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  • Terminology model

    Terminology model

    A terminology model is a refinement of a concept system. Within a terminology model the concepts (object types) of a specific problem or subject area are defined by subject-matter experts in terms of concept (object type) definitions and definitions of subordinated concepts or characteristics (properties). Besides object types, the terminology model allows defining hierarchical classifications, definitions for object type and property behavior and definition of casual relations. The terminology model is a means for subject-matter experts to express their knowledge about the subject in subject-specific terms. Since the terminology model is structured rather similar to an object-oriented database schema, is can be transformed without loss of information into an object-oriented database schema. Thus, the terminology model is a method for problem analysis on the one side and a mean of defining database schema on the other side. Several terminology models have been developed and published in the field of statistics: Terminology model for classifications Terminology model for statistical variables Reference model for statistical metadata

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  • Neural gas

    Neural gas

    Neural gas is an artificial neural network, inspired by the self-organizing map and introduced in 1991 by Thomas Martinetz and Klaus Schulten. The neural gas is a simple algorithm for finding optimal data representations based on feature vectors. The algorithm was coined "neural gas" because of the dynamics of the feature vectors during the adaptation process, which distribute themselves like a gas within the data space. It is applied where data compression or vector quantization is an issue, for example speech recognition, image processing or pattern recognition. As a robustly converging alternative to the k-means clustering it is also used for cluster analysis. == Algorithm == Suppose we want to model a probability distribution P ( x ) {\displaystyle P(x)} of data vectors x {\displaystyle x} using a finite number of feature vectors w i {\displaystyle w_{i}} , where i = 1 , ⋯ , N {\displaystyle i=1,\cdots ,N} . For each time step t {\displaystyle t} Sample data vector x {\displaystyle x} from P ( x ) {\displaystyle P(x)} Compute the distance between x {\displaystyle x} and each feature vector. Rank the distances. Let i 0 {\displaystyle i_{0}} be the index of the closest feature vector, i 1 {\displaystyle i_{1}} the index of the second closest feature vector, and so on. Update each feature vector by: w i k t + 1 = w i k t + ε ⋅ e − k / λ ⋅ ( x − w i k t ) , k = 0 , ⋯ , N − 1 {\displaystyle w_{i_{k}}^{t+1}=w_{i_{k}}^{t}+\varepsilon \cdot e^{-k/\lambda }\cdot (x-w_{i_{k}}^{t}),k=0,\cdots ,N-1} In the algorithm, ε {\displaystyle \varepsilon } can be understood as the learning rate, and λ {\displaystyle \lambda } as the neighborhood range. ε {\displaystyle \varepsilon } and λ {\displaystyle \lambda } are reduced with increasing t {\displaystyle t} so that the algorithm converges after many adaptation steps. The adaptation step of the neural gas can be interpreted as gradient descent on a cost function. By adapting not only the closest feature vector but all of them with a step size decreasing with increasing distance order, compared to (online) k-means clustering a much more robust convergence of the algorithm can be achieved. The neural gas model does not delete a node and also does not create new nodes. === Comparison with SOM === Compared to self-organized map, the neural gas model does not assume that some vectors are neighbors. If two vectors happen to be close together, they would tend to move together, and if two vectors happen to be apart, they would tend to not move together. In contrast, in an SOM, if two vectors are neighbors in the underlying graph, then they will always tend to move together, no matter whether the two vectors happen to be neighbors in the Euclidean space. The name "neural gas" is because one can imagine it to be what an SOM would be like if there is no underlying graph, and all points are free to move without the bonds that bind them together. == Variants == A number of variants of the neural gas algorithm exists in the literature so as to mitigate some of its shortcomings. More notable is perhaps Bernd Fritzke's growing neural gas, but also one should mention further elaborations such as the Growing When Required network and also the incremental growing neural gas. A performance-oriented approach that avoids the risk of overfitting is the Plastic Neural gas model. === Growing neural gas === Fritzke describes the growing neural gas (GNG) as an incremental network model that learns topological relations by using a "Hebb-like learning rule", only, unlike the neural gas, it has no parameters that change over time and it is capable of continuous learning, i.e. learning on data streams. GNG has been widely used in several domains, demonstrating its capabilities for clustering data incrementally. The GNG is initialized with two randomly positioned nodes which are initially connected with a zero age edge and whose errors are set to 0. Since in the GNG input data is presented sequentially one by one, the following steps are followed at each iteration: It is calculating the errors (distances) between the two closest nodes to the current input data. The error of the winner node (only the closest one) is respectively accumulated. The winner node and its topological neighbors (connected by an edge) are moving towards the current input by different fractions of their respective errors. The age of all edges connected to the winner node are incremented. If the winner node and the second-winner are connected by an edge, such an edge is set to 0. Else, an edge is created between them. If there are edges with an age larger than a threshold, they are removed. Nodes without connections are eliminated. If the current iteration is an integer multiple of a predefined frequency-creation threshold, a new node is inserted between the node with the largest error (among all) and its topological neighbor presenting the highest error. The link between the former and the latter nodes is eliminated (their errors are decreased by a given factor) and the new node is connected to both of them. The error of the new node is initialized as the updated error of the node which had the largest error (among all). The accumulated error of all nodes is decreased by a given factor. If the stopping criterion is not met, the algorithm takes a following input. The criterion might be a given number of epochs, i.e., a pre-set number of times where all data is presented, or the reach of a maximum number of nodes. === Incremental growing neural gas === Another neural gas variant inspired by the GNG algorithm is the incremental growing neural gas (IGNG). The authors propose the main advantage of this algorithm to be "learning new data (plasticity) without degrading the previously trained network and forgetting the old input data (stability)." === Growing when required === Having a network with a growing set of nodes, like the one implemented by the GNG algorithm was seen as a great advantage, however some limitation on the learning was seen by the introduction of the parameter λ, in which the network would only be able to grow when iterations were a multiple of this parameter. The proposal to mitigate this problem was a new algorithm, the Growing When Required network (GWR), which would have the network grow more quickly, by adding nodes as quickly as possible whenever the network identified that the existing nodes would not describe the input well enough. === Plastic neural gas === The ability to only grow a network may quickly introduce overfitting; on the other hand, removing nodes on the basis of age only, as in the GNG model, does not ensure that the removed nodes are actually useless, because removal depends on a model parameter that should be carefully tuned to the "memory length" of the stream of input data. The "Plastic Neural Gas" model solves this problem by making decisions to add or remove nodes using an unsupervised version of cross-validation, which controls an equivalent notion of "generalization ability" for the unsupervised setting. While growing-only methods only cater for the incremental learning scenario, the ability to grow and shrink is suited to the more general streaming data problem. == Implementations == To find the ranking i 0 , i 1 , … , i N − 1 {\displaystyle i_{0},i_{1},\ldots ,i_{N-1}} of the feature vectors, the neural gas algorithm involves sorting, which is a procedure that does not lend itself easily to parallelization or implementation in analog hardware. However, implementations in both parallel software and analog hardware were actually designed.

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  • Mean squared prediction error

