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  • Confusion matrix

    Confusion matrix

    In machine learning, a confusion matrix, also known as error matrix, is a specific table layout that allows visualization of the performance of an algorithm, typically a supervised learning one. In unsupervised learning it is usually called a matching matrix. The term is used specifically in the problem of statistical classification. Each row of the matrix represents the instances in an actual class while each column represents the instances in a predicted class, or vice versa – both variants are found in the literature. The diagonal of the matrix therefore represents all instances that are correctly predicted. The name stems from the fact that it makes it easy to identify whether the system is confusing two classes (i.e., commonly mislabeling one class as another). The confusion matrix has its origins in human perceptual studies of auditory stimuli. It was adapted for machine learning studies and used by Frank Rosenblatt, among other early researchers, to compare human and machine classifications of visual (and later auditory) stimuli. It is a special kind of contingency table, with two dimensions ("actual" and "predicted"), and identical sets of "classes" in both dimensions (each combination of dimension and class is a variable in the contingency table). == Example == Given a sample of 12 individuals, 8 that have been diagnosed with cancer and 4 that are cancer-free, where individuals with cancer belong to class 1 (positive) and non-cancer individuals belong to class 0 (negative), we can display that data as follows: Assume that we have a classifier that distinguishes between individuals with and without cancer in some way, we can take the 12 individuals and run them through the classifier. The classifier then makes 9 accurate predictions and misses 3: 2 individuals with cancer wrongly predicted as being cancer-free (sample 1 and 2), and 1 person without cancer that is wrongly predicted to have cancer (sample 9). Notice, that if we compare the actual classification set to the predicted classification set, there are 4 different outcomes that could result in any particular column: The actual classification is positive and the predicted classification is positive (1,1). This is called a true positive result because the positive sample was correctly identified by the classifier. The actual classification is positive and the predicted classification is negative (1,0). This is called a false negative result because the positive sample is incorrectly identified by the classifier as being negative. The actual classification is negative and the predicted classification is positive (0,1). This is called a false positive result because the negative sample is incorrectly identified by the classifier as being positive. The actual classification is negative and the predicted classification is negative (0,0). This is called a true negative result because the negative sample gets correctly identified by the classifier. We can then perform the comparison between actual and predicted classifications and add this information to the table, making correct results appear in green so they are more easily identifiable. The template for any binary confusion matrix uses the four kinds of results discussed above (true positives, false negatives, false positives, and true negatives) along with the positive and negative classifications. The four outcomes can be formulated in a 2×2 confusion matrix, as follows: The color convention of the three data tables above were picked to match this confusion matrix, in order to easily differentiate the data. Now, we can simply total up each type of result, substitute into the template, and create a confusion matrix that will concisely summarize the results of testing the classifier: In this confusion matrix, of the 8 samples with cancer, the system judged that 2 were cancer-free, and of the 4 samples without cancer, it predicted that 1 did have cancer. All correct predictions are located in the diagonal of the table (highlighted in green), so it is easy to visually inspect the table for prediction errors, as values outside the diagonal will represent them. By summing up the 2 rows of the confusion matrix, one can also deduce the total number of positive (P) and negative (N) samples in the original dataset, i.e. P = T P + F N {\displaystyle P=TP+FN} and N = F P + T N {\displaystyle N=FP+TN} . == Table of confusion == In predictive analytics, a table of confusion (sometimes also called a confusion matrix) is a table with two rows and two columns that reports the number of true positives, false negatives, false positives, and true negatives. This allows more detailed analysis than simply observing the proportion of correct classifications (accuracy). Accuracy will yield misleading results if the data set is unbalanced; that is, when the numbers of observations in different classes vary greatly. For example, if there were 95 cancer samples and only 5 non-cancer samples in the data, a particular classifier might classify all the observations as having cancer. The overall accuracy would be 95%, but in more detail the classifier would have a 100% recognition rate (sensitivity) for the cancer class but a 0% recognition rate for the non-cancer class. F1 score is even more unreliable in such cases, and here would yield over 97.4%, whereas informedness removes such bias and yields 0 as the probability of an informed decision for any form of guessing (here always guessing cancer). According to Davide Chicco and Giuseppe Jurman, the most informative metric to evaluate a confusion matrix is the Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC). Other metrics can be included in a confusion matrix, each of them having their significance and use. Some researchers have argued that the confusion matrix, and the metrics derived from it, do not truly reflect a model's knowledge. In particular, the confusion matrix cannot show whether correct predictions were reached through sound reasoning or merely by chance (a problem known in philosophy as epistemic luck). It also does not capture situations where the facts used to make a prediction later change or turn out to be wrong (defeasibility). This means that while the confusion matrix is a useful tool for measuring classification performance, it may give an incomplete picture of a model’s true reliability. == Confusion matrices with more than two categories == Confusion matrix is not limited to binary classification and can be used in multi-class classifiers as well. The confusion matrices discussed above have only two conditions: positive and negative. For example, the table below summarizes communication of a whistled language between two speakers, with zero values omitted for clarity. == Confusion matrices in multi-label and soft-label classification == Confusion matrices are not limited to single-label classification (where only one class is present) or hard-label settings (where classes are either fully present, 1, or absent, 0). They can also be extended to Multi-label classification (where multiple classes can be predicted at once) and soft-label classification (where classes can be partially present). One such extension is the Transport-based Confusion Matrix (TCM), which builds on the theory of optimal transport and the principle of maximum entropy. TCM applies to single-label, multi-label, and soft-label settings. It retains the familiar structure of the standard confusion matrix: a square matrix sized by the number of classes, with diagonal entries indicating correct predictions and off-diagonal entries indicating confusion. In the single-label case, TCM is identical to the standard confusion matrix. TCM follows the same reasoning as the standard confusion matrix: if class A is overestimated (its predicted value is greater than its label value) and class B is underestimated (its predicted value is less than its label value), A is considered confused with B, and the entry (B, A) is increased. If a class is both predicted and present, it is correctly identified, and the diagonal entry (A, A) increases. Optimal transport and maximum entropy are used to determine the extent to which these entries are updated. TCM enables clearer comparison between predictions and labels in complex classification tasks, while maintaining a consistent matrix format across settings.

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  • Rectified linear unit

    Rectified linear unit

    In the context of artificial neural networks, the rectifier or ReLU (rectified linear unit) activation function is an activation function defined as the non-negative part of its argument, i.e., the ramp function: ReLU ⁡ ( x ) = x + = max ( 0 , x ) = x + | x | 2 = { x if x > 0 , 0 x ≤ 0 {\displaystyle \operatorname {ReLU} (x)=x^{+}=\max(0,x)={\frac {x+|x|}{2}}={\begin{cases}x&{\text{if }}x>0,\\0&x\leq 0\end{cases}}} where x {\displaystyle x} is the input to a neuron. This is analogous to half-wave rectification in electrical engineering. ReLU is one of the most popular activation functions for artificial neural networks, and finds application in computer vision and speech recognition using deep neural nets and computational neuroscience. == History == The ReLU was first used by Alston Householder in 1941 as a mathematical abstraction of biological neural networks. Kunihiko Fukushima in 1969 used ReLU in the context of visual feature extraction in hierarchical neural networks. In 1998, Gregory Woodbury demonstrated that the rectified linear function could account for a broad range of emergent properties in the visual cortex. His work showed that a single unified model could drive the joint development of refined retinotopic maps, ocular dominance columns, and orientation selectivity. By utilizing the rectifier's "cutoff" property, Woodbury achieved a close quantitative fit to biological data, matching the spatial periodicities and topographic refinement patterns observed in macaque and cat cortical maps. Furthermore, he extended this framework to adult plasticity, accurately replicating the spatial and temporal dynamics of lesion-induced cortical reorganization. This research established that the rectified linear response was a necessary mechanism for the stable self-organisation and maintenance of complex, multi-feature neural maps. In 2000, Hahnloser et al. argued that ReLU approximates the biological relationship between neural firing rates and input current, in addition to enabling recurrent neural network dynamics to stabilise under weaker criteria. Prior to 2010, most activation functions used were the logistic sigmoid (which is inspired by probability theory; see logistic regression) and its more numerically efficient counterpart, the hyperbolic tangent. Around 2010, the use of ReLU became common again. Jarrett et al. (2009) noted that rectification by either absolute or ReLU (which they called "positive part") was critical for object recognition in convolutional neural networks (CNNs), specifically because it allows average pooling without neighboring filter outputs cancelling each other out. They hypothesized that the use of sigmoid or tanh was responsible for poor performance in previous CNNs. Nair and Hinton (2010) made a theoretical argument that the softplus activation function should be used, in that the softplus function numerically approximates the sum of an exponential number of linear models that share parameters. They then proposed ReLU as a good approximation to it. Specifically, they began by considering a single binary neuron in a Boltzmann machine that takes x {\displaystyle x} as input, and produces 1 as output with probability σ ( x ) = 1 1 + e − x {\displaystyle \sigma (x)={\frac {1}{1+e^{-x}}}} . They then considered extending its range of output by making infinitely many copies of it X 1 , X 2 , X 3 , … {\displaystyle X_{1},X_{2},X_{3},\dots } , that all take the same input, offset by an amount 0.5 , 1.5 , 2.5 , … {\displaystyle 0.5,1.5,2.5,\dots } , then their outputs are added together as ∑ i = 1 ∞ X i {\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{\infty }X_{i}} . They then demonstrated that ∑ i = 1 ∞ X i {\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{\infty }X_{i}} is approximately equal to N ( log ⁡ ( 1 + e x ) , σ ( x ) ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {N}}(\log(1+e^{x}),\sigma (x))} , which is also approximately equal to ReLU ⁡ ( N ( x , σ ( x ) ) ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {ReLU} ({\mathcal {N}}(x,\sigma (x)))} , where N {\displaystyle {\mathcal {N}}} stands for the gaussian distribution. They also argued for another reason for using ReLU: that it allows "intensity equivariance" in image recognition. That is, multiplying input image by a constant k {\displaystyle k} multiplies the output also. In contrast, this is false for other activation functions like sigmoid or tanh. They found that ReLU activation allowed good empirical performance in restricted Boltzmann machines. Glorot et al (2011) argued that ReLU has the following advantages over sigmoid or tanh: ReLU is more similar to biological neurons' responses in their main operating regime. ReLU avoids vanishing gradients. ReLU is cheaper to compute. ReLU creates sparse representation naturally, because many hidden units output exactly zero for a given input. They also found empirically that deep networks trained with ReLU can achieve strong performance without unsupervised pre-training, especially on large, purely supervised tasks. In 2017, the rectified linear function became a central component of the transformer architecture introduced in the Vaswani et al paper "Attention Is All You Need". Within every transformer layer, ReLU is utilized in the position-wise feed-forward networks (FFN), defined by Equation 2 of their paper: FFN ⁡ ( x ) = max ( 0 , x W 1 + b 1 ) W 2 + b 2 {\displaystyle \operatorname {FFN} (x)=\max(0,xW_{1}+b_{1})W_{2}+b_{2}} This equation is foundational to the model's capacity; while the attention mechanism determines the relationships between tokens, the ReLU-based FFN performs the majority of the numerical computation and houses the bulk of the model's parameters. The efficiency and scalability of this rectified framework triggered a global technological revolution, enabling the development of Large Language Models that have had a profound economic impact. The industrial response to this architecture—including the massive expansion of AI-specific hardware and the birth of the generative AI sector—has positioned the Transformer as a cornerstone of 21st-century infrastructure. During the post 2017 period of rapid AI advancement, the rectified linear unit function has been key to achieving increased model performance and scaling due to the fact that it zeros out responses that are immaterial for a given stimuli, preventing them from accumulating in massive scale models. It is the complete silencing of the parts of the model found to be stimuli-irrelevant during learning that allows for scaling. As the stimuli-irrelevant proportion of the model becomes more massive, these highly numerous connections within the model would inevitably accumulate during scaling no matter how small each individual response is. Therefore, the rectified linear unit function, with its absolute zeroing property, enabled the scaling to hundred billion parameter models and beyond. Early Transformer scaling giants like GPT-3 (2020) and Falcon-180B (2023) relied on the rectified linear unit function explicitly, while successors such as GPT-4 (2023) and Llama 3 (2024) utilized smoother variants like GELU or SwiGLU. These variants were used to improve training stability while fundamentally preserving the rectified principle of zeroing low responses. At the centre of modern artificial intelligence ReLU and its variants maintain absolute zero response across the bulk of the model at any one time, while maintaining approximately linear reponses for stimuli-relevant connections enabling high performance on each specific cognitive task. This feature of activation sparsity has been critical for massive scaling and performance gains of AI models right up to the present day. == Advantages == Advantages of ReLU include: Sparse activation: for example, in a randomly initialized network, only about 50% of hidden units are activated (i.e. have a non-zero output). Better gradient propagation: fewer vanishing gradient problems compared to sigmoidal activation functions that saturate in both directions. Efficiency: only requires comparison and addition. Scale-invariant (homogeneous, or "intensity equivariance"): max ( 0 , a x ) = a max ( 0 , x ) for a ≥ 0 {\displaystyle \max(0,ax)=a\max(0,x){\text{ for }}a\geq 0} . == Potential problems == Possible downsides can include: Non-differentiability at zero (however, it is differentiable anywhere else, and the value of the derivative at zero can be chosen to be 0 or 1 arbitrarily). Not zero-centered: ReLU outputs are always non-negative. This can make it harder for the network to learn during backpropagation, because gradient updates tend to push weights in one direction (positive or negative). Batch normalization can help address this. ReLU is unbounded. Redundancy of the parametrization: Because ReLU is scale-invariant, the network computes the exact same function by scaling the weights and biases in front of a ReLU activation by k {\displaystyle k} , and the weights after by 1 / k {\displaystyle 1/k} . Dying ReLU: ReLU neurons can sometimes be pushed into states

