes is provided as well.Comment: Computers and Mathematics with Applications, in pres

Visualization of Data by Method of Elastic Maps and Its Applications in Genomics, Economics and Sociology

Technology of data visualization and data modeling is suggested. The basic of the technology is original idea of elastic net and methods of its construction and application. A short review of relevant methods has been made. The methods proposed are illustrated by applying them to the real economical, sociological and biological datasets and to some model data distributions. The basic of the technology is original idea of elastic net - regular point approximation of some manifold that is put into the multidimensional space and has in a certain sense minimal energy. This manifold is an analogue of principal surface and serves as non-linear screen on what multidimensional data are projected. Remarkable feature of the technology is its ability to work with and to fill gaps in data tables. Gaps are unknown or unreliable values of some features. It gives a possibility to predict plausibly values of unknown features by values of other ones. So it provides technology of constructing different prognosis systems and non-linear regressions. The technology can be used by specialists in different fields. There are several examples of applying the method presented in the end of this paper

Reduction of dynamical biochemical reaction networks in computational biology

Biochemical networks are used in computational biology, to model the static and dynamical details of systems involved in cell signaling, metabolism, and regulation of gene expression. Parametric and structural uncertainty, as well as combinatorial explosion are strong obstacles against analyzing the dynamics of large models of this type. Multi-scaleness is another property of these networks, that can be used to get past some of these obstacles. Networks with many well separated time scales, can be reduced to simpler networks, in a way that depends only on the orders of magnitude and not on the exact values of the kinetic parameters. The main idea used for such robust simplifications of networks is the concept of dominance among model elements, allowing hierarchical organization of these elements according to their effects on the network dynamics. This concept finds a natural formulation in tropical geometry. We revisit, in the light of these new ideas, the main approaches to model reduction of reaction networks, such as quasi-steady state and quasi-equilibrium approximations, and provide practical recipes for model reduction of linear and nonlinear networks. We also discuss the application of model reduction to backward pruning machine learning techniques