    Mean squared prediction error

    In statistics the mean squared prediction error (MSPE), also known as mean squared error of the predictions, of a smoothing, curve fitting, or regression procedure is the expected value of the squared prediction errors (PE), the square difference between the fitted values implied by the predictive function g ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {g}}} and the values of the (unobservable) true value g. It is an inverse measure of the explanatory power of g ^ , {\displaystyle {\widehat {g}},} and can be used in the process of cross-validation of an estimated model. Knowledge of g would be required in order to calculate the MSPE exactly; in practice, MSPE is estimated. == Formulation == If the smoothing or fitting procedure has projection matrix (i.e., hat matrix) L, which maps the observed values vector y {\displaystyle y} to predicted values vector y ^ = L y , {\displaystyle {\hat {y}}=Ly,} then PE and MSPE are formulated as: P E i = g ( x i ) − g ^ ( x i ) , {\displaystyle \operatorname {PE_{i}} =g(x_{i})-{\widehat {g}}(x_{i}),} MSPE = E ⁡ [ PE i 2 ] = ∑ i = 1 n PE i 2 ⁡ / n . {\displaystyle \operatorname {MSPE} =\operatorname {E} \left[\operatorname {PE} _{i}^{2}\right]=\sum _{i=1}^{n}\operatorname {PE} _{i}^{2}/n.} The MSPE can be decomposed into two terms: the squared bias (mean error) of the fitted values and the variance of the fitted values: MSPE = ME 2 + VAR , {\displaystyle \operatorname {MSPE} =\operatorname {ME} ^{2}+\operatorname {VAR} ,} ME = E ⁡ [ g ^ ( x i ) − g ( x i ) ] {\displaystyle \operatorname {ME} =\operatorname {E} \left[{\widehat {g}}(x_{i})-g(x_{i})\right]} VAR = E ⁡ [ ( g ^ ( x i ) − E ⁡ [ g ( x i ) ] ) 2 ] . {\displaystyle \operatorname {VAR} =\operatorname {E} \left[\left({\widehat {g}}(x_{i})-\operatorname {E} \left[{g}(x_{i})\right]\right)^{2}\right].} The quantity SSPE=nMSPE is called sum squared prediction error. The root mean squared prediction error is the square root of MSPE: RMSPE=√MSPE. == Computation of MSPE over out-of-sample data == The mean squared prediction error can be computed exactly in two contexts. First, with a data sample of length n, the data analyst may run the regression over only q of the data points (with q < n), holding back the other n – q data points with the specific purpose of using them to compute the estimated model’s MSPE out of sample (i.e., not using data that were used in the model estimation process). Since the regression process is tailored to the q in-sample points, normally the in-sample MSPE will be smaller than the out-of-sample one computed over the n – q held-back points. If the increase in the MSPE out of sample compared to in sample is relatively slight, that results in the model being viewed favorably. And if two models are to be compared, the one with the lower MSPE over the n – q out-of-sample data points is viewed more favorably, regardless of the models’ relative in-sample performances. The out-of-sample MSPE in this context is exact for the out-of-sample data points that it was computed over, but is merely an estimate of the model’s MSPE for the mostly unobserved population from which the data were drawn. Second, as time goes on more data may become available to the data analyst, and then the MSPE can be computed over these new data. == Estimation of MSPE over the population == When the model has been estimated over all available data with none held back, the MSPE of the model over the entire population of mostly unobserved data can be estimated as follows. For the model y i = g ( x i ) + σ ε i {\displaystyle y_{i}=g(x_{i})+\sigma \varepsilon _{i}} where ε i ∼ N ( 0 , 1 ) {\displaystyle \varepsilon _{i}\sim {\mathcal {N}}(0,1)} , one may write n ⋅ MSPE ⁡ ( L ) = g T ( I − L ) T ( I − L ) g + σ 2 tr ⁡ [ L T L ] . {\displaystyle n\cdot \operatorname {MSPE} (L)=g^{\text{T}}(I-L)^{\text{T}}(I-L)g+\sigma ^{2}\operatorname {tr} \left[L^{\text{T}}L\right].} Using in-sample data values, the first term on the right side is equivalent to ∑ i = 1 n ( E ⁡ [ g ( x i ) − g ^ ( x i ) ] ) 2 = E ⁡ [ ∑ i = 1 n ( y i − g ^ ( x i ) ) 2 ] − σ 2 tr ⁡ [ ( I − L ) T ( I − L ) ] . {\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{n}\left(\operatorname {E} \left[g(x_{i})-{\widehat {g}}(x_{i})\right]\right)^{2}=\operatorname {E} \left[\sum _{i=1}^{n}\left(y_{i}-{\widehat {g}}(x_{i})\right)^{2}\right]-\sigma ^{2}\operatorname {tr} \left[\left(I-L\right)^{T}\left(I-L\right)\right].} Thus, n ⋅ MSPE ⁡ ( L ) = E ⁡ [ ∑ i = 1 n ( y i − g ^ ( x i ) ) 2 ] − σ 2 ( n − tr ⁡ [ L ] ) . {\displaystyle n\cdot \operatorname {MSPE} (L)=\operatorname {E} \left[\sum _{i=1}^{n}\left(y_{i}-{\widehat {g}}(x_{i})\right)^{2}\right]-\sigma ^{2}\left(n-\operatorname {tr} \left[L\right]\right).} If σ 2 {\displaystyle \sigma ^{2}} is known or well-estimated by σ ^ 2 {\displaystyle {\widehat {\sigma }}^{2}} , it becomes possible to estimate MSPE by n ⋅ M S P E ^ ⁡ ( L ) = ∑ i = 1 n ( y i − g ^ ( x i ) ) 2 − σ ^ 2 ( n − tr ⁡ [ L ] ) . {\displaystyle n\cdot \operatorname {\widehat {MSPE}} (L)=\sum _{i=1}^{n}\left(y_{i}-{\widehat {g}}(x_{i})\right)^{2}-{\widehat {\sigma }}^{2}\left(n-\operatorname {tr} \left[L\right]\right).} Colin Mallows advocated this method in the construction of his model selection statistic Cp, which is a normalized version of the estimated MSPE: C p = ∑ i = 1 n ( y i − g ^ ( x i ) ) 2 σ ^ 2 − n + 2 p . {\displaystyle C_{p}={\frac {\sum _{i=1}^{n}\left(y_{i}-{\widehat {g}}(x_{i})\right)^{2}}{{\widehat {\sigma }}^{2}}}-n+2p.} where p the number of estimated parameters p and σ ^ 2 {\displaystyle {\widehat {\sigma }}^{2}} is computed from the version of the model that includes all possible regressors. That concludes this proof.

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  • Parity benchmark

    Parity benchmark

    Parity problems are widely used as benchmark problems in genetic programming but inherited from the artificial neural network community. Parity is calculated by summing all the binary inputs and reporting if the sum is odd or even. This is considered difficult because: a very simple artificial neural network cannot solve it, and all inputs need to be considered and a change to any one of them changes the answer.

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  • Spanish Network of Excellence on Cybersecurity Research

    Spanish Network of Excellence on Cybersecurity Research

    The Spanish Network of Excellence on Cybersecurity Research (RENIC), is a research initiative to promote cybersecurity interests in Spain. == Members == === Board of Directors (2018) === President: Universidad de Málaga Vice president: CSIC Treasurer: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Secretary: Universidad de Granada Vocals: Tecnalia, Universidad de La Laguna and Universidad de Modragón === Board of Directors (2016) === President: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Vice president: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Treasurer: Universidad de Granada Secretary: Universidad de León Vocals: Gradiant, Tecnalia, Universidad de Málaga === Founding Members === Centro Andaluz de Innovación y Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (CITIC). Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Centro Tecnolóxico de Telecomunicaciones de Galicia (Gradiant). Instituto Imdea Software. Instituto Nacional de Ciberseguridad (INCIBE). Mondragón Unibertsitatea. Tecnalia. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Universidad Castilla la Mancha. Universidad de Granada. Universidad de la Laguna. Universidad de León. Universidad de Málaga. Universidad de Murcia. Universidad de Vigo. Universidad Internacional de la Rioja. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. === Members === Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Centro Tecnolóxico de Telecomunicaciones de Galicia (Gradiant). Instituto Imdea Software. Instituto Nacional de Ciberseguridad (INCIBE). Mondragón Unibertsitatea. Tecnalia. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. Universidad de Granada. Universidad de la Laguna. Universidad de León. Universidad de Málaga. Universidad de Murcia. Universidad de Vigo. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. IKERLAN. === Honorary Members === Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI). (2017) Instituto Nacional de Ciberseguridad (INCIBE). (2016) == Initiatives and Participations == RENIC is ECSO member, and is also a member of its board of directors. A collaboration agreement between RENIC and the Innovative Business Cluster on Cybersecurity (AEI Cybersecurity) has been signed. RENIC is pleased to sponsor the Cybersecurity Research National Conferences (JNIC) JNIC2017 edition, organized by Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. RENIC is pleased to announce the publication of the online version of the Catalog and knowledge map of cybersecurity research

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  • Large margin nearest neighbor