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  • Low-rank approximation

    Low-rank approximation

    In mathematics, low-rank approximation refers to the process of approximating a given matrix by a matrix of lower rank. More precisely, it is a minimization problem, in which the cost function measures the fit between a given matrix (the data) and an approximating matrix (the optimization variable), subject to a constraint that the approximating matrix has reduced rank. The problem is used for mathematical modeling and data compression. The rank constraint is related to a constraint on the complexity of a model that fits the data. In applications, often there are other constraints on the approximating matrix apart from the rank constraint, e.g., non-negativity and Hankel structure. Low-rank approximation is closely related to numerous other techniques, including principal component analysis, factor analysis, total least squares, latent semantic analysis, orthogonal regression, and dynamic mode decomposition. == Definition == Given structure specification S : R n p → R m × n {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}:\mathbb {R} ^{n_{p}}\to \mathbb {R} ^{m\times n}} , vector of structure parameters p ∈ R n p {\displaystyle p\in \mathbb {R} ^{n_{p}}} , norm ‖ ⋅ ‖ {\displaystyle \|\cdot \|} , and desired rank r {\displaystyle r} , minimize over p ^ ‖ p − p ^ ‖ subject to rank ⁡ ( S ( p ^ ) ) ≤ r . {\displaystyle {\text{minimize}}\quad {\text{over }}{\widehat {p}}\quad \|p-{\widehat {p}}\|\quad {\text{subject to}}\quad \operatorname {rank} {\big (}{\mathcal {S}}({\widehat {p}}){\big )}\leq r.} == Applications == Linear system identification, in which case the approximating matrix is Hankel structured. Machine learning, in which case the approximating matrix is nonlinearly structured. Recommender systems, in which cases the data matrix has missing values and the approximation is categorical. Distance matrix completion, in which case there is a positive definiteness constraint. Natural language processing, in which case the approximation is nonnegative. Computer algebra, in which case the approximation is Sylvester structured. Matrix product states, in which case the approximation is usually rescaled to have fixed Frobenius norm. == Basic low-rank approximation problem == The unstructured problem with fit measured by the Frobenius norm, i.e., minimize over D ^ ‖ D − D ^ ‖ F subject to rank ⁡ ( D ^ ) ≤ r {\displaystyle {\text{minimize}}\quad {\text{over }}{\widehat {D}}\quad \|D-{\widehat {D}}\|_{\text{F}}\quad {\text{subject to}}\quad \operatorname {rank} {\big (}{\widehat {D}}{\big )}\leq r} has an analytic solution in terms of the singular value decomposition of the data matrix. The result is referred to as the matrix approximation lemma or Eckart–Young–Mirsky theorem. This problem was originally solved by Erhard Schmidt in the infinite dimensional context of integral operators (although his methods easily generalize to arbitrary compact operators on Hilbert spaces) and later rediscovered by C. Eckart and G. Young. L. Mirsky generalized the result to arbitrary unitarily invariant norms. Let D = U Σ V ⊤ ∈ R m × n , m ≥ n {\displaystyle D=U\Sigma V^{\top }\in \mathbb {R} ^{m\times n},\quad m\geq n} be the singular value decomposition of D {\displaystyle D} , where Σ =: diag ⁡ ( σ 1 , … , σ r ) {\displaystyle \Sigma =:\operatorname {diag} (\sigma _{1},\ldots ,\sigma _{r})} , where r ≤ min { m , n } = n {\displaystyle r\leq \min\{m,n\}=n} , is the m × n {\displaystyle m\times n} rectangular diagonal matrix with r {\displaystyle r} non-zero singular values σ 1 ≥ … ≥ σ r > σ r + 1 = … = σ n = 0 {\displaystyle \sigma _{1}\geq \ldots \geq \sigma _{r}>\sigma _{r+1}=\ldots =\sigma _{n}=0} . For a given k ∈ { 1 , … , r } {\displaystyle k\in \{1,\dots ,r\}} , partition U {\displaystyle U} , Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } , and V {\displaystyle V} as follows: U =: [ U 1 U 2 ] , Σ =: [ Σ 1 0 0 Σ 2 ] , and V =: [ V 1 V 2 ] , {\displaystyle U=:{\begin{bmatrix}U_{1}&U_{2}\end{bmatrix}},\quad \Sigma =:{\begin{bmatrix}\Sigma _{1}&0\\0&\Sigma _{2}\end{bmatrix}},\quad {\text{and}}\quad V=:{\begin{bmatrix}V_{1}&V_{2}\end{bmatrix}},} where U 1 {\displaystyle U_{1}} is m × k {\displaystyle m\times k} , Σ 1 {\displaystyle \Sigma _{1}} is k × k {\displaystyle k\times k} , and V 1 {\displaystyle V_{1}} is n × k {\displaystyle n\times k} . Then the rank k {\displaystyle k} matrix D ^ ∗ := U 1 Σ 1 V 1 ⊤ , {\displaystyle {\widehat {D}}^{}:=U_{1}\Sigma _{1}V_{1}^{\top },} obtained from the truncated singular value decomposition is such that ‖ D − D ^ ∗ ‖ F = min rank ⁡ ( D ^ ) ≤ k ‖ D − D ^ ‖ F = σ k + 1 2 + ⋯ + σ r 2 . {\displaystyle \|D-{\widehat {D}}^{}\|_{\text{F}}=\min _{\operatorname {rank} ({\widehat {D}})\leq k}\|D-{\widehat {D}}\|_{\text{F}}={\sqrt {\sigma _{k+1}^{2}+\cdots +\sigma _{r}^{2}}}.} The minimizer D ^ ∗ {\displaystyle {\widehat {D}}^{}} is unique if and only if σ k > σ k + 1 {\displaystyle \sigma _{k}>\sigma _{k+1}} . == Proof of Eckart–Young–Mirsky theorem (for spectral norm) == Let A ∈ R m × n {\displaystyle A\in \mathbb {R} ^{m\times n}} be a real (possibly rectangular) matrix with m ≤ n {\displaystyle m\leq n} . Suppose that A = U Σ V ⊤ {\displaystyle A=U\Sigma V^{\top }} is the singular value decomposition of A {\displaystyle A} . Recall that U {\displaystyle U} and V {\displaystyle V} are orthogonal matrices, and Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } is an m × n {\displaystyle m\times n} diagonal matrix with entries ( σ 1 , σ 2 , ⋯ , σ m ) {\displaystyle (\sigma _{1},\sigma _{2},\cdots ,\sigma _{m})} such that σ 1 ≥ σ 2 ≥ ⋯ ≥ σ m ≥ 0 {\displaystyle \sigma _{1}\geq \sigma _{2}\geq \cdots \geq \sigma _{m}\geq 0} . We claim that the best rank- k {\displaystyle k} approximation to A {\displaystyle A} in the spectral norm, denoted by ‖ ⋅ ‖ 2 {\displaystyle \|\cdot \|_{2}} , is given by A k := ∑ i = 1 k σ i u i v i ⊤ {\displaystyle A_{k}:=\sum _{i=1}^{k}\sigma _{i}u_{i}v_{i}^{\top }} where u i {\displaystyle u_{i}} and v i {\displaystyle v_{i}} denote the i {\displaystyle i} th column of U {\displaystyle U} and V {\displaystyle V} , respectively. First, note that we have ‖ A − A k ‖ 2 = ‖ ∑ i = 1 n σ i u i v i ⊤ − ∑ i = 1 k σ i u i v i ⊤ ‖ 2 = ‖ ∑ i = k + 1 n σ i u i v i ⊤ ‖ 2 = σ k + 1 {\displaystyle \|A-A_{k}\|_{2}=\left\|\sum _{i=1}^{\color {red}{n}}\sigma _{i}u_{i}v_{i}^{\top }-\sum _{i=1}^{\color {red}{k}}\sigma _{i}u_{i}v_{i}^{\top }\right\|_{2}=\left\|\sum _{i=\color {red}{k+1}}^{n}\sigma _{i}u_{i}v_{i}^{\top }\right\|_{2}=\sigma _{k+1}} Therefore, we need to show that if B k = X Y ⊤ {\displaystyle B_{k}=XY^{\top }} where X {\displaystyle X} and Y {\displaystyle Y} have k {\displaystyle k} columns then ‖ A − A k ‖ 2 = σ k + 1 ≤ ‖ A − B k ‖ 2 {\displaystyle \|A-A_{k}\|_{2}=\sigma _{k+1}\leq \|A-B_{k}\|_{2}} . Since Y {\displaystyle Y} has k {\displaystyle k} columns, then there must be a nontrivial linear combination of the first k + 1 {\displaystyle k+1} columns of V {\displaystyle V} , i.e., w = γ 1 v 1 + ⋯ + γ k + 1 v k + 1 , {\displaystyle w=\gamma _{1}v_{1}+\cdots +\gamma _{k+1}v_{k+1},} such that Y ⊤ w = 0 {\displaystyle Y^{\top }w=0} . Without loss of generality, we can scale w {\displaystyle w} so that ‖ w ‖ 2 = 1 {\displaystyle \|w\|_{2}=1} or (equivalently) γ 1 2 + ⋯ + γ k + 1 2 = 1 {\displaystyle \gamma _{1}^{2}+\cdots +\gamma _{k+1}^{2}=1} . Therefore, ‖ A − B k ‖ 2 2 ≥ ‖ ( A − B k ) w ‖ 2 2 = ‖ A w ‖ 2 2 = γ 1 2 σ 1 2 + ⋯ + γ k + 1 2 σ k + 1 2 ≥ σ k + 1 2 . {\displaystyle \|A-B_{k}\|_{2}^{2}\geq \|(A-B_{k})w\|_{2}^{2}=\|Aw\|_{2}^{2}=\gamma _{1}^{2}\sigma _{1}^{2}+\cdots +\gamma _{k+1}^{2}\sigma _{k+1}^{2}\geq \sigma _{k+1}^{2}.} The result follows by taking the square root of both sides of the above inequality. == Proof of Eckart–Young–Mirsky theorem (for Frobenius norm) == Let A ∈ R m × n {\displaystyle A\in \mathbb {R} ^{m\times n}} be a real (possibly rectangular) matrix with m ≤ n {\displaystyle m\leq n} . Suppose that A = U Σ V ⊤ {\displaystyle A=U\Sigma V^{\top }} is the singular value decomposition of A {\displaystyle A} . We claim that the best rank k {\displaystyle k} approximation to A {\displaystyle A} in the Frobenius norm, denoted by ‖ ⋅ ‖ F {\displaystyle \|\cdot \|_{F}} , is given by A k = ∑ i = 1 k σ i u i v i ⊤ {\displaystyle A_{k}=\sum _{i=1}^{k}\sigma _{i}u_{i}v_{i}^{\top }} where u i {\displaystyle u_{i}} and v i {\displaystyle v_{i}} denote the i {\displaystyle i} th column of U {\displaystyle U} and V {\displaystyle V} , respectively. First, note that we have ‖ A − A k ‖ F 2 = ‖ ∑ i = k + 1 n σ i u i v i ⊤ ‖ F 2 = ∑ i = k + 1 n σ i 2 {\displaystyle \|A-A_{k}\|_{F}^{2}=\left\|\sum _{i=k+1}^{n}\sigma _{i}u_{i}v_{i}^{\top }\right\|_{F}^{2}=\sum _{i=k+1}^{n}\sigma _{i}^{2}} Therefore, we need to show that if B k = X Y ⊤ {\displaystyle B_{k}=XY^{\top }} where X {\displaystyle X} and Y {\displaystyle Y} have k {\displaystyle k} columns then ‖ A − A k ‖ F 2 = ∑ i = k + 1 n σ i 2 ≤ ‖ A − B k ‖ F 2 . {\displaystyle \|A-A_{k}\|_{F}^{2}=\sum _{i=k+1}^{n}\sigma _{i}^{2}\leq \|A-B_{k}\|_{F}^{2}.} By the triangle inequality with the spectral norm

