13390342
Data acquisition with active and impact-sensitive instance selection
Real-world data is never perfect and can often suffer from corruptions or missing values that may impact models created from the data. To build accurate predictive models, data acquisition is usually adopted to complete missing values in the incomplete instances. Due to the significant cost of doing so and the inherent correlations in the dataset, acquiring complete information for all instances is likely prohibitive and unnecessary. An interesting and important problem raises here is to select what kind of instances to complete so the model built from the data can receive significant improvement. We propose two solutions to resolve this problem, and the essential idea is to complete the attributes with higher impacts to the system performance. The first solution is based on an impact-sensitive instance ranking mechanism [X. Zhu et al. (2004)]. We explore the correlation between attributes and the class and use the correlation as weights of the attributes; the larger the weight, the higher the impacts of the attribute. For each incomplete instance, we sum all weights of the attributes with missing values, and the instance with larger sum appears to be more important for users to complete their missing information. In the second solution, active learning, impact-sensitive instance ranking and missing value prediction are combined for data acquisition. Experimental results from real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our strategies.
14899560
Dealing with Predictive-but-Unpredictable Attributes in Noisy Data Sources
Attribute noise can affect classification learning. Previous work in handling attribute noise has focused on those predictable attributes that can be predicted by the class and other attributes. However, attributes can often be predictive but unpredictable. Being predictive, they are essential to classification learning and it is important to handle their noise. Being unpredictable, they require strategies different from those of predictable attributes. This paper presents a study on identifying, cleansing and measuring noise for predictive-but-unpredictable attributes. New strategies are accordingly proposed. Both theoretical analysis and empirical evidence suggest that these strategies are more effective and more efficient than previous alternatives.
3813357
Video data mining: semantic indexing and event detection from the association perspective
Advances in the media and entertainment industries, including streaming audio and digital TV, present new challenges for managing and accessing large audio-visual collections. Current content management systems support retrieval using low-level features, such as motion, color, and texture. However, low-level features often have little meaning for naive users, who much prefer to identify content using high-level semantics or concepts. This creates a gap between systems and their users that must be bridged for these systems to be used effectively. To this end, in this paper, we first present a knowledge-based video indexing and content management framework for domain specific videos (using basketball video as an example). We will provide a solution to explore video knowledge by mining associations from video data. The explicit definitions and evaluation measures (e.g., temporal support and confidence) for video associations are proposed by integrating the distinct feature of video data. Our approach uses video processing techniques to find visual and audio cues (e.g., court field, camera motion activities, and applause), introduces multilevel sequential association mining to explore associations among the audio and visual cues, classifies the associations by assigning each of them with a class label, and uses their appearances in the video to construct video indices. Our experimental results demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach.
11232317
Cost-constrained data acquisition for intelligent data preparation
Real-world data is noisy and can often suffer from corruptions or incomplete values that may impact the models created from the data. To build accurate predictive models, data acquisition is usually adopted to prepare the data and complete missing values. However, due to the significant cost of doing so and the inherent correlations in the data set, acquiring correct information for all instances is prohibitive and unnecessary. An interesting and important problem that arises here is to select what kinds of instances to complete so the model built from the processed data can receive the "maximum" performance improvement. This problem is complicated by the reality that the costs associated with the attributes are different, and fixing the missing values of some attributes is inherently more expensive than others. Therefore, the problem becomes that given a fixed budget, what kinds of instances should be selected for preparation, so that the learner built from the processed data set can maximize its performance? In this paper, we propose a solution for this problem, and the essential idea is to combine attribute costs and the relevance of each attribute to the target concept, so that the data acquisition can pay more attention to those attributes that are cheap in price but informative for classification. To this end, we will first introduce a unique economical factor (EF) that seamlessly integrates the cost and the importance (in terms of classification) of each attribute. Then, we will propose a cost-constrained data acquisition model, where active learning, missing value prediction, and impact-sensitive instance ranking are combined for effective data acquisition. Experimental results and comparative studies from real-world data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
5621999
Accelerated Kernel Feature Analysis
A fast algorithm, Accelerated Kernel Feature Analysis (AKFA), that discovers salient features evidenced in a sample of n unclassified patterns, is presented. Like earlier kernel-based feature selection algorithms, AKFA implicitly embeds each pattern into a Hilbert space, H, induced by a Mercer kernel. An \ell-dimensional linear subspace of H is iteratively constructed by maximizing a variance condition for the nonlinearly transformed sample. This linear subspace can then be used to define more efficient data representations and pattern classifiers. AKFA requires O(\elln2) operations, as compared to 0(n^3) for Sch¨olkof, Smola, and M¨uller’s Kernel Principal Component Analysis (KPCA), and O(\ell^2 n^2) for Smola, Mangasarian, and Sch¨olkopf’s Sparse Kernel Feature Analysis (SKFA). Numerical experiments show that AKFA can generate more concise feature representations than both KPCA and SKFA, and demonstrate that AKFA obtains similar classification performance as KPCA for a face recognition problem.