    Large margin nearest neighbor

    Large margin nearest neighbor (LMNN) classification is a statistical machine learning algorithm for metric learning. It learns a pseudometric designed for k-nearest neighbor classification. The algorithm is based on semidefinite programming, a sub-class of convex optimization. The goal of supervised learning (more specifically classification) is to learn a decision rule that can categorize data instances into pre-defined classes. The k-nearest neighbor rule assumes a training data set of labeled instances (i.e. the classes are known). It classifies a new data instance with the class obtained from the majority vote of the k closest (labeled) training instances. Closeness is measured with a pre-defined metric. Large margin nearest neighbors is an algorithm that learns this global (pseudo-)metric in a supervised fashion to improve the classification accuracy of the k-nearest neighbor rule. == Setup == The main intuition behind LMNN is to learn a pseudometric under which all data instances in the training set are surrounded by at least k instances that share the same class label. If this is achieved, the leave-one-out error (a special case of cross validation) is minimized. Let the training data consist of a data set D = { ( x → 1 , y 1 ) , … , ( x → n , y n ) } ⊂ R d × C {\displaystyle D=\{({\vec {x}}_{1},y_{1}),\dots ,({\vec {x}}_{n},y_{n})\}\subset R^{d}\times C} , where the set of possible class categories is C = { 1 , … , c } {\displaystyle C=\{1,\dots ,c\}} . The algorithm learns a pseudometric of the type d ( x → i , x → j ) = ( x → i − x → j ) ⊤ M ( x → i − x → j ) {\displaystyle d({\vec {x}}_{i},{\vec {x}}_{j})=({\vec {x}}_{i}-{\vec {x}}_{j})^{\top }\mathbf {M} ({\vec {x}}_{i}-{\vec {x}}_{j})} . For d ( ⋅ , ⋅ ) {\displaystyle d(\cdot ,\cdot )} to be well defined, the matrix M {\displaystyle \mathbf {M} } needs to be positive semi-definite. The Euclidean metric is a special case, where M {\displaystyle \mathbf {M} } is the identity matrix. This generalization is often (falsely) referred to as Mahalanobis metric. Figure 1 illustrates the effect of the metric under varying M {\displaystyle \mathbf {M} } . The two circles show the set of points with equal distance to the center x → i {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{i}} . In the Euclidean case this set is a circle, whereas under the modified (Mahalanobis) metric it becomes an ellipsoid. The algorithm distinguishes between two types of special data points: target neighbors and impostors. === Target neighbors === Target neighbors are selected before learning. Each instance x → i {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{i}} has exactly k {\displaystyle k} different target neighbors within D {\displaystyle D} , which all share the same class label y i {\displaystyle y_{i}} . The target neighbors are the data points that should become nearest neighbors under the learned metric. Let us denote the set of target neighbors for a data point x → i {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{i}} as N i {\displaystyle N_{i}} . === Impostors === An impostor of a data point x → i {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{i}} is another data point x → j {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{j}} with a different class label (i.e. y i ≠ y j {\displaystyle y_{i}\neq y_{j}} ) which is one of the nearest neighbors of x → i {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{i}} . During learning the algorithm tries to minimize the number of impostors for all data instances in the training set. == Algorithm == Large margin nearest neighbors optimizes the matrix M {\displaystyle \mathbf {M} } with the help of semidefinite programming. The objective is twofold: For every data point x → i {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{i}} , the target neighbors should be close and the impostors should be far away. Figure 1 shows the effect of such an optimization on an illustrative example. The learned metric causes the input vector x → i {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{i}} to be surrounded by training instances of the same class. If it was a test point, it would be classified correctly under the k = 3 {\displaystyle k=3} nearest neighbor rule. The first optimization goal is achieved by minimizing the average distance between instances and their target neighbors ∑ i , j ∈ N i d ( x → i , x → j ) {\displaystyle \sum _{i,j\in N_{i}}d({\vec {x}}_{i},{\vec {x}}_{j})} . The second goal is achieved by penalizing distances to impostors x → l {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{l}} that are less than one unit further away than target neighbors x → j {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{j}} (and therefore pushing them out of the local neighborhood of x → i {\displaystyle {\vec {x}}_{i}} ). The resulting value to be minimized can be stated as: ∑ i , j ∈ N i , l , y l ≠ y i [ d ( x → i , x → j ) + 1 − d ( x → i , x → l ) ] + {\displaystyle \sum _{i,j\in N_{i},l,y_{l}\neq y_{i}}[d({\vec {x}}_{i},{\vec {x}}_{j})+1-d({\vec {x}}_{i},{\vec {x}}_{l})]_{+}} With a hinge loss function [ ⋅ ] + = max ( ⋅ , 0 ) {\textstyle [\cdot ]_{+}=\max(\cdot ,0)} , which ensures that impostor proximity is not penalized when outside the margin. The margin of exactly one unit fixes the scale of the matrix M {\displaystyle M} . Any alternative choice c > 0 {\displaystyle c>0} would result in a rescaling of M {\displaystyle M} by a factor of 1 / c {\displaystyle 1/c} . The final optimization problem becomes: min M ∑ i , j ∈ N i d ( x → i , x → j ) + λ ∑ i , j , l ξ i j l {\displaystyle \min _{\mathbf {M} }\sum _{i,j\in N_{i}}d({\vec {x}}_{i},{\vec {x}}_{j})+\lambda \sum _{i,j,l}\xi _{ijl}} ∀ i , j ∈ N i , l , y l ≠ y i {\displaystyle \forall _{i,j\in N_{i},l,y_{l}\neq y_{i}}} d ( x → i , x → j ) + 1 − d ( x → i , x → l ) ≤ ξ i j l {\displaystyle d({\vec {x}}_{i},{\vec {x}}_{j})+1-d({\vec {x}}_{i},{\vec {x}}_{l})\leq \xi _{ijl}} ξ i j l ≥ 0 {\displaystyle \xi _{ijl}\geq 0} M ⪰ 0 {\displaystyle \mathbf {M} \succeq 0} The hyperparameter λ > 0 {\textstyle \lambda >0} is some positive constant (typically set through cross-validation). Here the variables ξ i j l {\displaystyle \xi _{ijl}} (together with two types of constraints) replace the term in the cost function. They play a role similar to slack variables to absorb the extent of violations of the impostor constraints. The last constraint ensures that M {\displaystyle \mathbf {M} } is positive semi-definite. The optimization problem is an instance of semidefinite programming (SDP). Although SDPs tend to suffer from high computational complexity, this particular SDP instance can be solved very efficiently due to the underlying geometric properties of the problem. In particular, most impostor constraints are naturally satisfied and do not need to be enforced during runtime (i.e. the set of variables ξ i j l {\displaystyle \xi _{ijl}} is sparse). A particularly well suited solver technique is the working set method, which keeps a small set of constraints that are actively enforced and monitors the remaining (likely satisfied) constraints only occasionally to ensure correctness. == Extensions and efficient solvers == LMNN was extended to multiple local metrics in the 2008 paper. This extension significantly improves the classification error, but involves a more expensive optimization problem. In their 2009 publication in the Journal of Machine Learning Research, Weinberger and Saul derive an efficient solver for the semi-definite program. It can learn a metric for the MNIST handwritten digit data set in several hours, involving billions of pairwise constraints. An open source Matlab implementation is freely available at the authors web page. Kumal et al. extended the algorithm to incorporate local invariances to multivariate polynomial transformations and improved regularization.

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  • Dispersive flies optimisation