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  • Reservoir computing

    Reservoir computing

    Reservoir computing is a framework for computation derived from recurrent neural network theory that maps input signals into higher dimensional computational spaces through the dynamics of a fixed, non-linear system called a reservoir. After the input signal is fed into the reservoir, which is treated as a "black box," a simple readout mechanism is trained to read the state of the reservoir and map it to the desired output. The first key benefit of this framework is that training is performed only at the readout stage, as the reservoir dynamics are fixed. The second is that the computational power of naturally available systems, both classical and quantum mechanical, can be used to reduce the effective computational cost. == History == The first examples of reservoir neural networks demonstrated that randomly connected recurrent neural networks could be used for sensorimotor sequence learning, and simple forms of interval and speech discrimination. In these early models the memory in the network took the form of both short-term synaptic plasticity and activity mediated by recurrent connections. In other early reservoir neural network models the memory of the recent stimulus history was provided solely by the recurrent activity. Overall, the general concept of reservoir computing stems from the use of recursive connections within neural networks to create a complex dynamical system. It is a generalisation of earlier neural network architectures such as recurrent neural networks, liquid-state machines and echo-state networks. Reservoir computing also extends to physical systems that are not networks in the classical sense, but rather continuous systems in space and/or time: e.g. a literal "bucket of water" can serve as a reservoir that performs computations on inputs given as perturbations of the surface. The resultant complexity of such recurrent neural networks was found to be useful in solving a variety of problems including language processing and dynamic system modeling. However, training of recurrent neural networks is challenging and computationally expensive. Reservoir computing reduces those training-related challenges by fixing the dynamics of the reservoir and only training the linear output layer. A large variety of nonlinear dynamical systems can serve as a reservoir that performs computations. In recent years semiconductor lasers have attracted considerable interest as computation can be fast and energy efficient compared to electrical components. Recent advances in both AI and quantum information theory have given rise to the concept of quantum neural networks. These hold promise in quantum information processing, which is challenging to classical networks, but can also find application in solving classical problems. In 2018, a physical realization of a quantum reservoir computing architecture was demonstrated in the form of nuclear spins within a molecular solid. However, the nuclear spin experiments in did not demonstrate quantum reservoir computing per se as they did not involve processing of sequential data. Rather the data were vector inputs, which makes this more accurately a demonstration of quantum implementation of a random kitchen sink algorithm (also going by the name of extreme learning machines in some communities). In 2019, another possible implementation of quantum reservoir processors was proposed in the form of two-dimensional fermionic lattices. In 2020, realization of reservoir computing on gate-based quantum computers was proposed and demonstrated on cloud-based IBM superconducting near-term quantum computers. Reservoir computers have been used for time-series analysis purposes. In particular, some of their usages involve chaotic time-series prediction, separation of chaotic signals, and link inference of networks from their dynamics. == Classical reservoir computing == === Reservoir === The 'reservoir' in reservoir computing is the internal structure of the computer, and must have two properties: it must be made up of individual, non-linear units, and it must be capable of storing information. The non-linearity describes the response of each unit to input, which is what allows reservoir computers to solve complex problems. Reservoirs are able to store information by connecting the units in recurrent loops, where the previous input affects the next response. The change in reaction due to the past allows the computers to be trained to complete specific tasks. Reservoirs can be virtual or physical. Virtual reservoirs are typically randomly generated and are designed like neural networks. Virtual reservoirs can be designed to have non-linearity and recurrent loops, but, unlike neural networks, the connections between units are randomized and remain unchanged throughout computation. Physical reservoirs are possible because of the inherent non-linearity of certain natural systems. The interaction between ripples on the surface of water contains the nonlinear dynamics required in reservoir creation, and a pattern recognition RC was developed by first inputting ripples with electric motors then recording and analyzing the ripples in the readout. === Readout === The readout is a neural network layer that performs a linear transformation on the output of the reservoir. The weights of the readout layer are trained by analyzing the spatiotemporal patterns of the reservoir after excitation by known inputs, and by utilizing a training method such as a linear regression or a Ridge regression. As its implementation depends on spatiotemporal reservoir patterns, the details of readout methods are tailored to each type of reservoir. For example, the readout for a reservoir computer using a container of liquid as its reservoir might entail observing spatiotemporal patterns on the surface of the liquid. === Types === ==== Context reverberation network ==== An early example of reservoir computing was the context reverberation network. In this architecture, an input layer feeds into a high dimensional dynamical system which is read out by a trainable single-layer perceptron. Two kinds of dynamical system were described: a recurrent neural network with fixed random weights, and a continuous reaction–diffusion system inspired by Alan Turing's model of morphogenesis. At the trainable layer, the perceptron associates current inputs with the signals that reverberate in the dynamical system; the latter were said to provide a dynamic "context" for the inputs. In the language of later work, the reaction–diffusion system served as the reservoir. ==== Echo state network ==== The tree echo state network (TreeESN) model represents a generalization of the reservoir computing framework to tree structured data. ==== Liquid-state machine ==== Chaotic liquid state machine The liquid (i.e. reservoir) of a chaotic liquid state machine (CLSM), or chaotic reservoir, is made from chaotic spiking neurons but which stabilize their activity by settling to a single hypothesis that describes the trained inputs of the machine. This is in contrast to general types of reservoirs that don't stabilize. The liquid stabilization occurs via synaptic plasticity and chaos control that govern neural connections inside the liquid. CLSM showed promising results in learning sensitive time series data. ==== Nonlinear transient computation ==== This type of information processing is most relevant when time-dependent input signals depart from the mechanism's internal dynamics. These departures cause transients or temporary altercations which are represented in the device's output. ==== Deep reservoir computing ==== The extension of the reservoir computing framework towards deep learning, with the introduction of deep reservoir computing and of the deep echo state network (DeepESN) model allows to develop efficiently trained models for hierarchical processing of temporal data, at the same time enabling the investigation on the inherent role of layered composition in recurrent neural networks. == Quantum reservoir computing == Quantum reservoir computing may use the nonlinear nature of quantum mechanical interactions or processes to form the characteristic nonlinear reservoirs but may also be done with linear reservoirs when the injection of the input to the reservoir creates the nonlinearity. The marriage of machine learning and quantum devices is leading to the emergence of quantum neuromorphic computing as a new research area. === Types === ==== Gaussian states of interacting quantum harmonic oscillators ==== Gaussian states are a paradigmatic class of states of continuous variable quantum systems. Although they can nowadays be created and manipulated in, e.g, state-of-the-art optical platforms, naturally robust to decoherence, it is well-known that they are not sufficient for, e.g., universal quantum computing because transformations that preserve the Gaussian nature of a state are linear. Normally, linear dynamics would not be sufficient for nontrivial reser

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  • Local coordinates

    Local coordinates

    Local coordinates are the ones used in a local coordinate system or a local coordinate space. Simple examples: Houses. In order to work in a house construction, the measurements are referred to a control arbitrary point that will allow to check it: stick/sticks on the ground, steel bar, nails... Addresses. Using house numbers to locate a house on a street; the street is a local coordinate system within a larger system composed of city townships, states, countries, postal codes, etc. Local systems exist for convenience. On ancient times, every work was made on relative bases as there was no conception of global systems. Practically, it is better to use local systems for small works as houses, buildings... For most of the applications, it is desired the position of one element relative to one building or location, and in a more local way, relative to one furniture or person. In a regular way, you will not give your position by geographical coordinates rather than "I am 15 meters away of the entry to the building". So it is a pretty common way to locate things. It is possible to bring latitude and longitude for all terrestrial locations, but unless one has a highly precise GPS device or you make astronomical observations, this is impractical. It is much simpler to use a tape, a rope, a chain... The position information (global) should be transformed into a location. Position refers to a numeric or symbolic description within a spatial reference system, whereas location refers to information about surrounding objects and their interrelationships. (Topological space) == Use == In computer graphics and computer animation, local coordinate spaces are also useful for their ability to model independently transformable aspects of geometrical scene graphs. When modeling a car, for example, it is desirable to describe the center of each wheel with respect to the car's coordinate system, but then specify the shape of each wheel in separate local spaces centered about these points. This way, the information describing each wheel can be simply duplicated four times, and independent transformations (e.g., steering rotation) can be similarly effected. Bounding volumes of objects may be described more accurately using extents in the local coordinates, (i.e. an object oriented bounding box, contrasted with the simpler axis aligned bounding box). The trade-off for this flexibility is additional computational cost: the rendering system must access the higher-level coordinate system of the car and combine it with the space of each wheel in order to draw everything in its proper place. Local coordinates also afford digital designers a means around the finite limits of numerical representation. The tread marks on a tire, for example, can be described using millimeters by allowing the whole tire to occupy the entire range of numeric precision available. The larger aspects of the car, such as its frame, might be described in centimeters, and the terrain that the car travels on could be specified in meters. In differential topology, local coordinates on a manifold are defined by means of an atlas of charts. The basic idea behind coordinate charts is that each small patch of a manifold can be endowed with a set of local coordinates. These are collected together into an atlas, and stitched together in such a way that they are self-consistent on the manifold. In Cartography and Maps, the traditional way of works are local datum. With a local datum the land can be mapped on relative small areas as a country. With the need of global systems, the transformations on between datum became a problem, so geodetic datum have been created. More than 150 local datum have been used in the world.

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  • Independent component analysis