15136742
Mining Complex Patterns across Sequences with Gap Requirements
The recurring appearance of sequential patterns, when confined by the predefined gap requirements, often implies strong temporal correlations or trends among pattern elements. In this paper, we study the problem of mining a set of gap constrained sequential patterns across multiple sequences. Given a set of sequences S1, S2,., SK constituting a single hypersequence S, we aim to find recurring patterns in S, say P, which may cross multiple sequences with all their matching characters in S bounded by the user specified gap constraints. Because of the combinatorial candidate explosion, traditional Apriori-based algorithms are computationally infeasible. Our research proposes a new mechanism to ensure pattern growing and pruning. When combining the pruning technique with our Gap Constrained Search (GCS) and map-based support prediction approaches, our method achieves a speed about 40 times faster than its other peers.
7395446
Segmenting hands of arbitrary color
Hand segmentation is a prerequisite for many gesture recognition tasks. Color has been widely used for hand segmentation. However, many approaches rely on predefined skin color models. It is very difficult to predefine a color model in a mobile application where the light condition may change dramatically over time. We propose a novel statistical approach to hand segmentation based on Bayes decision theory. The proposed method requires no predefined skin color model. Instead it generates a hand color model and a background color model for a given image, and uses these models to classify each pixel in the image as either a hand pixel or a background pixel. Models are generated using a Gaussian mixture model with the restricted EM algorithm. Our method is capable of segmenting hands of arbitrary color in a complex scene. It performs well even when there is a significant overlap between hand and background colors, or when the user wears gloves. We show that the Bayes decision method is superior to a commonly used method by comparing their upper bound performance. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.
12029215
Multiuser Detection and Channel Estimation in MIMO OFDM Systems via Blind Source Separation
This paper proposes a blind multiuser detection and channel estimation method for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems based on blind source separation (BSS). Using multiple antennas for transmission and reception the multiuser detection problem can be cast as a BSS problem of linear instantaneous mixtures. The proposed method uses BSS in each subcarrier to detect the user signals. The source order and scaling indeterminacies inherent to BSS methods are overcome by exploiting the cross correlation between the subcarriers introduced by convolutional encoding. Additionally, the method provides an estimate of the channels. It is shown that this method provides significant performance enhancement over previous work.
206792834
Star chromatic numbers of graphs
We investigate the relation between the star-chromatic number χ(G) and the chromatic number χ(G) of a graphG. First we give a sufficient condition for graphs under which their starchromatic numbers are equal to their ordinary chromatic numbers. As a corollary we show that for any two positive integersk, g, there exists ak-chromatic graph of girth at leastg whose star-chromatic number is alsok. The special case of this corollary withg=4 answers a question of Abbott and Zhou. We also present an infinite family of triangle-free planar graphs whose star-chromatic number equals their chromatic number. We then study the star-chromatic number of An infinite family of graphs is constructed to show that for each ε>0 and eachm≥2 there is anm-connected (m+1)-critical graph with star chromatic number at mostm+ε. This answers another question asked by Abbott and Zhou.
10041607
Comparison of Modularization Methods in Application to Different Biological Networks
Most biological networks have been proposed to possess modular organization, which increases the robustness, flexibility, and stability of networks. Many clustering methods have been used in mining biological data and partitioning complex networks into functional modules. Most of these methods require presetting the number of modules and therefore can potentially obtain biased results. The Markov clustering method (MCL) and the simulated annealing module-detection method (SA) eliminate this requirement and can objectively separate relatively dense subgraphs. In this paper, we compared these two module-detection methods for three types of biological data: protein family classification, microarray clustering, and modularity of metabolic networks. We found that these two methods show differential advantages for different biological networks. In the case of the gene network based on Affymetrix microarray spike data, MCL exactly identified the same number of groups and same contents in each group set by the spike data. In the case of the gene network derived from actual expression data, although neither of the two methods can perfectly recover the natural classification, MCL performs slightly better than SA. However, with increased random noise added to the gene expression values, SA generates better modular structures with higher modularity. Next we compared the modularization results of MCL and SA for protein family classification and found the modules detected by SA could not be well matched with the Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP database), which suggests that MCL is ideally suited to the rapid and accurate detection of protein families. In addition, we used both methods to detect modules in the metabolic network of E. coli. MCL gives a trivial clustering, which generates biologically insignificant modules. In contrast, SA detects modules well corresponding to the KEGG functional classification. Moreover the modularity for several other metabolic networks detected by SA is also much higher than that by MCL. In summary, MCL is more suited to modularize relatively complete and definite data, such as a protein family network. In contrast, SA is less sensitive to noise such as experimental error or incomplete data and outperforms MCL when modularizing gene networks based on microarray data and large scale metabolic networks constructed from incomplete databases.
6597740
Semi-supervised classification with hybrid generative/discriminative methods
We compare two recently proposed frameworks for combining generative and discriminative probabilistic classifiers and apply them to semi-supervised classification. In both cases we explore the tradeoff between maximizing a discriminative likelihood of labeled data and a generative likelihood of labeled and unlabeled data. While prominent semi-supervised learning methods assume low density regions between classes or are subject to generative modeling assumptions, we conjecture that hybrid generative/discriminative methods allow semi-supervised learning in the presence of strongly overlapping classes and reduce the risk of modeling structure in the unlabeled data that is irrelevant for the specific classification task of interest. We apply both hybrid approaches within naively structured Markov random field models and provide a thorough empirical comparison with two well-known semi-supervised learning methods on six text classification tasks. A semi-supervised hybrid generative/discriminative method provides the best accuracy in 75% of the experiments, and the multi-conditional learning hybrid approach achieves the highest overall mean accuracy across all tasks.