    Dispersive flies optimisation

    Dispersive flies optimisation (DFO) is a bare-bones swarm intelligence algorithm which is inspired by the swarming behaviour of flies hovering over food sources. DFO is a simple optimiser which works by iteratively trying to improve a candidate solution with regard to a numerical measure that is calculated by a fitness function. Each member of the population, a fly or an agent, holds a candidate solution whose suitability can be evaluated by their fitness value. Optimisation problems are often formulated as either minimisation or maximisation problems. DFO was introduced with the intention of analysing a simplified swarm intelligence algorithm with the fewest tunable parameters and components. In the first work on DFO, this algorithm was compared against a few other existing swarm intelligence techniques using error, efficiency and diversity measures. It is shown that despite the simplicity of the algorithm, which only uses agents’ position vectors at time t to generate the position vectors for time t + 1, it exhibits a competitive performance. Since its inception, DFO has been used in a variety of applications including medical imaging and image analysis as well as data mining and machine learning. == Algorithm == DFO bears many similarities with other existing continuous, population-based optimisers (e.g. particle swarm optimization and differential evolution). In that, the swarming behaviour of the individuals consists of two tightly connected mechanisms, one is the formation of the swarm and the other is its breaking or weakening. DFO works by facilitating the information exchange between the members of the population (the swarming flies). Each fly x {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} } represents a position in a d-dimensional search space: x = ( x 1 , x 2 , … , x d ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} =(x_{1},x_{2},\ldots ,x_{d})} , and the fitness of each fly is calculated by the fitness function f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(\mathbf {x} )} , which takes into account the flies' d dimensions: f ( x ) = f ( x 1 , x 2 , … , x d ) {\displaystyle f(\mathbf {x} )=f(x_{1},x_{2},\ldots ,x_{d})} . The pseudocode below represents one iteration of the algorithm: for i = 1 : N flies x i . fitness = f ( x i ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {x_{i}} .{\text{fitness}}=f(\mathbf {x} _{i})} end for i x s {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} _{s}} = arg min [ f ( x i ) ] , i ∈ { 1 , … , N } {\textstyle [f(\mathbf {x} _{i})],\;i\in \{1,\ldots ,N\}} for i = 1 : N and i ≠ s {\displaystyle i\neq s} for d = 1 : D dimensions if U ( 0 , 1 ) < Δ {\displaystyle U(0,1)<\Delta } x i d t + 1 = U ( x min , d , x max , d ) {\displaystyle x_{id}^{t+1}=U(x_{\min ,d},x_{\max ,d})} else x i d t + 1 = x i n d t + U ( 0 , 1 ) ( x s d t − x i d t ) {\displaystyle x_{id}^{t+1}=x_{i_{nd}}^{t}+U(0,1)(x_{sd}^{t}-x_{id}^{t})} end if end for d end for i In the algorithm above, x i d t + 1 {\displaystyle x_{id}^{t+1}} represents fly i {\displaystyle i} at dimension d {\displaystyle d} and time t + 1 {\displaystyle t+1} ; x i n d t {\displaystyle x_{i_{nd}}^{t}} presents x i {\displaystyle x_{i}} 's best neighbouring fly in ring topology (left or right, using flies indexes), at dimension d {\displaystyle d} and time t {\displaystyle t} ; and x s d t {\displaystyle x_{sd}^{t}} is the swarm's best fly. Using this update equation, the swarm's population update depends on each fly's best neighbour (which is used as the focus μ {\displaystyle \mu } , and the difference between the current fly and the best in swarm represents the spread of movement, σ {\displaystyle \sigma } ). Other than the population size N {\displaystyle N} , the only tunable parameter is the disturbance threshold Δ {\displaystyle \Delta } , which controls the dimension-wise restart in each fly vector. This mechanism is proposed to control the diversity of the swarm. Other notable minimalist swarm algorithm is Bare bones particle swarms (BB-PSO), which is based on particle swarm optimisation, along with bare bones differential evolution (BBDE) which is a hybrid of the bare bones particle swarm optimiser and differential evolution, aiming to reduce the number of parameters. Alhakbani in her PhD thesis covers many aspects of the algorithms including several DFO applications in feature selection as well as parameter tuning. == Applications == Some of the recent applications of DFO are listed below: Optimising support vector machine kernel to classify imbalanced data Quantifying symmetrical complexity in computational aesthetics Analysing computational autopoiesis and computational creativity Identifying calcifications in medical images Building non-identical organic structures for game's space development Deep Neuroevolution: Training Deep Neural Networks for False Alarm Detection in Intensive Care Units Identification of animation key points from 2D-medialness maps

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  • Witness set

    Witness set

    In combinatorics and computational learning theory, a witness set is a set of elements that distinguishes a given Boolean function from a given class of other Boolean functions. Let C {\displaystyle C} be a concept class over a domain X {\displaystyle X} (that is, a family of Boolean functions over X {\displaystyle X} ) and c {\displaystyle c} be a concept in X {\displaystyle X} (a single Boolean function). A subset S {\displaystyle S} of X {\displaystyle X} is a witness set for c {\displaystyle c} in X {\displaystyle X} if S {\displaystyle S} distinguishes c {\displaystyle c} from all the other functions in C {\displaystyle C} , in the sense that no other function in C {\displaystyle C} has the same values on S {\displaystyle S} . For a concept class with | C | {\displaystyle |C|} concepts, there exists a concept that has a witness of size at most log 2 ⁡ | C | {\displaystyle \log _{2}|C|} ; this bound is tight when C {\displaystyle C} consists of all Boolean functions over X {\displaystyle X} . By a result of Bondy (1972) there exists a single witness set of size at most | C | − 1 {\displaystyle |C|-1} that is valid for all concepts in C {\displaystyle C} ; this bound is tight when C {\displaystyle C} consists of the indicator functions of the empty set and some singleton sets. One way to construct this set is to interpret the concepts as bitstrings, and the domain elements as positions in these bitstrings. Then the set of positions at which a trie of the bitstrings branches forms the desired witness set. This construction is central to the operation of the fusion tree data structure. The minimum size of a witness set for c {\displaystyle c} is called the witness size or specification number and is denoted by w C ( c ) {\displaystyle w_{C}(c)} . The value max { w C ( c ) : c ∈ C } {\displaystyle \max\{w_{C}(c):c\in C\}} is called the teaching dimension of C {\displaystyle C} . It represents the number of examples of a concept that need to be presented by a teacher to a learner, in the worst case, to enable the learner to determine which concept is being presented. Witness sets have also been called teaching sets, keys, specifying sets, or discriminants. The "witness set" terminology is from Kushilevitz et al. (1996), who trace the concept of witness sets to work by Cover (1965).

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  • Log shipping

    Log shipping

    Log shipping is the process of automating the backup of transaction log files on a primary (production) database server, and then restoring them onto a standby server. This technique is supported by Microsoft SQL Server, 4D Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Similar to replication, the primary purpose of log shipping is to increase database availability by maintaining a backup server that can replace a production server quickly. Other databases such as Adaptive Server Enterprise and Oracle Database support the technique but require the Database Administrator to write code or scripts to perform the work. Although the actual failover mechanism in log shipping is manual, this implementation is often chosen due to its low cost in human and server resources, and ease of implementation. In comparison, SQL server clusters enable automatic failover, but at the expense of much higher storage costs. Compared to database replication, log shipping does not provide as much in terms of reporting capabilities, but backs up system tables along with data tables, and locks the standby server from users' modifications. A replicated server can be modified (e.g. views) and is therefore unsuitable for failover purposes.

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  • Silhouette (clustering)

    Silhouette (clustering)