    Independent component analysis

    In signal processing, independent component analysis (ICA) is a computational method for separating a multivariate signal into additive subcomponents. This is done by assuming that at most one subcomponent is Gaussian and that the subcomponents are statistically independent from each other. ICA was invented by Jeanny Hérault and Christian Jutten in 1985. ICA is a special case of blind source separation. A common example application of ICA is the "cocktail party problem" of listening in on one person's speech in a noisy room. == Introduction == Independent component analysis attempts to decompose a multivariate signal into independent non-Gaussian signals. As an example, sound is usually a signal that is composed of the numerical addition, at each time t, of signals from several sources. The question then is whether it is possible to separate these contributing sources from the observed total signal. When the statistical independence assumption is correct, blind ICA separation of a mixed signal gives very good results. It is also used for signals that are not supposed to be generated by mixing for analysis purposes. A simple application of ICA is the "cocktail party problem", where the underlying speech signals are separated from a sample data consisting of people talking simultaneously in a room. Usually the problem is simplified by assuming no time delays or echoes. Note that a filtered and delayed signal is a copy of a dependent component, and thus the statistical independence assumption is not violated. Mixing weights for constructing the M {\textstyle M} observed signals from the N {\textstyle N} components can be placed in an M × N {\textstyle M\times N} matrix. An important thing to consider is that if N {\textstyle N} sources are present, at least N {\textstyle N} observations (e.g. microphones if the observed signal is audio) are needed to recover the original signals. When there are an equal number of observations and source signals, the mixing matrix is square ( M = N {\textstyle M=N} ). Other cases of underdetermined ( M < N {\textstyle M N {\textstyle M>N} ) have been investigated. The success of ICA separation of mixed signals relies on two assumptions and three effects of mixing source signals. Two assumptions: The source signals are independent of each other. The values in each source signal have non-Gaussian distributions. Three effects of mixing source signals: Independence: As per assumption 1, the source signals are independent; however, their signal mixtures are not. This is because the signal mixtures share the same source signals. Normality: According to the Central Limit Theorem, the distribution of a sum of independent random variables with finite variance tends towards a Gaussian distribution.Loosely speaking, a sum of two independent random variables usually has a distribution that is closer to Gaussian than any of the two original variables. Here we consider the value of each signal as the random variable. Complexity: The temporal complexity of any signal mixture is greater than that of its simplest constituent source signal. Those principles contribute to the basic establishment of ICA. If the signals extracted from a set of mixtures are independent and have non-Gaussian distributions or have low complexity, then they must be source signals. Another common example is image steganography, where ICA is used to embed one image within another. For instance, two grayscale images can be linearly combined to create mixed images in which the hidden content is visually imperceptible. ICA can then be used to recover the original source images from the mixtures. This technique underlies digital watermarking, which allows the embedding of ownership information into images, as well as more covert applications such as undetected information transmission. The method has even been linked to real-world cyberespionage cases. In such applications, ICA serves to unmix the data based on statistical independence, making it possible to extract hidden components that are not apparent in the observed data. Steganographic techniques, including those potentially involving ICA-based analysis, have been used in real-world cyberespionage cases. In 2010, the FBI uncovered a Russian spy network known as the "Illegals Program" (Operation Ghost Stories), where agents used custom-built steganography tools to conceal encrypted text messages within image files shared online. In another case, a former General Electric engineer, Xiaoqing Zheng, was convicted in 2022 for economic espionage. Zheng used steganography to exfiltrate sensitive turbine technology by embedding proprietary data within image files for transfer to entities in China. == Defining component independence == ICA finds the independent components (also called factors, latent variables or sources) by maximizing the statistical independence of the estimated components. We may choose one of many ways to define a proxy for independence, and this choice governs the form of the ICA algorithm. The two broadest definitions of independence for ICA are Minimization of mutual information Maximization of non-Gaussianity The Minimization-of-Mutual information (MMI) family of ICA algorithms uses measures like Kullback-Leibler Divergence and maximum entropy. The non-Gaussianity family of ICA algorithms, motivated by the central limit theorem, uses kurtosis and negentropy. Typical algorithms for ICA use centering (subtract the mean to create a zero mean signal), whitening (usually with the eigenvalue decomposition), and dimensionality reduction as preprocessing steps in order to simplify and reduce the complexity of the problem for the actual iterative algorithm. == Mathematical definitions == Linear independent component analysis can be divided into noiseless and noisy cases, where noiseless ICA is a special case of noisy ICA. Nonlinear ICA should be considered as a separate case. === General Derivation === In the classical ICA model, it is assumed that the observed data x i ∈ R m {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} _{i}\in \mathbb {R} ^{m}} at time t i {\displaystyle t_{i}} is generated from source signals s i ∈ R m {\displaystyle \mathbf {s} _{i}\in \mathbb {R} ^{m}} via a linear transformation x i = A s i {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} _{i}=A\mathbf {s} _{i}} , where A {\displaystyle A} is an unknown, invertible mixing matrix. To recover the source signals, the data is first centered (zero mean), and then whitened so that the transformed data has unit covariance. This whitening reduces the problem from estimating a general matrix A {\displaystyle A} to estimating an orthogonal matrix V {\displaystyle V} , significantly simplifying the search for independent components. If the covariance matrix of the centered data is Σ x = A A ⊤ {\displaystyle \Sigma _{x}=AA^{\top }} , then using the eigen-decomposition Σ x = Q D Q ⊤ {\displaystyle \Sigma _{x}=QDQ^{\top }} , the whitening transformation can be taken as D − 1 / 2 Q ⊤ {\displaystyle D^{-1/2}Q^{\top }} . This step ensures that the recovered sources are uncorrelated and of unit variance, leaving only the task of rotating the whitened data to maximize statistical independence. This general derivation underlies many ICA algorithms and is foundational in understanding the ICA model. ==== Reduced Mixing Problem ==== Independent component analysis (ICA) addresses the problem of recovering a set of unobserved source signals s i = ( s i 1 , s i 2 , … , s i m ) T {\displaystyle s_{i}=(s_{i1},s_{i2},\dots ,s_{im})^{T}} from observed mixed signals x i = ( x i 1 , x i 2 , … , x i m ) T {\displaystyle x_{i}=(x_{i1},x_{i2},\dots ,x_{im})^{T}} , based on the linear mixing model: x i = A s i , {\displaystyle x_{i}=A\,s_{i},} where the A {\displaystyle A} is an m × m {\displaystyle m\times m} invertible matrix called the mixing matrix, s i {\displaystyle s_{i}} represents the m‑dimensional vector containing the values of the sources at time t i {\displaystyle t_{i}} , and x i {\displaystyle x_{i}} is the corresponding vector of observed values at time t i {\displaystyle t_{i}} . The goal is to estimate both A {\displaystyle A} and the source signals { s i } {\displaystyle \{s_{i}\}} solely from the observed data { x i } {\displaystyle \{x_{i}\}} . After centering, the Gram matrix is computed as: ( X ∗ ) T X ∗ = Q D Q T , {\displaystyle (X^{})^{T}X^{}=Q\,D\,Q^{T},} where D is a diagonal matrix with positive entries (assuming X ∗ {\displaystyle X^{}} has maximum rank), and Q is an orthogonal matrix. Writing the SVD of the mixing matrix A = U Σ V T {\displaystyle A=U\Sigma V^{T}} and comparing with A A T = U Σ 2 U T {\displaystyle AA^{T}=U\Sigma ^{2}U^{T}} the mixing A has the form A = Q D 1 / 2 V T . {\displaystyle A=Q\,D^{1/2}\,V^{T}.} So, the normalized source values satisfy s i ∗ = V y i ∗ {\displaystyle s_{i}^{}=V\,y_{i}^{}} , where y i ∗ = D − 1 2 Q T x i ∗ . {\displaystyle y_{i}^{}=D^{-{\tfrac {1}{2}}}Q^{T}x_{i}^{}.} Thus, ICA reduces

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  • Neural cryptography

    Neural cryptography

    Neural cryptography is a branch of cryptography dedicated to analyzing the application of stochastic algorithms, especially artificial neural network algorithms, for use in encryption and cryptanalysis. == Definition == Artificial neural networks are well known for their ability to selectively explore the solution space of a given problem. This feature finds a natural niche of application in the field of cryptanalysis. At the same time, neural networks offer a new approach to attack ciphering algorithms based on the principle that any function could be reproduced by a neural network, which is a powerful proven computational tool that can be used to find the inverse-function of any cryptographic algorithm. The ideas of mutual learning, self learning, and stochastic behavior of neural networks and similar algorithms can be used for different aspects of cryptography, like public-key cryptography, solving the key distribution problem using neural network mutual synchronization, hashing or generation of pseudo-random numbers. Another idea is the ability of a neural network to separate space in non-linear pieces using "bias". It gives different probabilities of activating the neural network or not. This is very useful in the case of Cryptanalysis. Two names are used to design the same domain of research: Neuro-Cryptography and Neural Cryptography. The first work that it is known on this topic can be traced back to 1995 in an IT Master Thesis. == Applications == In 1995, Sebastien Dourlens applied neural networks to cryptanalyze DES by allowing the networks to learn how to invert the S-tables of the DES. The bias in DES studied through Differential Cryptanalysis by Adi Shamir is highlighted. The experiment shows about 50% of the key bits can be found, allowing the complete key to be found in a short time. Hardware application with multi micro-controllers have been proposed due to the easy implementation of multilayer neural networks in hardware. One example of a public-key protocol is given by Khalil Shihab . He describes the decryption scheme and the public key creation that are based on a backpropagation neural network. The encryption scheme and the private key creation process are based on Boolean algebra. This technique has the advantage of small time and memory complexities. A disadvantage is the property of backpropagation algorithms: because of huge training sets, the learning phase of a neural network is very long. Therefore, the use of this protocol is only theoretical so far. == Neural key exchange protocol == The most used protocol for key exchange between two parties A and B in the practice is Diffie–Hellman key exchange protocol. Neural key exchange, which is based on the synchronization of two tree parity machines, should be a secure replacement for this method. Synchronizing these two machines is similar to synchronizing two chaotic oscillators in chaos communications. === Tree parity machine === The tree parity machine is a special type of multi-layer feedforward neural network. It consists of one output neuron, K hidden neurons and K×N input neurons. Inputs to the network take three values: x i j ∈ { − 1 , 0 , + 1 } {\displaystyle x_{ij}\in \left\{-1,0,+1\right\}} The weights between input and hidden neurons take the values: w i j ∈ { − L , . . . , 0 , . . . , + L } {\displaystyle w_{ij}\in \left\{-L,...,0,...,+L\right\}} Output value of each hidden neuron is calculated as a sum of all multiplications of input neurons and these weights: σ i = sgn ⁡ ( ∑ j = 1 N w i j x i j ) {\displaystyle \sigma _{i}=\operatorname {sgn}(\sum _{j=1}^{N}w_{ij}x_{ij})} Signum is a simple function, which returns −1,0 or 1: sgn ⁡ ( x ) = { − 1 if x < 0 , 0 if x = 0 , 1 if x > 0. {\displaystyle \operatorname {sgn}(x)={\begin{cases}-1&{\text{if }}x<0,\\0&{\text{if }}x=0,\\1&{\text{if }}x>0.\end{cases}}} If the scalar product is 0, the output of the hidden neuron is mapped to −1 in order to ensure a binary output value. The output of neural network is then computed as the multiplication of all values produced by hidden elements: τ = ∏ i = 1 K σ i {\displaystyle \tau =\prod _{i=1}^{K}\sigma _{i}} Output of the tree parity machine is binary. === Protocol === Each party (A and B) uses its own tree parity machine. Synchronization of the tree parity machines is achieved in these steps Initialize random weight values Execute these steps until the full synchronization is achieved Generate random input vector X Compute the values of the hidden neurons Compute the value of the output neuron Compare the values of both tree parity machines Outputs are the same: one of the suitable learning rules is applied to the weights Outputs are different: go to 2.1 After the full synchronization is achieved (the weights wij of both tree parity machines are same), A and B can use their weights as keys. This method is known as a bidirectional learning. One of the following learning rules can be used for the synchronization: Hebbian learning rule: w i + = g ( w i + σ i x i Θ ( σ i τ ) Θ ( τ A τ B ) ) {\displaystyle w_{i}^{+}=g(w_{i}+\sigma _{i}x_{i}\Theta (\sigma _{i}\tau )\Theta (\tau ^{A}\tau ^{B}))} Anti-Hebbian learning rule: w i + = g ( w i − σ i x i Θ ( σ i τ ) Θ ( τ A τ B ) ) {\displaystyle w_{i}^{+}=g(w_{i}-\sigma _{i}x_{i}\Theta (\sigma _{i}\tau )\Theta (\tau ^{A}\tau ^{B}))} Random walk: w i + = g ( w i + x i Θ ( σ i τ ) Θ ( τ A τ B ) ) {\displaystyle w_{i}^{+}=g(w_{i}+x_{i}\Theta (\sigma _{i}\tau )\Theta (\tau ^{A}\tau ^{B}))} Where: Θ ( a , b ) = 0 {\displaystyle \Theta (a,b)=0} if a ≠ b {\displaystyle a\neq b} otherwise Θ ( a , b ) = 1 {\displaystyle \Theta (a,b)=1} And: g ( x ) {\displaystyle g(x)} is a function that keeps the w i {\displaystyle w_{i}} in the range { − L , − L + 1 , . . . , 0 , . . . , L − 1 , L } {\displaystyle \{-L,-L+1,...,0,...,L-1,L\}} === Attacks and security of this protocol === In every attack it is considered, that the attacker E can eavesdrop messages between the parties A and B, but does not have an opportunity to change them. ==== Brute force ==== To provide a brute force attack, an attacker has to test all possible keys (all possible values of weights wij). By K hidden neurons, K×N input neurons and boundary of weights L, this gives (2L+1)KN possibilities. For example, the configuration K = 3, L = 3 and N = 100 gives us 310253 key possibilities, making the attack impossible with today's computer power. ==== Learning with own tree parity machine ==== One of the basic attacks can be provided by an attacker, who owns the same tree parity machine as the parties A and B. He wants to synchronize his tree parity machine with these two parties. In each step there are three situations possible: Output(A) ≠ Output(B): None of the parties updates its weights. Output(A) = Output(B) = Output(E): All the three parties update weights in their tree parity machines. Output(A) = Output(B) ≠ Output(E): Parties A and B update their tree parity machines, but the attacker can not do that. Because of this situation his learning is slower than the synchronization of parties A and B. It has been proven, that the synchronization of two parties is faster than learning of an attacker. It can be improved by increasing of the synaptic depth L of the neural network. That gives this protocol enough security and an attacker can find out the key only with small probability. ==== Other attacks ==== For conventional cryptographic systems, we can improve the security of the protocol by increasing of the key length. In the case of neural cryptography, we improve it by increasing of the synaptic depth L of the neural networks. Changing this parameter increases the cost of a successful attack exponentially, while the effort for the users grows polynomially. Therefore, breaking the security of neural key exchange belongs to the complexity class NP. Alexander Klimov, Anton Mityaguine, and Adi Shamir say that the original neural synchronization scheme can be broken by at least three different attacks—geometric, probabilistic analysis, and using genetic algorithms. Even though this particular implementation is insecure, the ideas behind chaotic synchronization could potentially lead to a secure implementation. === Permutation parity machine === The permutation parity machine is a binary variant of the tree parity machine. It consists of one input layer, one hidden layer and one output layer. The number of neurons in the output layer depends on the number of hidden units K. Each hidden neuron has N binary input neurons: x i j ∈ { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle x_{ij}\in \left\{0,1\right\}} The weights between input and hidden neurons are also binary: w i j ∈ { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle w_{ij}\in \left\{0,1\right\}} Output value of each hidden neuron is calculated as a sum of all exclusive disjunctions (exclusive or) of input neurons and these weights: σ i = θ N ( ∑ j = 1 N w i j ⊕ x i j ) {\displaystyle \sigma _{i}=\theta _{N}(\sum _{j=1}^{N}w_{ij}\oplus x_{ij})} (⊕ means XOR). Th

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  • One-class classification

    One-class classification

    In machine learning, one-class classification (OCC), also known as unary classification or class-modelling, is an approach to the training of binary classifiers in which only examples of one of the two classes are used. Examples include the monitoring of helicopter gearboxes, motor failure prediction, or assessing the operational status of a nuclear plant as 'normal': In such scenarios, there are few, if any, examples of the catastrophic system states – rare outliers – that comprise the second class. Alternatively, the class that is being focused on may cover a small, coherent subset of the data and the training may rely on an information bottleneck approach. In practice, counter-examples from the second class may be used in later rounds of training to further refine the algorithm. == Overview == The term one-class classification (OCC) was coined by Moya & Hush (1996) and many applications can be found in scientific literature, for example outlier detection, anomaly detection, novelty detection. A feature of OCC is that it uses only sample points from the assigned class, so that a representative sampling is not strictly required for non-target classes. == Introduction == SVM based one-class classification (OCC) relies on identifying the smallest hypersphere (with radius r, and center c) consisting of all the data points. This method is called Support Vector Data Description (SVDD). Formally, the problem can be defined in the following constrained optimization form, min r , c r 2 subject to, | | Φ ( x i ) − c | | 2 ≤ r 2 ∀ i = 1 , 2 , . . . , n {\displaystyle \min _{r,c}r^{2}{\text{ subject to, }}||\Phi (x_{i})-c||^{2}\leq r^{2}\;\;\forall i=1,2,...,n} However, the above formulation is highly restrictive, and is sensitive to the presence of outliers. Therefore, a flexible formulation, that allow for the presence of outliers is formulated as shown below, min r , c , ζ r 2 + 1 ν n ∑ i = 1 n ζ i {\displaystyle \min _{r,c,\zeta }r^{2}+{\frac {1}{\nu n}}\sum _{i=1}^{n}\zeta _{i}} subject to, | | Φ ( x i ) − c | | 2 ≤ r 2 + ζ i ∀ i = 1 , 2 , . . . , n {\displaystyle {\text{subject to, }}||\Phi (x_{i})-c||^{2}\leq r^{2}+\zeta _{i}\;\;\forall i=1,2,...,n} From the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions for optimality, we get c = ∑ i = 1 n α i Φ ( x i ) , {\displaystyle c=\sum _{i=1}^{n}\alpha _{i}\Phi (x_{i}),} where the α i {\displaystyle \alpha _{i}} 's are the solution to the following optimization problem: max α ∑ i = 1 n α i κ ( x i , x i ) − ∑ i , j = 1 n α i α j κ ( x i , x j ) {\displaystyle \max _{\alpha }\sum _{i=1}^{n}\alpha _{i}\kappa (x_{i},x_{i})-\sum _{i,j=1}^{n}\alpha _{i}\alpha _{j}\kappa (x_{i},x_{j})} subject to, ∑ i = 1 n α i = 1 and 0 ≤ α i ≤ 1 ν n for all i = 1 , 2 , . . . , n . {\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{n}\alpha _{i}=1{\text{ and }}0\leq \alpha _{i}\leq {\frac {1}{\nu n}}{\text{for all }}i=1,2,...,n.} The introduction of kernel function provide additional flexibility to the One-class SVM (OSVM) algorithm. === PU (Positive Unlabeled) learning === A similar problem is PU learning, in which a binary classifier is constructed by semi-supervised learning from only positive and unlabeled sample points. In PU learning, two sets of examples are assumed to be available for training: the positive set P {\displaystyle P} and a mixed set U {\displaystyle U} , which is assumed to contain both positive and negative samples, but without these being labeled as such. This contrasts with other forms of semisupervised learning, where it is assumed that a labeled set containing examples of both classes is available in addition to unlabeled samples. A variety of techniques exist to adapt supervised classifiers to the PU learning setting, including variants of the EM algorithm. PU learning has been successfully applied to text, time series, bioinformatics tasks, and remote sensing data. == Approaches == Several approaches have been proposed to solve one-class classification (OCC). The approaches can be distinguished into three main categories, density estimation, boundary methods, and reconstruction methods. === Density estimation methods === Density estimation methods rely on estimating the density of the data points, and set the threshold. These methods rely on assuming distributions, such as Gaussian, or a Poisson distribution. Following which discordancy tests can be used to test the new objects. These methods are robust to scale variance. Gaussian model is one of the simplest methods to create one-class classifiers. Due to Central Limit Theorem (CLT), these methods work best when large number of samples are present, and they are perturbed by small independent error values. The probability distribution for a d-dimensional object is given by: p N ( z ; μ ; Σ ) = 1 ( 2 π ) d 2 | Σ | 1 2 exp ⁡ { − 1 2 ( z − μ ) T Σ − 1 ( z − μ ) } {\displaystyle p_{\mathcal {N}}(z;\mu ;\Sigma )={\frac {1}{(2\pi )^{\frac {d}{2}}|\Sigma |^{\frac {1}{2}}}}\exp \left\{-{\frac {1}{2}}(z-\mu )^{T}\Sigma ^{-1}(z-\mu )\right\}} Where, μ {\displaystyle \mu } is the mean and Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } is the covariance matrix. Computing the inverse of covariance matrix ( Σ − 1 {\displaystyle \Sigma ^{-1}} ) is the costliest operation, and in the cases where the data is not scaled properly, or data has singular directions pseudo-inverse Σ + {\displaystyle \Sigma ^{+}} is used to approximate the inverse, and is calculated as Σ T ( Σ Σ T ) − 1 {\displaystyle \Sigma ^{T}(\Sigma \Sigma ^{T})^{-1}} . === Boundary methods === Boundary methods focus on setting boundaries around a few set of points, called target points. These methods attempt to optimize the volume. Boundary methods rely on distances, and hence are not robust to scale variance. K-centers method, NN-d, and SVDD are some of the key examples. K-centers In K-center algorithm, k {\displaystyle k} small balls with equal radius are placed to minimize the maximum distance of all minimum distances between training objects and the centers. Formally, the following error is minimized, ε k − c e n t e r = max i ( min k | | x i − μ k | | 2 ) {\displaystyle \varepsilon _{k-center}=\max _{i}(\min _{k}||x_{i}-\mu _{k}||^{2})} The algorithm uses forward search method with random initialization, where the radius is determined by the maximum distance of the object, any given ball should capture. After the centers are determined, for any given test object z {\displaystyle z} the distance can be calculated as, d k − c e n t r ( z ) = min k | | z − μ k | | 2 {\displaystyle d_{k-centr}(z)=\min _{k}||z-\mu _{k}||^{2}} === Reconstruction methods === Reconstruction methods use prior knowledge and generating process to build a generating model that best fits the data. New objects can be described in terms of a state of the generating model. Some examples of reconstruction methods for OCC are, k-means clustering, learning vector quantization, self-organizing maps, etc. == Applications == === Document classification === The basic Support Vector Machine (SVM) paradigm is trained using both positive and negative examples, however studies have shown there are many valid reasons for using only positive examples. When the SVM algorithm is modified to only use positive examples, the process is considered one-class classification. One situation where this type of classification might prove useful to the SVM paradigm is in trying to identify a web browser's sites of interest based only off of the user's browsing history. === Biomedical studies === One-class classification can be particularly useful in biomedical studies where often data from other classes can be difficult or impossible to obtain. In studying biomedical data it can be difficult and/or expensive to obtain the set of labeled data from the second class that would be necessary to perform a two-class classification. A study from The Scientific World Journal found that the typicality approach is the most useful in analysing biomedical data because it can be applied to any type of dataset (continuous, discrete, or nominal). The typicality approach is based on the clustering of data by examining data and placing it into new or existing clusters. To apply typicality to one-class classification for biomedical studies, each new observation, y 0 {\displaystyle y_{0}} , is compared to the target class, C {\displaystyle C} , and identified as an outlier or a member of the target class. === Unsupervised Concept Drift Detection === One-class classification has similarities with unsupervised concept drift detection, where both aim to identify whether the unseen data share similar characteristics to the initial data. A concept is referred to as the fixed probability distribution which data is drawn from. In unsupervised concept drift detection, the goal is to detect if the data distribution changes without utilizing class labels. In one-class classification, the flow of data is not important. Unseen data is classified as typical or outlier depending on its characteristics, whether it is from the initi

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  • Workplace robotics safety