    Silhouette is a method of interpretation and validation of consistency within clusters of data. The technique provides a succinct graphical representation of how well each object has been classified. It was proposed by Belgian statistician Peter Rousseeuw in 1987. The silhouette value is a measure of how similar an object is to its own cluster (cohesion) compared to other clusters (separation). The silhouette value ranges from −1 to +1, where a high value indicates that the object is well matched to its own cluster and poorly matched to neighboring clusters. If most objects have a high value, then the clustering configuration is appropriate. If many points have a low or negative value, then the clustering configuration may have too many or too few clusters. A clustering with an average silhouette width of over 0.7 is considered to be "strong", a value over 0.5 "reasonable", and over 0.25 "weak". However, with an increasing dimensionality of the data, it becomes difficult to achieve such high values because of the curse of dimensionality, as the distances become more similar. The silhouette score is specialized for measuring cluster quality when the clusters are convex-shaped, and may not perform well if the data clusters have irregular shapes or are of varying sizes. The silhouette value can be calculated with any distance metric, such as Euclidean distance or Manhattan distance. == Definition == Assume the data have been clustered via any technique, such as k-medoids or k-means, into k {\displaystyle k} clusters. For data point i ∈ C i {\displaystyle i\in C_{i}} (data point i {\displaystyle i} in the cluster C i {\displaystyle C_{i}} ), calculate a ( i ) {\displaystyle a(i)} , the average distance that i {\displaystyle i} is from all other points in that cluster: a ( i ) = 1 | C i | − 1 ∑ j ∈ C i , i ≠ j d ( i , j ) {\displaystyle a(i)={\frac {1}{|C_{i}|-1}}\sum _{j\in C_{i},i\neq j}d(i,j)} where | C i | {\displaystyle |C_{i}|} is the number of points belonging to cluster C i {\displaystyle C_{i}} , and d ( i , j ) {\displaystyle d(i,j)} is the distance between data points i {\displaystyle i} and j {\displaystyle j} in the cluster C i {\displaystyle C_{i}} (we divide by | C i | − 1 {\displaystyle |C_{i}|-1} because the distance d ( i , i ) {\displaystyle d(i,i)} is not included in the sum). a ( i ) {\displaystyle a(i)} can be interpreted as a measure of how well i {\displaystyle i} is assigned to its cluster (the smaller the value, the better the assignment). We then define the mean dissimilarity of point i {\displaystyle i} to some cluster C j {\displaystyle C_{j}} as the mean of the distance from i {\displaystyle i} to all points in C j {\displaystyle C_{j}} (where C j ≠ C i {\displaystyle C_{j}\neq C_{i}} ). For each data point i ∈ C i {\displaystyle i\in C_{i}} , we now define b ( i ) {\displaystyle b(i)} as the average distance between i {\displaystyle i} and the points in the closest cluster (hence: "min") that i {\displaystyle i} does not belong to: b ( i ) = min j ≠ i 1 | C j | ∑ l ∈ C j d ( i , l ) {\displaystyle b(i)=\min _{j\neq i}{\frac {1}{|C_{j}|}}\sum _{l\in C_{j}}d(i,l)} The cluster with the smallest mean dissimilarity is said to be the "neighboring cluster" of i {\displaystyle i} because it is the next best fit cluster for point i {\displaystyle i} . We now define a silhouette (value) of one data point i {\displaystyle i} s ( i ) = b ( i ) − a ( i ) max { a ( i ) , b ( i ) } {\displaystyle s(i)={\frac {b(i)-a(i)}{\max\{a(i),b(i)\}}}} , if | C i | > 1 {\displaystyle |C_{i}|>1} and s ( i ) = 0 {\displaystyle s(i)=0} , if | C i | = 1 {\displaystyle |C_{i}|=1} , which can also be written as s ( i ) = { 1 − a ( i ) b ( i ) , if a ( i ) < b ( i ) 0 , if a ( i ) = b ( i ) b ( i ) a ( i ) − 1 , if a ( i ) > b ( i ) {\displaystyle s(i)={\begin{cases}1-{\frac {a(i)}{b(i)}},&{\mbox{ if }}a(i)b(i)\\\end{cases}}} From the above definition, s ( i ) {\displaystyle s(i)} is bounded to the interval [ − 1 , 1 ] {\displaystyle [-1,1]} , i.e. − 1 ≤ s ( i ) ≤ 1. {\displaystyle -1\leq s(i)\leq 1.} Note that a ( i ) {\displaystyle a(i)} is not clearly defined for clusters with size = 1, in which case we set s ( i ) = 0 {\displaystyle s(i)=0} . This choice is arbitrary, but neutral in the sense that it is at the midpoint of the bounds, -1 and 1. For s ( i ) {\displaystyle s(i)} to be close to 1 we require a ( i ) ≪ b ( i ) {\displaystyle a(i)\ll b(i)} . As a ( i ) {\displaystyle a(i)} is a measure of how dissimilar i {\displaystyle i} is to its own cluster, a small value means it is well matched. Furthermore, a large b ( i ) {\displaystyle b(i)} implies that i {\displaystyle i} is badly matched to its neighbouring cluster. Thus an s ( i ) {\displaystyle s(i)} close to 1 means that the data is appropriately clustered. If s ( i ) {\displaystyle s(i)} is close to -1, then by the same logic we see that i {\displaystyle i} would be more appropriate if it was clustered in its neighbouring cluster. An s ( i ) {\displaystyle s(i)} near zero means that the datum is on the border of two natural clusters. The mean s ( i ) {\displaystyle s(i)} over all points of a cluster is a measure of how tightly grouped all the points in the cluster are. Thus the mean s ( i ) {\displaystyle s(i)} over all data of the entire dataset is a measure of how appropriately the data have been clustered. If there are too many or too few clusters, as may occur when a poor choice of k {\displaystyle k} is used in the clustering algorithm (e.g., k-means), some of the clusters will typically display much narrower silhouettes than the rest. Thus silhouette plots and means may be used to determine the natural number of clusters within a dataset. One can also increase the likelihood of the silhouette being maximized at the correct number of clusters by re-scaling the data using feature weights that are cluster specific. Kaufman et al. introduced the term silhouette coefficient for the maximum value of the mean s ( i ) {\displaystyle s(i)} over all data of the entire dataset, i.e., S C = max k s ~ ( k ) , {\displaystyle SC=\max _{k}{\tilde {s}}\left(k\right),} where s ~ ( k ) {\displaystyle {\tilde {s}}\left(k\right)} represents the mean s ( i ) {\displaystyle s(i)} over all data of the entire dataset for a specific number of clusters k {\displaystyle k} . The silhouette coefficient describes the best possible clustering possible for a given number of clusters, as measured by the highest average silhouette score for all points in the dataset. == Simplified and medoid silhouette == Computing the silhouette coefficient needs all O ( N 2 ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {O}}(N^{2})} pairwise distances, making this evaluation much more costly than clustering with k-means. For a clustering with centers μ C I {\displaystyle \mu _{C_{I}}} for each cluster C I {\displaystyle C_{I}} , we can use the following simplified Silhouette for each point i ∈ C I {\displaystyle i\in C_{I}} instead, which can be computed using only O ( N k ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {O}}(Nk)} distances: a ′ ( i ) = d ( i , μ C I ) {\displaystyle a'(i)=d(i,\mu _{C_{I}})} and b ′ ( i ) = min C J ≠ C I d ( i , μ C J ) {\displaystyle b'(i)=\min _{C_{J}\neq C_{I}}d(i,\mu _{C_{J}})} , which has the additional benefit that a ′ ( i ) {\displaystyle a'(i)} is always defined, then define accordingly the simplified silhouette and simplified silhouette coefficient s ′ ( i ) = b ′ ( i ) − a ′ ( i ) max { a ′ ( i ) , b ′ ( i ) } {\displaystyle s'(i)={\frac {b'(i)-a'(i)}{\max\{a'(i),b'(i)\}}}} S C ′ = max k 1 N ∑ i s ′ ( i ) {\displaystyle SC'=\max _{k}{\frac {1}{N}}\sum _{i}s'\left(i\right)} . If the cluster centers are medoids (as in k-medoids clustering) instead of arithmetic means (as in k-means clustering), this is also called the medoid-based silhouette or medoid silhouette. If every object is assigned to the nearest medoid (as in k-medoids clustering), we know that a ′ ( i ) ≤ b ′ ( i ) {\displaystyle a'(i)\leq b'(i)} , and hence s ′ ( i ) = b ′ ( i ) − a ′ ( i ) b ′ ( i ) = 1 − a ′ ( i ) b ′ ( i ) {\displaystyle s'(i)={\frac {b'(i)-a'(i)}{b'(i)}}=1-{\frac {a'(i)}{b'(i)}}} . == Silhouette clustering == Instead of using the average silhouette to evaluate a clustering obtained from, e.g., k-medoids or k-means, we can try to directly find a solution that maximizes the Silhouette. We do not have a closed form solution to maximize this, but it will usually be best to assign points to the nearest cluster as done by these methods. Van der Laan et al. proposed to adapt the standard algorithm for k-medoids, PAM, for this purpose and call this algorithm PAMSIL: Choose initial medoids by using PAM Compute the average silhouette of this initial solution For each pair of a medoid m and a non-medoid x swap m and x compute the average silhouette of the resulting solution remember the best swap un-swap m and x for the next iteration Perform the best swap and return to

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  • Detrended correspondence analysis