    Workplace robotics safety

    Workplace robotics safety is an aspect of occupational safety and health when robots are used in the workplace. This includes traditional industrial robots as well as emerging technologies such as drone aircraft and wearable robotic exoskeletons. Types of accidents include collisions, crushing, and injuries from mechanical parts. Hazard controls include physical barriers, good work practices, and proper maintenance. == Background == Many workplace robots are industrial robots used in manufacturing. According to the International Federation of Robotics, 1.7 million new robots are expected to be used in factories between 2017 and 2020. Emerging robot technologies include collaborative robots, personal care robots, construction robots, exoskeletons, autonomous vehicles, and drone aircraft (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs). Advances in automation technologies (e.g. fixed robots, collaborative and mobile robots, and exoskeletons) have the potential to improve work conditions but also to introduce workplace hazards in manufacturing workplaces. Fifty-six percent of robot injuries are classified as pinch injuries and 44% of injuries are classified as impact injuries. A 1987 study found that line workers are at the greatest risk, followed by maintenance workers, and programmers. Poor workplace design and human error caused most injuries. Despite the lack of occupational surveillance data on injuries associated specifically with robots, researchers from the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) identified 61 robot-related deaths between 1992 and 2015 using keyword searches of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries research database (see info from Center for Occupational Robotics Research). Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, NIOSH and its state partners have investigated 4 robot-related fatalities under the Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation Program. In addition the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has investigated robot-related deaths and injuries, which can be reviewed at OSHA Accident Search page. Injuries and fatalities could increase over time because of the increasing number of collaborative and co-existing robots, powered exoskeletons, and autonomous vehicles into the work environment. Safety standards are being developed by the Robotic Industries Association (RIA) in conjunction with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). On October 5, 2017, OSHA, NIOSH and RIA signed an alliance to work together to enhance technical expertise, identify and help address potential workplace hazards associated with traditional industrial robots and the emerging technology of human-robot collaboration installations and systems, and help identify needed research to reduce workplace hazards. On October 16 NIOSH launched the Center for Occupational Robotics Research to "provide scientific leadership to guide the development and use of occupational robots that enhance worker safety, health, and well being". So far, the research needs identified by NIOSH and its partners include: tracking and preventing injuries and fatalities, intervention and dissemination strategies to promote safe machine control and maintenance procedures, and on translating effective evidence-based interventions into workplace practice. == Hazards == Many hazards and injuries can result from the use of robots in the workplace. Some robots, notably those in a traditional industrial environment, are fast and powerful. This increases the potential for injury as one swing from a robotic arm, for example, could cause serious bodily harm. There are additional risks when a robot malfunctions or is in need of maintenance. A worker who is working on the robot may be injured because a malfunctioning robot is typically unpredictable. For example, a robotic arm that is part of a car assembly line may experience a jammed motor. A worker who is working to fix the jam may suddenly get hit by the arm the moment it becomes unjammed. Additionally, if a worker is standing in a zone that is overlapping with nearby robotic arms, he or she may get injured by other moving equipment. There are four types of accidents that can occur with robots: impact or collision accidents, crushing and trapping accidents, mechanical part accidents, and other accidents. Impact or collision accidents occur generally from malfunctions and unpredicted changes. Crushing and trapping accidents occur when a part of a worker's body becomes trapped or caught on robotic equipment. Mechanical part accidents can occur when a robot malfunctions and starts to "break down", where the ejection of parts or exposed wire can cause serious injury. Other accidents at just general accidents that occur from working with robots. There are seven sources of hazards that are associated with human interaction with robots and machines: human errors, control errors, unauthorized access, mechanical failures, environmental sources, power systems, and improper installation. Human errors could be anything from one line of incorrect code to a loose bolt on a robotic arm. Many hazards can stem from human-based error. Control errors are intrinsic and are usually not controllable nor predictable. Unauthorized access hazards occur when a person who is not familiar with the area enters the domain of a robot. Mechanical failures can happen at any time, and a faulty unit is usually unpredictable. Environmental sources are things such as electromagnetic or radio interference in the environment that can cause a robot to malfunction. Power systems are pneumatic, hydraulic, or electrical power sources; these power sources can malfunction and cause fires, leaks, or electrical shocks. Improper installation is fairly self-explanatory; a loose bolt or an exposed wire can lead to inherent hazards. === Emerging technologies === Emerging robotic technologies can reduce hazards to workers, but can also introduce new hazards. For example, robotic exoskeletons can be used in construction to reduce load to the spine, improve posture, and reduce fatigue; however, they can also increase chest pressure, limit mobility when moving out of the way of a falling object, and cause balance problems. Unmanned aerial vehicles are being used in the construction industry to do monitoring and inspections of buildings under construction. This reduces the need for humans to be in hazardous locations, but the risk of a UAV collision presents a hazard to workers. For collaborative robots, isolation is not possible. Possible hazard controls include collision avoidance systems, and making the robot less stiff to lessen the impact force. Robotic tech vest is a wearable device for humans, worn in Amazon warehouses. == Hazard controls == There are a few ways to prevent injuries by implementing hazard controls. There can be risk assessments at each of the various stages of a robot's development. Risk assessments can help gather information about a robot's status, how well it is being maintained, and if repairs are needed soon. By being aware of the status of a robot, injuries can be prevented and hazards reduced. Safeguarding devices can be implemented to reduce the risk of injuries. These can include engineering controls such as physical barriers, guard rails, presence-sensing safeguarding devices, etc. Awareness devices are usually used in conjunction with safeguarding devices. They are usually a system of rope or chain barriers with lights, signs, whistles, and horns. Their purpose it to be able to alert workers or personnel of certain dangers. Operator safeguards can also be in place. These usually utilize safeguarding devices to protect the operator and reduce risk of injury. Additionally, when an operator is within close proximity of a robot, the working speed of the robot can be reduced to ensure that the operator is in full control. This can be done by placing the robot in the manual or teach mode. It is also crucial to inform the programmer of the robot of what type of work the robot will be doing, how it will interact with other robots, and how it will work in relation to an operator. Proper maintenance of robotic equipment is also critical in order to reduce hazards. Maintaining a robot insures that it continues to function properly, thereby reducing the risks associated with a malfunction. One common safeguard used in industrial settings is the installation of robot safety fencing. These barriers, often made from durable materials such as mesh or polycarbonate, prevent accidental interactions between workers and robotic systems, reducing the risk of injury. Robot safety fencing is particularly important in environments where high-speed or powerful robots are used. == Regulations == Some existing regulations regarding robots and robotic systems include: ANSI/RIA R15.06 OSHA 29 CFR 1910.333 OSHA 29 CFR 1910.147 ISO 10218 ISO/TS 15066 ISO/DIS 13482

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  • Amazon Rekognition

    Amazon Rekognition

    Amazon Rekognition is a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) computer vision platform that was launched in 2016. It has been sold to, and used by, a number of United States government agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Orlando, Florida police, as well as private entities. == Capabilities == Rekognition provides a number of computer vision capabilities, which can be divided into two categories: Algorithms that are pre-trained on data collected by Amazon or its partners, and algorithms that a user can train on a custom dataset. As of July 2019, Rekognition provides the following computer vision capabilities. === Pre-trained algorithms === Celebrity recognition in images Facial attribute detection in images, including gender, age range, emotions (e.g. happy, calm, disgusted), whether the face has a beard or mustache, whether the face has eyeglasses or sunglasses, whether the eyes are open, whether the mouth is open, whether the person is smiling, and the location of several markers such as the pupils and jaw line. People Pathing enables tracking of people through a video. An advertised use-case of this capability is to track sports players for post-game analysis. Text detection and classification in images Unsafe visual content detection === Algorithms that a user can train on a custom dataset === SearchFaces enables users to import a database of images with pre-labeled faces, to train a machine learning model on this database, and to expose the model as a cloud service with an API. Then, the user can post new images to the API and receive information about the faces in the image. The API can be used to expose a number of capabilities, including identifying faces of known people, comparing faces, and finding similar faces in a database. Face-based user verification == History and use == === 2017 === In late 2017, the Washington County, Oregon Sheriff's Office began using Rekognition to identify suspects' faces. Rekognition was marketed as a general-purpose computer vision tool, and an engineer working for Washington County decided to use the tool for facial analysis of suspects. Rekognition was offered to the department for free, and Washington County became the first US law enforcement agency known to use Rekognition. In 2018, the agency logged over 1,000 facial searches. The county, according to the Washington Post, by 2019 was paying about $7 a month for all of its searches. The relationship was unknown to the public until May 2018. In 2018, Rekognition was also used to help identify celebrities during a royal wedding telecast. === 2018 === In April 2018, it was reported that FamilySearch was using Rekognition to enable their users to "see which of their ancestors they most resemble based on family photographs". In early 2018, the FBI also began using it as a pilot program for analyzing video surveillance. In May 2018, it was reported by the ACLU that Orlando, Florida was running a pilot using Rekognition for facial analysis in law enforcement, with that pilot ending in July 2019. After the report, on June 22, 2018, Gizmodo reported that Amazon workers had written a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos requesting he cease selling Rekognition to US law enforcement, particularly ICE and Homeland Security. A letter was also sent to Bezos by the ACLU. On June 26, 2018, it was reported that the Orlando police force had ceased using Rekognition after their trial contract expired, reserving the right to use it in the future. The Orlando Police Department said that they had "never gotten to the point to test images" due to old infrastructure and low bandwidth. In July 2018, the ACLU released a test showing that Rekognition had falsely matched 28 members of Congress with mugshot photos, particularly Congresspeople of color. 25 House members afterwards sent a letter to Bezos, expressing concern about Rekognition. Amazon responded saying the Rekognition test had generated 80 percent confidence, while it recommended law enforcement only use matches rated at 99 percent confidence. The Washington Post states that Oregon instead has officers pick a "best of five" result, instead of adhering to the recommendation. In September 2018, it was reported that Mapillary was using Rekognition to read the text on parking signs (e.g. no stopping, no parking, or specific parking hours) in cities. In October 2018, it was reported that Amazon had earlier that year pitched Rekognition to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Amazon defended government use of Rekognition. On December 1, 2018, it was reported that 8 Democratic lawmakers had said in a letter that Amazon had "failed to provide sufficient answers" about Rekognition, writing that they had "serious concerns that this type of product has significant accuracy issues, places disproportionate burdens on communities of color, and could stifle Americans' willingness to exercise their First Amendment rights in public." === 2019 === In January 2019, MIT researchers published a peer-reviewed study asserting that Rekognition had more difficulty in identifying dark-skinned females than competitors such as IBM and Microsoft. In the study, Rekognition misidentified darker-skinned women as men 31% of the time, but made no mistakes for light-skinned men. Amazon called the report "misinterpreted results" of the research with an improper "default confidence threshold." In January 2019, Amazon's shareholders "urged Amazon to stop selling Rekognition software to law enforcement agencies." Amazon in response defended its use of Rekognition, but supported new federal oversight and guidelines to "make sure facial recognition technology cannot be used to discriminate." In February 2019, it was reported that Amazon was collaborating with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on developing standardized tests to improve accuracy and remove bias with facial recognition. In March 2019, an open letter regarding Rekognition was sent by a group of prominent AI researchers to Amazon, criticizing its sale to law enforcement with around 50 signatures. In April 2019, Amazon was told by the Securities and Exchange Commission that they had to vote on two shareholder proposals seeking to limit Rekognition. Amazon argued that the proposals were an "insignificant public policy issue for the Company" not related to Amazon's ordinary business, but their appeal was denied. The vote was set for May. The first proposal was tabled by shareholders. On May 24, 2019, 2.4% of shareholders voted to stop selling Rekognition to government agencies, while a second proposal calling for a study into Rekognition and civil rights had 27.5% support. In August 2019, the ACLU again used Rekognition on members of government, with 26 of 120 lawmakers in California flagged as matches to mugshots. Amazon stated the ACLU was "misusing" the software in the tests, by not dismissing results that did not meet Amazon's recommended accuracy threshold of 99%. By August 2019, there had been protests against ICE's use of Rekognition to surveil immigrants. In March 2019, Amazon announced a Rekognition update that would improve emotional detection, and in August 2019, "fear" was added to emotions that Rekognition could detect. === 2020 === In June 2020, Amazon announced it was implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition, in response to the George Floyd protests. === 2024 === The Department of Justice disclosed that the FBI is initiating the use of Amazon Rekognition. The DOJ's AI inventory revealed the FBI's "Project Tyr" aims to customize Rekognition to identify nudity, weapons, explosives, and other information from lawfully acquired media. === 2025 === In late 2025, the New York Times reported that scientist, Dr. Jürgen Matthäus, retired from as the head of research at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., used Amazon Rekognition to identify the shooter in the Holocaust photograph known as The Last Jew in Vinnitsa "with more than 99 percent certainty" — as Jakobus Onnen (1906–1943), a teacher from Tichelwarf near Weener in East Frisia who had been a member of the SS since 1934 and was later killed in action near Zhitomir in 1943. The photographer and victim remain unidentified. == Controversy regarding facial analysis == === Racial and gender bias === In 2018, MIT researchers Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru published a study called Gender Shades. In this study, a set of images was collected, and faces in the images were labeled with face position, gender, and skin tone information. The images were run through SaaS facial recognition platforms from Face++, IBM, and Microsoft. In all three of these platforms, the classifiers performed best on male faces (with error rates on female faces being 8.1% to 20.6% higher than error rates on male faces), and they performed worst on dark female faces (with error rates ranging from 20.8% to 30.4%). The authors hypothesized that this discr

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  • Hinge loss

    Hinge loss

    In machine learning, the hinge loss is a loss function used for training classifiers. The hinge loss is used for "maximum-margin" classification, most notably for support vector machines (SVMs). For an intended output t = ±1 and a classifier score y, the hinge loss of the prediction y is defined as ℓ ( y ) = max ( 0 , 1 − t ⋅ y ) {\displaystyle \ell (y)=\max(0,1-t\cdot y)} Note that y {\displaystyle y} should be the "raw" output of the classifier's decision function, not the predicted class label. For instance, in linear SVMs, y = w ⋅ x + b {\displaystyle y=\mathbf {w} \cdot \mathbf {x} +b} , where ( w , b ) {\displaystyle (\mathbf {w} ,b)} are the parameters of the hyperplane and x {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} } is the input variable(s). When t and y have the same sign (meaning y predicts the right class) and | y | ≥ 1 {\displaystyle |y|\geq 1} , the hinge loss ℓ ( y ) = 0 {\displaystyle \ell (y)=0} . When they have opposite signs, ℓ ( y ) {\displaystyle \ell (y)} increases linearly with y, and similarly if | y | < 1 {\displaystyle |y|<1} , even if it has the same sign (correct prediction, but not by enough margin). The Hinge loss is not a proper scoring rule. == Extensions == While binary SVMs are commonly extended to multiclass classification in a one-vs.-all or one-vs.-one fashion, it is also possible to extend the hinge loss itself for such an end. Several different variations of multiclass hinge loss have been proposed. For example, Crammer and Singer defined it for a linear classifier as ℓ ( y ) = max ( 0 , 1 + max y ≠ t w y x − w t x ) {\displaystyle \ell (y)=\max(0,1+\max _{y\neq t}\mathbf {w} _{y}\mathbf {x} -\mathbf {w} _{t}\mathbf {x} )} , where t {\displaystyle t} is the target label, w t {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} _{t}} and w y {\displaystyle \mathbf {w} _{y}} are the model parameters. Weston and Watkins provided a similar definition, but with a sum rather than a max: ℓ ( y ) = ∑ y ≠ t max ( 0 , 1 + w y x − w t x ) {\displaystyle \ell (y)=\sum _{y\neq t}\max(0,1+\mathbf {w} _{y}\mathbf {x} -\mathbf {w} _{t}\mathbf {x} )} . In structured prediction, the hinge loss can be further extended to structured output spaces. Structured SVMs with margin rescaling use the following variant, where w denotes the SVM's parameters, y the SVM's predictions, φ the joint feature function, and Δ the Hamming loss: ℓ ( y ) = max ( 0 , Δ ( y , t ) + ⟨ w , ϕ ( x , y ) ⟩ − ⟨ w , ϕ ( x , t ) ⟩ ) = max ( 0 , max y ∈ Y ( Δ ( y , t ) + ⟨ w , ϕ ( x , y ) ⟩ ) − ⟨ w , ϕ ( x , t ) ⟩ ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}\ell (\mathbf {y} )&=\max(0,\Delta (\mathbf {y} ,\mathbf {t} )+\langle \mathbf {w} ,\phi (\mathbf {x} ,\mathbf {y} )\rangle -\langle \mathbf {w} ,\phi (\mathbf {x} ,\mathbf {t} )\rangle )\\&=\max(0,\max _{y\in {\mathcal {Y}}}\left(\Delta (\mathbf {y} ,\mathbf {t} )+\langle \mathbf {w} ,\phi (\mathbf {x} ,\mathbf {y} )\rangle \right)-\langle \mathbf {w} ,\phi (\mathbf {x} ,\mathbf {t} )\rangle )\end{aligned}}} . == Optimization == The hinge loss is a convex function, so many of the usual convex optimizers used in machine learning can work with it. It is not differentiable, but has a subgradient with respect to model parameters w of a linear SVM with score function y = w ⋅ x {\displaystyle y=\mathbf {w} \cdot \mathbf {x} } that is given by ∂ ℓ ∂ w i = { − t ⋅ x i if t ⋅ y < 1 , 0 otherwise . {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial \ell }{\partial w_{i}}}={\begin{cases}-t\cdot x_{i}&{\text{if }}t\cdot y<1,\\0&{\text{otherwise}}.\end{cases}}} However, since the derivative of the hinge loss at t y = 1 {\displaystyle ty=1} is undefined, smoothed versions may be preferred for optimization, such as Rennie and Srebro's ℓ ( y ) = { 1 2 − t y if t y ≤ 0 , 1 2 ( 1 − t y ) 2 if 0 < t y < 1 , 0 if 1 ≤ t y {\displaystyle \ell (y)={\begin{cases}{\frac {1}{2}}-ty&{\text{if}}~~ty\leq 0,\\{\frac {1}{2}}(1-ty)^{2}&{\text{if}}~~0 Read more →

  • Triplet loss

    Triplet loss

    Triplet loss is a machine learning loss function widely used in one-shot learning, a setting where models are trained to generalize effectively from limited examples. It was conceived by Google researchers for their prominent FaceNet algorithm for face detection. Triplet loss is designed to support metric learning. Namely, to assist training models to learn an embedding (mapping to a feature space) where similar data points are closer together and dissimilar ones are farther apart, enabling robust discrimination across varied conditions. In the context of face detection, data points correspond to images. == Definition == The loss function is defined using triplets of training points of the form ( A , P , N ) {\displaystyle (A,P,N)} . In each triplet, A {\displaystyle A} (called an "anchor point") denotes a reference point of a particular identity, P {\displaystyle P} (called a "positive point") denotes another point of the same identity in point A {\displaystyle A} , and N {\displaystyle N} (called a "negative point") denotes a point of an identity different from the identity in point A {\displaystyle A} and P {\displaystyle P} . Let x {\displaystyle x} be some point and let f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)} be the embedding of x {\displaystyle x} in the finite-dimensional Euclidean space. It shall be assumed that the L2-norm of f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)} is unity (the L2 norm of a vector X {\displaystyle X} in a finite dimensional Euclidean space is denoted by ‖ X ‖ {\displaystyle \Vert X\Vert } .) We assemble m {\displaystyle m} triplets of points from the training dataset. The goal of training here is to ensure that, after learning, the following condition (called the "triplet constraint") is satisfied by all triplets ( A ( i ) , P ( i ) , N ( i ) ) {\displaystyle (A^{(i)},P^{(i)},N^{(i)})} in the training data set: ‖ f ( A ( i ) ) − f ( P ( i ) ) ‖ 2 2 + α < ‖ f ( A ( i ) ) − f ( N ( i ) ) ‖ 2 2 {\displaystyle \Vert f(A^{(i)})-f(P^{(i)})\Vert _{2}^{2}+\alpha <\Vert f(A^{(i)})-f(N^{(i)})\Vert _{2}^{2}} The variable α {\displaystyle \alpha } is a hyperparameter called the margin, and its value must be set manually. In the FaceNet system, its value was set as 0.2. Thus, the full form of the function to be minimized is the following: L = ∑ i = 1 m max ( ‖ f ( A ( i ) ) − f ( P ( i ) ) ‖ 2 2 − ‖ f ( A ( i ) ) − f ( N ( i ) ) ‖ 2 2 + α , 0 ) {\displaystyle L=\sum _{i=1}^{m}\max {\Big (}\Vert f(A^{(i)})-f(P^{(i)})\Vert _{2}^{2}-\Vert f(A^{(i)})-f(N^{(i)})\Vert _{2}^{2}+\alpha ,0{\Big )}} == Intuition == A baseline for understanding the effectiveness of triplet loss is the contrastive loss, which operates on pairs of samples (rather than triplets). Training with the contrastive loss pulls embeddings of similar pairs closer together, and pushes dissimilar pairs apart. Its pairwise approach is greedy, as it considers each pair in isolation. Triplet loss innovates by considering relative distances. Its goal is that the embedding of an anchor (query) point be closer to positive points than to negative points (also accounting for the margin). It does not try to further optimize the distances once this requirement is met. This is approximated by simultaneously considering two pairs (anchor-positive and anchor-negative), rather than each pair in isolation. == Triplet "mining" == One crucial implementation detail when training with triplet loss is triplet "mining", which focuses on the smart selection of triplets for optimization. This process adds an additional layer of complexity compared to contrastive loss. A naive approach to preparing training data for the triplet loss involves randomly selecting triplets from the dataset. In general, the set of valid triplets of the form ( A ( i ) , P ( i ) , N ( i ) ) {\displaystyle (A^{(i)},P^{(i)},N^{(i)})} is very large. To speed-up training convergence, it is essential to focus on challenging triplets. In the FaceNet paper, several options were explored, eventually arriving at the following. For each anchor-positive pair, the algorithm considers only semi-hard negatives. These are negatives that violate the triplet requirement (i.e, are "hard"), but lie farther from the anchor than the positive (not too hard). Restated, for each A ( i ) {\displaystyle A^{(i)}} and P ( i ) {\displaystyle P^{(i)}} , they seek N ( i ) {\displaystyle N^{(i)}} such that: The rationale for this design choice is heuristic. It may appear puzzling that the mining process neglects "very hard" negatives (i.e., closer to the anchor than the positive). Experiments conducted by the FaceNet designers found that this often leads to a convergence to degenerate local minima. Triplet mining is performed at each training step, from within the sample points contained in the training batch (this is known as online mining), after embeddings were computed for all points in the batch. While ideally the entire dataset could be used, this is impractical in general. To support a large search space for triplets, the FaceNet authors used very large batches (1800 samples). Batches are constructed by selecting a large number of same-category sample points (40), and randomly selected negatives for them. == Extensions == Triplet loss has been extended to simultaneously maintain a series of distance orders by optimizing a continuous relevance degree with a chain (i.e., ladder) of distance inequalities. This leads to the Ladder Loss, which has been demonstrated to offer performance enhancements of visual-semantic embedding in learning to rank tasks. In Natural Language Processing, triplet loss is one of the loss functions considered for BERT fine-tuning in the SBERT architecture. Other extensions involve specifying multiple negatives (multiple negatives ranking loss).

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  • SemEval

    SemEval

    SemEval (Semantic Evaluation) is an ongoing series of evaluations of computational semantic analysis systems; it evolved from the Senseval word sense evaluation series. The evaluations are intended to explore the nature of meaning in language. While meaning is intuitive to humans, transferring those intuitions to computational analysis has proved elusive. This series of evaluations provides a mechanism to characterize in more precise terms exactly what is necessary to compute in meaning. As such, the evaluations provide an emergent mechanism to identify the problems and solutions for computations with meaning. These exercises have evolved to articulate more of the dimensions that are involved in our use of language. They began with apparently simple attempts to identify word senses computationally. They have evolved to investigate the interrelationships among the elements in a sentence (e.g., semantic role labeling), relations between sentences (e.g., coreference), and the nature of what we are saying (semantic relations and sentiment analysis). The purpose of the SemEval and Senseval exercises is to evaluate semantic analysis systems. "Semantic Analysis" refers to a formal analysis of meaning, and "computational" refer to approaches that in principle support effective implementation. The first three evaluations, Senseval-1 through Senseval-3, were focused on word sense disambiguation (WSD), each time growing in the number of languages offered in the tasks and in the number of participating teams. Beginning with the fourth workshop, SemEval-2007 (SemEval-1), the nature of the tasks evolved to include semantic analysis tasks outside of word sense disambiguation. Triggered by the conception of the SEM conference, the SemEval community had decided to hold the evaluation workshops yearly in association with the SEM conference. It was also the decision that not every evaluation task will be run every year, e.g. none of the WSD tasks were included in the SemEval-2012 workshop. == History == === Early evaluation of algorithms for word sense disambiguation === From the earliest days, assessing the quality of word sense disambiguation algorithms had been primarily a matter of intrinsic evaluation, and “almost no attempts had been made to evaluate embedded WSD components”. Only very recently (2006) had extrinsic evaluations begun to provide some evidence for the value of WSD in end-user applications. Until 1990 or so, discussions of the sense disambiguation task focused mainly on illustrative examples rather than comprehensive evaluation. The early 1990s saw the beginnings of more systematic and rigorous intrinsic evaluations, including more formal experimentation on small sets of ambiguous words. === Senseval to SemEval === In April 1997, Martha Palmer and Marc Light organized a workshop entitled Tagging with Lexical Semantics: Why, What, and How? in conjunction with the Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing. At the time, there was a clear recognition that manually annotated corpora had revolutionized other areas of NLP, such as part-of-speech tagging and parsing, and that corpus-driven approaches had the potential to revolutionize automatic semantic analysis as well. Kilgarriff recalled that there was "a high degree of consensus that the field needed evaluation", and several practical proposals by Resnik and Yarowsky kicked off a discussion that led to the creation of the Senseval evaluation exercises. === SemEval's 3, 2 or 1 year(s) cycle === After SemEval-2010, many participants feel that the 3-year cycle is a long wait. Many other shared tasks such as Conference on Natural Language Learning (CoNLL) and Recognizing Textual Entailments (RTE) run annually. For this reason, the SemEval coordinators gave the opportunity for task organizers to choose between a 2-year or a 3-year cycle. The SemEval community favored the 3-year cycle. Although the votes within the SemEval community favored a 3-year cycle, organizers and coordinators had settled to split the SemEval task into 2 evaluation workshops. This was triggered by the introduction of the new SEM conference. The SemEval organizers thought it would be appropriate to associate our event with the SEM conference and collocate the SemEval workshop with the SEM conference. The organizers got very positive responses (from the task coordinators/organizers and participants) about the association with the yearly SEM, and 8 tasks were willing to switch to 2012. Thus was born SemEval-2012 and SemEval-2013. The current plan is to switch to a yearly SemEval schedule to associate it with the SEM conference but not every task needs to run every year. ==== List of Senseval and SemEval Workshops ==== Senseval-1 took place in the summer of 1998 for English, French, and Italian, culminating in a workshop held at Herstmonceux Castle, Sussex, England on September 2–4. Senseval-2 took place in the summer of 2001, and was followed by a workshop held in July 2001 in Toulouse, in conjunction with ACL 2001. Senseval-2 included tasks for Basque, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Swedish. Senseval-3 took place in March–April 2004, followed by a workshop held in July 2004 in Barcelona, in conjunction with ACL 2004. Senseval-3 included 14 different tasks for core word sense disambiguation, as well as identification of semantic roles, multilingual annotations, logic forms, subcategorization acquisition. SemEval-2007 (Senseval-4) took place in 2007, followed by a workshop held in conjunction with ACL in Prague. SemEval-2007 included 18 different tasks targeting the evaluation of systems for the semantic analysis of text. A special issue of Language Resources and Evaluation is devoted to the result. SemEval-2010 took place in 2010, followed by a workshop held in conjunction with ACL in Uppsala. SemEval-2010 included 18 different tasks targeting the evaluation of semantic analysis systems. SemEval-2012 took place in 2012; it was associated with the new SEM, First Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics, and co-located with NAACL, Montreal, Canada. SemEval-2012 included 8 different tasks targeting at evaluating computational semantic systems. However, there was no WSD task involved in SemEval-2012, the WSD related tasks were scheduled in the upcoming SemEval-2013. SemEval-2013 was associated with NAACL 2013, North American Association of Computational Linguistics, Georgia, USA and took place in 2013. It included 13 different tasks targeting at evaluating computational semantic systems. SemEval-2014 took place in 2014. It was co-located with COLING 2014, 25th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and SEM 2014, Second Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics, Dublin, Ireland. There were 10 different tasks in SemEval-2014 evaluating various computational semantic systems. SemEval-2015 took place in 2015. It was co-located with NAACL-HLT 2015, 2015 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics – Human Language Technologies and SEM 2015, Third Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics, Denver, USA. There were 17 different tasks in SemEval-2015 evaluating various computational semantic systems. == SemEval Workshop framework == The framework of the SemEval/Senseval evaluation workshops emulates the Message Understanding Conferences (MUCs) and other evaluation workshops ran by ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency, renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)). Stages of SemEval/Senseval evaluation workshops Firstly, all likely participants were invited to express their interest and participate in the exercise design. A timetable towards a final workshop was worked out. A plan for selecting evaluation materials was agreed. 'Gold standards' for the individual tasks were acquired, often human annotators were considered as a gold standard to measure precision and recall scores of computer systems. These 'gold standards' are what the computational systems strive towards. In WSD tasks, human annotators were set on the task of generating a set of correct WSD answers (i.e. the correct sense for a given word in a given context) The gold standard materials, without answers, were released to participants, who then had a short time to run their programs over them and return their sets of answers to the organizers. The organizers then scored the answers and the scores were announced and discussed at a workshop. == Semantic evaluation tasks == Senseval-1 & Senseval-2 focused on evaluation WSD systems on major languages that were available corpus and computerized dictionary. Senseval-3 looked beyond the lexemes and started to evaluate systems that looked into wider areas of semantics, such as Semantic Roles (technically known as Theta roles in formal semantics), Logic Form Transformation (commonly semantics of phrases, clauses or sentences were represented