    Detrended correspondence analysis

    Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) is a multivariate statistical technique widely used by ecologists to find the main factors or gradients in large, species-rich but usually sparse data matrices that typify ecological community data. DCA is frequently used to suppress artifacts inherent in most other multivariate analyses when applied to gradient data. == History == DCA was created in 1979 by Mark Hill of the United Kingdom's Institute for Terrestrial Ecology (now merged into Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) and implemented in FORTRAN code package called DECORANA (Detrended Correspondence Analysis), a correspondence analysis method. DCA is sometimes erroneously referred to as DECORANA; however, DCA is the underlying algorithm, while DECORANA is a tool implementing it. == Issues addressed == According to Hill and Gauch, DCA suppresses two artifacts inherent in most other multivariate analyses when applied to gradient data. An example is a time-series of plant species colonising a new habitat; early successional species are replaced by mid-successional species, then by late successional ones (see example below). When such data are analysed by a standard ordination such as a correspondence analysis: the ordination scores of the samples will exhibit the 'edge effect', i.e. the variance of the scores at the beginning and the end of a regular succession of species will be considerably smaller than that in the middle, when presented as a graph the points will be seen to follow a horseshoe shaped curve rather than a straight line ('arch effect'), even though the process under analysis is a steady and continuous change that human intuition would prefer to see as a linear trend. Outside ecology, the same artifacts occur when gradient data are analysed (e.g. soil properties along a transect running between 2 different geologies, or behavioural data over the lifespan of an individual) because the curved projection is an accurate representation of the shape of the data in multivariate space. Ter Braak and Prentice (1987, p. 121) cite a simulation study analysing two-dimensional species packing models resulting in a better performance of DCA compared to CA. == Method == DCA is an iterative algorithm that has shown itself to be a highly reliable and useful tool for data exploration and summary in community ecology (Shaw 2003). It starts by running a standard ordination (CA or reciprocal averaging) on the data, to produce the initial horse-shoe curve in which the 1st ordination axis distorts into the 2nd axis. It then divides the first axis into segments (default = 26), and rescales each segment to have mean value of zero on the 2nd axis - this effectively squashes the curve flat. It also rescales the axis so that the ends are no longer compressed relative to the middle, so that 1 DCA unit approximates to the same rate of turnover all the way through the data: the rule of thumb is that 4 DCA units mean that there has been a total turnover in the community. Ter Braak and Prentice (1987, p. 122) warn against the non-linear rescaling of the axes due to robustness issues and recommend using detrending-by-polynomials only. == Drawbacks == No significance tests are available with DCA, although there is a constrained (canonical) version called DCCA in which the axes are forced by Multiple linear regression to correlate optimally with a linear combination of other (usually environmental) variables; this allows testing of a null model by Monte-Carlo permutation analysis. == Example == The example shows an ideal data set: The species data is in rows, samples in columns. For each sample along the gradient, a new species is introduced but another species is no longer present. The result is a sparse matrix. Ones indicate the presence of a species in a sample. Except at the edges each sample contains five species. The plot of the first two axes of the correspondence analysis result on the right hand side clearly shows the disadvantages of this procedure: the edge effect, i.e. the points are clustered at the edges of the first axis, and the arch effect. == Software == An open source implementation of DCA, based on the original FORTRAN code, is available in the vegan R-package.

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  • Quantum neural network

    Quantum neural network

    Quantum neural networks are computational neural network models which are based on the principles of quantum mechanics. The first ideas on quantum neural computation were published independently in 1995 by Subhash Kak and Ron Chrisley, engaging with the theory of quantum mind, which posits that quantum effects play a role in cognitive function. However, typical research in quantum neural networks involves combining classical artificial neural network models (which are widely used in machine learning for the important task of pattern recognition) with the advantages of quantum information in order to develop more efficient algorithms. One important motivation for these investigations is the difficulty to train classical neural networks, especially in big data applications. The hope is that features of quantum computing such as quantum parallelism or the effects of interference and entanglement can be used as resources. Since the technological implementation of a quantum computer is still in a premature stage, such quantum neural network models are mostly theoretical proposals that await their full implementation in physical experiments. Most Quantum neural networks are developed as feed-forward networks. Similar to their classical counterparts, this structure intakes input from one layer of qubits, and passes that input onto another layer of qubits. This layer of qubits evaluates this information and passes on the output to the next layer. Eventually the path leads to the final layer of qubits. The layers do not have to be of the same width, meaning they don't have to have the same number of qubits as the layer before or after it. This structure is trained on which path to take similar to classical artificial neural networks. This is discussed in a lower section. Quantum neural networks refer to three different categories: Quantum computer with classical data, classical computer with quantum data, and quantum computer with quantum data. == Examples == Quantum neural network research is still in its infancy, and a conglomeration of proposals and ideas of varying scope and mathematical rigor have been put forward. Most of them are based on the idea of replacing classical binary or McCulloch-Pitts neurons with a qubit (which can be called a "quron"), resulting in neural units that can be in a superposition of the state 'firing' and 'resting'. === Quantum perceptrons === A lot of proposals attempt to find a quantum equivalent for the perceptron unit from which neural nets are constructed. A problem is that nonlinear activation functions do not immediately correspond to the mathematical structure of quantum theory, since a quantum evolution is described by linear operations and leads to probabilistic observation. Ideas to imitate the perceptron activation function with a quantum mechanical formalism reach from special measurements to postulating non-linear quantum operators (a mathematical framework that is disputed). A direct implementation of the activation function using the circuit-based model of quantum computation has recently been proposed by Schuld, Sinayskiy and Petruccione based on the quantum phase estimation algorithm. === Quantum networks === At a larger scale, researchers have attempted to generalize neural networks to the quantum setting. One way of constructing a quantum neuron is to first generalise classical neurons and then generalising them further to make unitary gates. Interactions between neurons can be controlled quantumly, with unitary gates, or classically, via measurement of the network states. This high-level theoretical technique can be applied broadly, by taking different types of networks and different implementations of quantum neurons, such as photonically implemented neurons and quantum reservoir processor (quantum version of reservoir computing). Most learning algorithms follow the classical model of training an artificial neural network to learn the input-output function of a given training set and use classical feedback loops to update parameters of the quantum system until they converge to an optimal configuration. Learning as a parameter optimisation problem has also been approached by adiabatic models of quantum computing. Quantum neural networks can be applied to algorithmic design: given qubits with tunable mutual interactions, one can attempt to learn interactions following the classical backpropagation rule from a training set of desired input-output relations, taken to be the desired output algorithm's behavior. The quantum network thus 'learns' an algorithm. === Quantum associative memory === The first quantum associative memory algorithm was introduced by Dan Ventura and Tony Martinez in 1999. The authors do not attempt to translate the structure of artificial neural network models into quantum theory, but propose an algorithm for a circuit-based quantum computer that simulates associative memory. The memory states (in Hopfield neural networks saved in the weights of the neural connections) are written into a superposition, and a Grover-like quantum search algorithm retrieves the memory state closest to a given input. As such, this is not a fully content-addressable memory, since only incomplete patterns can be retrieved. The first truly content-addressable quantum memory, which can retrieve patterns also from corrupted inputs, was proposed by Carlo A. Trugenberger. Both memories can store an exponential (in terms of n qubits) number of patterns but can be used only once due to the no-cloning theorem and their destruction upon measurement. Trugenberger, however, has shown that his probabilistic model of quantum associative memory can be efficiently implemented and re-used multiples times for any polynomial number of stored patterns, a large advantage with respect to classical associative memories. === Classical neural networks inspired by quantum theory === A substantial amount of interest has been given to a "quantum-inspired" model that uses ideas from quantum theory to implement a neural network based on fuzzy logic. == Training == Quantum Neural Networks can be theoretically trained similarly to training classical/artificial neural networks. A key difference lies in communication between the layers of a neural networks. For classical neural networks, at the end of a given operation, the current perceptron copies its output to the next layer of perceptron(s) in the network. However, in a quantum neural network, where each perceptron is a qubit, this would violate the no-cloning theorem. A proposed generalized solution to this is to replace the classical fan-out method with an arbitrary unitary that spreads out, but does not copy, the output of one qubit to the next layer of qubits. Using this fan-out Unitary ( U f {\displaystyle U_{f}} ) with a dummy state qubit in a known state (Ex. | 0 ⟩ {\displaystyle |0\rangle } in the computational basis), also known as an Ancilla bit, the information from the qubit can be transferred to the next layer of qubits. This process adheres to the quantum operation requirement of reversibility. Using this quantum feed-forward network, deep neural networks can be executed and trained efficiently. A deep neural network is essentially a network with many hidden-layers, as seen in the sample model neural network above. Since the Quantum neural network being discussed uses fan-out Unitary operators, and each operator only acts on its respective input, only two layers are used at any given time. In other words, no Unitary operator is acting on the entire network at any given time, meaning the number of qubits required for a given step depends on the number of inputs in a given layer. Since Quantum Computers are notorious for their ability to run multiple iterations in a short period of time, the efficiency of a quantum neural network is solely dependent on the number of qubits in any given layer, and not on the depth of the network. === Cost functions === To determine the effectiveness of a neural network, a cost function is used, which essentially measures the proximity of the network's output to the expected or desired output. In a Classical Neural Network, the weights ( w {\displaystyle w} ) and biases ( b {\displaystyle b} ) at each step determine the outcome of the cost function C ( w , b ) {\displaystyle C(w,b)} . When training a Classical Neural network, the weights and biases are adjusted after each iteration, and given equation 1 below, where y ( x ) {\displaystyle y(x)} is the desired output and a out ( x ) {\displaystyle a^{\text{out}}(x)} is the actual output, the cost function is optimized when C ( w , b ) {\displaystyle C(w,b)} = 0. For a quantum neural network, the cost function is determined by measuring the fidelity of the outcome state ( ρ out {\displaystyle \rho ^{\text{out}}} ) with the desired outcome state ( ϕ out {\displaystyle \phi ^{\text{out}}} ), seen in Equation 2 below. In this case, the Unitary operators are adjusted after each it