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  • Influence diagram

    Influence diagram

    An influence diagram (ID) (also called a relevance diagram, decision diagram or a decision network) is a compact graphical and mathematical representation of a decision situation. It is a generalization of a Bayesian network, in which not only probabilistic inference problems but also decision making problems (following the maximum expected utility criterion) can be modeled and solved. ID was first developed in the mid-1970s by decision analysts with an intuitive semantic that is easy to understand. It is now adopted widely and becoming an alternative to the decision tree which typically suffers from exponential growth in number of branches with each variable modeled. ID is directly applicable in team decision analysis, since it allows incomplete sharing of information among team members to be modeled and solved explicitly. Extensions of ID also find their use in game theory as an alternative representation of the game tree. == Semantics == An ID is a directed acyclic graph with three types (plus one subtype) of node and three types of arc (or arrow) between nodes. Nodes: Decision node (corresponding to each decision to be made) is drawn as a rectangle. Uncertainty node (corresponding to each uncertainty to be modeled) is drawn as an oval. Deterministic node (corresponding to special kind of uncertainty that its outcome is deterministically known whenever the outcome of some other uncertainties are also known) is drawn as a double oval. Value node (corresponding to each component of additively separable Von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function) is drawn as an octagon (or diamond). Arcs: Functional arcs (ending in value node) indicate that one of the components of additively separable utility function is a function of all the nodes at their tails. Conditional arcs (ending in uncertainty node) indicate that the uncertainty at their heads is probabilistically conditioned on all the nodes at their tails. Conditional arcs (ending in deterministic node) indicate that the uncertainty at their heads is deterministically conditioned on all the nodes at their tails. Informational arcs (ending in decision node) indicate that the decision at their heads is made with the outcome of all the nodes at their tails known beforehand. Given a properly structured ID: Decision nodes and incoming information arcs collectively state the alternatives (what can be done when the outcome of certain decisions and/or uncertainties are known beforehand) Uncertainty/deterministic nodes and incoming conditional arcs collectively model the information (what are known and their probabilistic/deterministic relationships) Value nodes and incoming functional arcs collectively quantify the preference (how things are preferred over one another). Alternative, information, and preference are termed decision basis in decision analysis, they represent three required components of any valid decision situation. Formally, the semantic of influence diagram is based on sequential construction of nodes and arcs, which implies a specification of all conditional independencies in the diagram. The specification is defined by the d {\displaystyle d} -separation criterion of Bayesian network. According to this semantic, every node is probabilistically independent on its non-successor nodes given the outcome of its immediate predecessor nodes. Likewise, a missing arc between non-value node X {\displaystyle X} and non-value node Y {\displaystyle Y} implies that there exists a set of non-value nodes Z {\displaystyle Z} , e.g., the parents of Y {\displaystyle Y} , that renders Y {\displaystyle Y} independent of X {\displaystyle X} given the outcome of the nodes in Z {\displaystyle Z} . == Example == Consider the simple influence diagram representing a situation where a decision-maker is planning their vacation. There is 1 decision node (Vacation Activity), 2 uncertainty nodes (Weather Condition, Weather Forecast), and 1 value node (Satisfaction). There are 2 functional arcs (ending in Satisfaction), 1 conditional arc (ending in Weather Forecast), and 1 informational arc (ending in Vacation Activity). Functional arcs ending in Satisfaction indicate that Satisfaction is a utility function of Weather Condition and Vacation Activity. In other words, their satisfaction can be quantified if they know what the weather is like and what their choice of activity is. (Note that they do not value Weather Forecast directly) Conditional arc ending in Weather Forecast indicates their belief that Weather Forecast and Weather Condition can be dependent. Informational arc ending in Vacation Activity indicates that they will only know Weather Forecast, not Weather Condition, when making their choice. In other words, actual weather will be known after they make their choice, and only forecast is what they can count on at this stage. It also follows semantically, for example, that Vacation Activity is independent on (irrelevant to) Weather Condition given Weather Forecast is known. == Applicability to value of information == The above example highlights the power of the influence diagram in representing an extremely important concept in decision analysis known as the value of information. Consider the following three scenarios; Scenario 1: The decision-maker could make their Vacation Activity decision while knowing what Weather Condition will be like. This corresponds to adding extra informational arc from Weather Condition to Vacation Activity in the above influence diagram. Scenario 2: The original influence diagram as shown above. Scenario 3: The decision-maker makes their decision without even knowing the Weather Forecast. This corresponds to removing informational arc from Weather Forecast to Vacation Activity in the above influence diagram. Scenario 1 is the best possible scenario for this decision situation since there is no longer any uncertainty on what they care about (Weather Condition) when making their decision. Scenario 3, however, is the worst possible scenario for this decision situation since they need to make their decision without any hint (Weather Forecast) on what they care about (Weather Condition) will turn out to be. The decision-maker is usually better off (definitely no worse off, on average) to move from scenario 3 to scenario 2 through the acquisition of new information. The most they should be willing to pay for such move is called the value of information on Weather Forecast, which is essentially the value of imperfect information on Weather Condition. The applicability of this simple ID and the value of information concept is tremendous, especially in medical decision making when most decisions have to be made with imperfect information about their patients, diseases, etc. == Related concepts == Influence diagrams are hierarchical and can be defined either in terms of their structure or in greater detail in terms of the functional and numerical relation between diagram elements. An ID that is consistently defined at all levels—structure, function, and number—is a well-defined mathematical representation and is referred to as a well-formed influence diagram (WFID). WFIDs can be evaluated using reversal and removal operations to yield answers to a large class of probabilistic, inferential, and decision questions. More recent techniques have been developed by artificial intelligence researchers concerning Bayesian network inference (belief propagation). An influence diagram having only uncertainty nodes (i.e., a Bayesian network) is also called a relevance diagram. An arc connecting node A to B implies not only that "A is relevant to B", but also that "B is relevant to A" (i.e., relevance is a symmetric relationship).

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  • Evolutionary multimodal optimization

    Evolutionary multimodal optimization

    In applied mathematics, multimodal optimization deals with optimization tasks that involve finding all or most of the multiple (at least locally optimal) solutions of a problem, as opposed to a single best solution. Evolutionary multimodal optimization is a branch of evolutionary computation, which is closely related to machine learning. Wong provides a short survey, wherein the chapter of Shir and the book of Preuss cover the topic in more detail. == Motivation == Knowledge of multiple solutions to an optimization task is especially helpful in engineering, when due to physical (and/or cost) constraints, the best results may not always be realizable. In such a scenario, if multiple solutions (locally and/or globally optimal) are known, the implementation can be quickly switched to another solution and still obtain the best possible system performance. Multiple solutions could also be analyzed to discover hidden properties (or relationships) of the underlying optimization problem, which makes them important for obtaining domain knowledge. In addition, the algorithms for multimodal optimization usually not only locate multiple optima in a single run, but also preserve their population diversity, resulting in their global optimization ability on multimodal functions. Moreover, the techniques for multimodal optimization are usually borrowed as diversity maintenance techniques to other problems. == Background == Classical techniques of optimization would need multiple restart points and multiple runs in the hope that a different solution may be discovered every run, with no guarantee however. Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) due to their population based approach, provide a natural advantage over classical optimization techniques. They maintain a population of possible solutions, which are processed every generation, and if the multiple solutions can be preserved over all these generations, then at termination of the algorithm we will have multiple good solutions, rather than only the best solution. Note that this is against the natural tendency of classical optimization techniques, which will always converge to the best solution, or a sub-optimal solution (in a rugged, “badly behaving” function). Finding and maintenance of multiple solutions is wherein lies the challenge of using EAs for multi-modal optimization. Niching is a generic term referred to as the technique of finding and preserving multiple stable niches, or favorable parts of the solution space possibly around multiple solutions, so as to prevent convergence to a single solution. The field of Evolutionary algorithms encompasses genetic algorithms (GAs), evolution strategy (ES), differential evolution (DE), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and other methods. Attempts have been made to solve multi-modal optimization in all these realms and most, if not all the various methods implement niching in some form or the other. == Multimodal optimization using genetic algorithms/evolution strategies == De Jong's crowding method, Goldberg's sharing function approach, Petrowski's clearing method, restricted mating, maintaining multiple subpopulations are some of the popular approaches that have been proposed by the community. The first two methods are especially well studied, however, they do not perform explicit separation into solutions belonging to different basins of attraction. The application of multimodal optimization within ES was not explicit for many years, and has been explored only recently. A niching framework utilizing derandomized ES was introduced by Shir, proposing the CMA-ES as a niching optimizer for the first time. The underpinning of that framework was the selection of a peak individual per subpopulation in each generation, followed by its sampling to produce the consecutive dispersion of search-points. The biological analogy of this machinery is an alpha-male winning all the imposed competitions and dominating thereafter its ecological niche, which then obtains all the sexual resources therein to generate its offspring. Recently, an evolutionary multiobjective optimization (EMO) approach was proposed, in which a suitable second objective is added to the originally single objective multimodal optimization problem, so that the multiple solutions form a weak pareto-optimal front. Hence, the multimodal optimization problem can be solved for its multiple solutions using an EMO algorithm. Improving upon their work, the same authors have made their algorithm self-adaptive, thus eliminating the need for pre-specifying the parameters. An approach that does not use any radius for separating the population into subpopulations (or species) but employs the space topology instead is proposed in.

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