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  • Adobe Presenter

    Adobe Presenter

    Adobe Presenter is eLearning software released by Adobe Systems available on the Microsoft Windows platform as a Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in, and on both Windows and OS X as the screencasting and video editing tool Adobe Presenter Video Express. It is mainly targeted towards learning professionals and trainers. In addition to recording one's computer desktop and speech, it also provides the option to add quizzes and track performance by integrating with learning management systems. Adobe Presenter was designed to replace the discontinued Adobe Ovation software, which had similar functions. == Predecessor == Adobe Ovation was originally released by Serious Magic. It converted PowerPoint slides into visual presentations with additional effects. Ovation included themes called PowerLooks that could add motion and polish the presentations. They were available in a variety of color variations complete with animated backgrounds and dynamic text effects. Ovation could make text with jagged edges more readable. TimeKeeper could be used to set the period of the presentation, and the PointPrompter scrolled down the notes. Ovation's development has been discontinued, nor does it support PowerPoint 2007. == Features == The main purpose of Adobe Presenter is to capture on-screen presentations and convert them into more interactive and engaging videos. Support is given to convert Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and 2013 presentations into videos. It also allows for content authoring on PowerPoint and ActionScript 3, and offers integration with Adobe Captivate. Slide branching enables users to control slide navigation and titles and create complex slide branching to guide viewers through the content of the presentation. Video editing tools are also provided, and offer the ability to upload to video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo and other sites. Multimedia features such as annotations, eLearning templates, actors, audio narration and drag-and-drop elements enrich users' presentations. Quizzes and surveys is another highlighted feature, which include generating question pools, importing questions from existing quizzes and in-course collaboration which allows presenters to receive feedback by allowing them to comment on specific content within a course or ask questions for more clarity. Presenters could opt to receive feedback from viewers through video analytics and create Experience API, SCORM and AICC-compliant content. Options to publish to Adobe Connect are provided. Other unique features include universal standards support, file size control, navigational restrictions among others.

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  • Probit model

    Probit model

    In statistics, a probit model is a type of regression where the dependent variable can take only two values, for example married or not married. The word is a portmanteau, coming from probability + unit. The purpose of the model is to estimate the probability that an observation with particular characteristics will fall into a specific one of the categories; moreover, classifying observations based on their predicted probabilities is a type of binary classification model. A probit model is a popular specification for a binary response model. As such it treats the same set of problems as does logistic regression using similar techniques. When viewed in the generalized linear model framework, the probit model employs a probit link function. It is most often estimated using the maximum likelihood procedure, such an estimation being called a probit regression. == Conceptual framework == Suppose a response variable Y is binary, that is it can have only two possible outcomes which we will denote as 1 and 0. For example, Y may represent presence/absence of a certain condition, success/failure of some device, answer yes/no on a survey, etc. We also have a vector of regressors X, which are assumed to influence the outcome Y. Specifically, we assume that the model takes the form P ( Y = 1 ∣ X ) = Φ ( X T β ) , {\displaystyle P(Y=1\mid X)=\Phi (X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta ),} where P is the probability and Φ {\displaystyle \Phi } is the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the standard normal distribution. The parameters β are typically estimated by maximum likelihood. It is possible to motivate the probit model as a latent variable model. Suppose there exists an auxiliary random variable Y ∗ = X T β + ε , {\displaystyle Y^{\ast }=X^{T}\beta +\varepsilon ,} where ε ~ N(0, 1). Then Y can be viewed as an indicator for whether this latent variable is positive: Y = { 1 Y ∗ > 0 0 otherwise } = { 1 X T β + ε > 0 0 otherwise } {\displaystyle Y=\left.{\begin{cases}1&Y^{}>0\\0&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}\right\}=\left.{\begin{cases}1&X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta +\varepsilon >0\\0&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}\right\}} The use of the standard normal distribution causes no loss of generality compared with the use of a normal distribution with an arbitrary mean and standard deviation, because adding a fixed amount to the mean can be compensated by subtracting the same amount from the intercept, and multiplying the standard deviation by a fixed amount can be compensated by multiplying the weights by the same amount. To see that the two models are equivalent, note that P ( Y = 1 ∣ X ) = P ( Y ∗ > 0 ) = P ( X T β + ε > 0 ) = P ( ε > − X T β ) = P ( ε < X T β ) by symmetry of the normal distribution = Φ ( X T β ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}P(Y=1\mid X)&=P(Y^{\ast }>0)\\&=P(X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta +\varepsilon >0)\\&=P(\varepsilon >-X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta )\\&=P(\varepsilon 0 {\displaystyle t,\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }n_{t}/n=c_{t}>0} . Denote p ^ t = r t / n t {\displaystyle {\hat {p}}_{t}=r_{t}/n_{t}} σ ^ t 2 = 1 n t p ^ t ( 1 − p ^ t ) φ 2 ( Φ − 1 ( p ^ t ) ) {\displaystyle {\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{2}={\frac {1}{n_{t}}}{\frac {{\hat {p}}_{t}(1-{\hat {p}}_{t})}{\varphi ^{2}{\big (}\Phi ^{-1}({\hat {p}}_{t}){\big )}}}} Then Berkson's minimum chi-square estimator is a generalized least squares estimator in a regression of Φ − 1 ( p ^ t ) {\displaystyle \Phi ^{-1}({\hat {p}}_{t})} on x ( t ) {\displaystyle x_{(t)}} with weights σ ^ t − 2 {\displaystyle {\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{-2}} : β ^ = ( ∑ t = 1 T σ ^ t − 2 x ( t ) x ( t ) T ) − 1 ∑ t = 1 T σ ^ t − 2 x ( t ) Φ − 1 ( p ^ t ) {\displaystyle {\hat {\beta }}={\Bigg (}\sum _{t=1}^{T}{\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{-2}x_{(t)}x_{(t)}^{\operatorname {T} }{\Bigg )}^{-1}\sum _{t=1}^{T}{\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{-2}x_{(t)}\Phi ^{-1}({\hat {p}}_{t})} It can be shown that this estimator is consistent (as n→∞ and T fixed), asymptotically normal and efficient. Its advantage is the presence of a closed-form formula for the estimator. However, it is only meaningful to carry out this analysis when individual observations are not available, only their aggregated counts r t {\displaystyle r_{t}} , n t {\disp

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  • Multiple kernel learning

    Multiple kernel learning

    Multiple kernel learning refers to a set of machine learning methods that use a predefined set of kernels and learn an optimal linear or non-linear combination of kernels as part of the algorithm. Reasons to use multiple kernel learning include a) the ability to select for an optimal kernel and parameters from a larger set of kernels, reducing bias due to kernel selection while allowing for more automated machine learning methods, and b) combining data from different sources (e.g. sound and images from a video) that have different notions of similarity and thus require different kernels. Instead of creating a new kernel, multiple kernel algorithms can be used to combine kernels already established for each individual data source. Multiple kernel learning approaches have been used in many applications, such as event recognition in video, object recognition in images, and biomedical data fusion. == Algorithms == Multiple kernel learning algorithms have been developed for supervised, semi-supervised, as well as unsupervised learning. Most work has been done on the supervised learning case with linear combinations of kernels, however, many algorithms have been developed. The basic idea behind multiple kernel learning algorithms is to add an extra parameter to the minimization problem of the learning algorithm. As an example, consider the case of supervised learning of a linear combination of a set of n {\displaystyle n} kernels K {\displaystyle K} . We introduce a new kernel K ′ = ∑ i = 1 n β i K i {\displaystyle K'=\sum _{i=1}^{n}\beta _{i}K_{i}} , where β {\displaystyle \beta } is a vector of coefficients for each kernel. Because the kernels are additive (due to properties of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces), this new function is still a kernel. For a set of data X {\displaystyle X} with labels Y {\displaystyle Y} , the minimization problem can then be written as min β , c E ( Y , K ′ c ) + R ( K , c ) {\displaystyle \min _{\beta ,c}\mathrm {E} (Y,K'c)+R(K,c)} where E {\displaystyle \mathrm {E} } is an error function and R {\displaystyle R} is a regularization term. E {\displaystyle \mathrm {E} } is typically the square loss function (Tikhonov regularization) or the hinge loss function (for SVM algorithms), and R {\displaystyle R} is usually an ℓ n {\displaystyle \ell _{n}} norm or some combination of the norms (i.e. elastic net regularization). This optimization problem can then be solved by standard optimization methods. Adaptations of existing techniques such as the Sequential Minimal Optimization have also been developed for multiple kernel SVM-based methods. === Supervised learning === For supervised learning, there are many other algorithms that use different methods to learn the form of the kernel. The following categorization has been proposed by Gonen and Alpaydın (2011) ==== Fixed rules approaches ==== Fixed rules approaches such as the linear combination algorithm described above use rules to set the combination of the kernels. These do not require parameterization and use rules like summation and multiplication to combine the kernels. The weighting is learned in the algorithm. Other examples of fixed rules include pairwise kernels, which are of the form k ( ( x 1 i , x 1 j ) , ( x 2 i , x 2 j ) ) = k ( x 1 i , x 2 i ) k ( x 1 j , x 2 j ) + k ( x 1 i , x 2 j ) k ( x 1 j , x 2 i ) {\displaystyle k((x_{1i},x_{1j}),(x_{2i},x_{2j}))=k(x_{1i},x_{2i})k(x_{1j},x_{2j})+k(x_{1i},x_{2j})k(x_{1j},x_{2i})} . These pairwise approaches have been used in predicting protein-protein interactions. ==== Heuristic approaches ==== These algorithms use a combination function that is parameterized. The parameters are generally defined for each individual kernel based on single-kernel performance or some computation from the kernel matrix. Examples of these include the kernel from Tenabe et al. (2008). Letting π m {\displaystyle \pi _{m}} be the accuracy obtained using only K m {\displaystyle K_{m}} , and letting δ {\displaystyle \delta } be a threshold less than the minimum of the single-kernel accuracies, we can define β m = π m − δ ∑ h = 1 n ( π h − δ ) {\displaystyle \beta _{m}={\frac {\pi _{m}-\delta }{\sum _{h=1}^{n}(\pi _{h}-\delta )}}} Other approaches use a definition of kernel similarity, such as A ( K 1 , K 2 ) = ⟨ K 1 , K 2 ⟩ ⟨ K 1 , K 1 ⟩ ⟨ K 2 , K 2 ⟩ {\displaystyle A(K_{1},K_{2})={\frac {\langle K_{1},K_{2}\rangle }{\sqrt {\langle K_{1},K_{1}\rangle \langle K_{2},K_{2}\rangle }}}} Using this measure, Qui and Lane (2009) used the following heuristic to define β m = A ( K m , Y Y T ) ∑ h = 1 n A ( K h , Y Y T ) {\displaystyle \beta _{m}={\frac {A(K_{m},YY^{T})}{\sum _{h=1}^{n}A(K_{h},YY^{T})}}} ==== Optimization approaches ==== These approaches solve an optimization problem to determine parameters for the kernel combination function. This has been done with similarity measures and structural risk minimization approaches. For similarity measures such as the one defined above, the problem can be formulated as follows: max β , tr ⁡ ( K t r a ′ ) = 1 , K ′ ≥ 0 A ( K t r a ′ , Y Y T ) . {\displaystyle \max _{\beta ,\operatorname {tr} (K'_{tra})=1,K'\geq 0}A(K'_{tra},YY^{T}).} where K t r a ′ {\displaystyle K'_{tra}} is the kernel of the training set. Structural risk minimization approaches that have been used include linear approaches, such as that used by Lanckriet et al. (2002). We can define the implausibility of a kernel ω ( K ) {\displaystyle \omega (K)} to be the value of the objective function after solving a canonical SVM problem. We can then solve the following minimization problem: min tr ⁡ ( K t r a ′ ) = c ω ( K t r a ′ ) {\displaystyle \min _{\operatorname {tr} (K'_{tra})=c}\omega (K'_{tra})} where c {\displaystyle c} is a positive constant. Many other variations exist on the same idea, with different methods of refining and solving the problem, e.g. with nonnegative weights for individual kernels and using non-linear combinations of kernels. ==== Bayesian approaches ==== Bayesian approaches put priors on the kernel parameters and learn the parameter values from the priors and the base algorithm. For example, the decision function can be written as f ( x ) = ∑ i = 0 n α i ∑ m = 1 p η m K m ( x i m , x m ) {\displaystyle f(x)=\sum _{i=0}^{n}\alpha _{i}\sum _{m=1}^{p}\eta _{m}K_{m}(x_{i}^{m},x^{m})} η {\displaystyle \eta } can be modeled with a Dirichlet prior and α {\displaystyle \alpha } can be modeled with a zero-mean Gaussian and an inverse gamma variance prior. This model is then optimized using a customized multinomial probit approach with a Gibbs sampler. These methods have been used successfully in applications such as protein fold recognition and protein homology problems ==== Boosting approaches ==== Boosting approaches add new kernels iteratively until some stopping criteria that is a function of performance is reached. An example of this is the MARK model developed by Bennett et al. (2002) f ( x ) = ∑ i = 1 N ∑ m = 1 P α i m K m ( x i m , x m ) + b {\displaystyle f(x)=\sum _{i=1}^{N}\sum _{m=1}^{P}\alpha _{i}^{m}K_{m}(x_{i}^{m},x^{m})+b} The parameters α i m {\displaystyle \alpha _{i}^{m}} and b {\displaystyle b} are learned by gradient descent on a coordinate basis. In this way, each iteration of the descent algorithm identifies the best kernel column to choose at each particular iteration and adds that to the combined kernel. The model is then rerun to generate the optimal weights α i {\displaystyle \alpha _{i}} and b {\displaystyle b} . === Semisupervised learning === Semisupervised learning approaches to multiple kernel learning are similar to other extensions of supervised learning approaches. An inductive procedure has been developed that uses a log-likelihood empirical loss and group LASSO regularization with conditional expectation consensus on unlabeled data for image categorization. We can define the problem as follows. Let L = ( x i , y i ) {\displaystyle L={(x_{i},y_{i})}} be the labeled data, and let U = x i {\displaystyle U={x_{i}}} be the set of unlabeled data. Then, we can write the decision function as follows. f ( x ) = α 0 + ∑ i = 1 | L | α i K i ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)=\alpha _{0}+\sum _{i=1}^{|L|}\alpha _{i}K_{i}(x)} The problem can be written as min f L ( f ) + λ R ( f ) + γ Θ ( f ) {\displaystyle \min _{f}L(f)+\lambda R(f)+\gamma \Theta (f)} where L {\displaystyle L} is the loss function (weighted negative log-likelihood in this case), R {\displaystyle R} is the regularization parameter (Group LASSO in this case), and Θ {\displaystyle \Theta } is the conditional expectation consensus (CEC) penalty on unlabeled data. The CEC penalty is defined as follows. Let the marginal kernel density for all the data be g m π ( x ) = ⟨ ϕ m π , ψ m ( x ) ⟩ {\displaystyle g_{m}^{\pi }(x)=\langle \phi _{m}^{\pi },\psi _{m}(x)\rangle } where ψ m ( x ) = [ K m ( x 1 , x ) , … , K m ( x L , x ) ] T {\displaystyle \psi _{m}(x)=[K_{m}(x_{1},x),\ldots ,K_{m}(x_{L},x)]^{T}} (the kernel distance between the labe

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