Best AI Image Generators

Best AI Image Generators — hands-on reviews, top picks, pricing, pros and cons and a practical how-to guide on Aizhi.

  • Airfair

    Airfair

    AirFair was a mobile travel application that checks flights, and shows whether a traveler is owed compensation. == History == AirFair was developed in 2016 by Allay Logic Ltd; a Newcastle-based tech-company. == Services == AirFair offered a free flight check to see if compensation is owed. The app could indicate how much the person is owed within minutes whether the flight was delayed, cancelled or the traveler is refused boarding.

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  • Multi-label classification

    Multi-label classification

    In machine learning, multi-label classification or multi-output classification is a variant of the classification problem where multiple nonexclusive labels may be assigned to each instance. Multi-label classification is a generalization of multiclass classification, which is the single-label problem of categorizing instances into precisely one of several (greater than or equal to two) classes. In the multi-label problem the labels are nonexclusive and there is no constraint on how many of the classes the instance can be assigned to. The formulation of multi-label learning was first introduced by Shen et al. in the context of Semantic Scene Classification, and later gained popularity across various areas of machine learning. Formally, multi-label classification is the problem of finding a model that maps inputs x to binary vectors y; that is, it assigns a value of 0 or 1 for each element (label) in y. == Problem transformation methods == Several problem transformation methods exist for multi-label classification, and can be roughly broken down into: === Transformation into binary classification problems === The baseline approach, called the binary relevance method, amounts to independently training one binary classifier for each label. Given an unseen sample, the combined model then predicts all labels for this sample for which the respective classifiers predict a positive result. Although this method of dividing the task into multiple binary tasks may resemble superficially the one-vs.-all (OvA) and one-vs.-rest (OvR) methods for multiclass classification, it is essentially different from both, because a single classifier under binary relevance deals with a single label, without any regard to other labels whatsoever. A classifier chain is an alternative method for transforming a multi-label classification problem into several binary classification problems. It differs from binary relevance in that labels are predicted sequentially, and the output of all previous classifiers (i.e. positive or negative for a particular label) are input as features to subsequent classifiers. Classifier chains have been applied, for instance, in HIV drug resistance prediction. Bayesian network has also been applied to optimally order classifiers in Classifier chains. In case of transforming the problem to multiple binary classifications, the likelihood function reads L = ∏ i = 1 n ( ∏ k ( ∏ j k ( p k , j k ( x i ) δ y i , k , j k ) ) ) {\displaystyle L=\prod _{i=1}^{n}(\prod _{k}(\prod _{j_{k}}(p_{k,j_{k}}(x_{i})^{\delta _{y_{i,k},j_{k}}})))} where index i {\displaystyle i} runs over the samples, index k {\displaystyle k} runs over the labels, j k {\displaystyle j_{k}} indicates the binary outcomes 0 or 1, δ a , b {\displaystyle \delta _{a,b}} indicates the Kronecker delta, y i , k ∈ 0 , 1 {\displaystyle y_{i,k}\in {0,1}} indicates the multiple hot encoded labels of sample i {\displaystyle i} . === Transformation into multi-class classification problem === The label powerset (LP) transformation creates one binary classifier for every label combination present in the training set. For example, if possible labels for an example were A, B, and C, the label powerset representation of this problem is a multi-class classification problem with the classes [0 0 0], [1 0 0], [0 1 0], [0 0 1], [1 1 0], [1 0 1], [0 1 1], and [1 1 1] where for example [1 0 1] denotes an example where labels A and C are present and label B is absent. === Ensemble methods === A set of multi-class classifiers can be used to create a multi-label ensemble classifier. For a given example, each classifier outputs a single class (corresponding to a single label in the multi-label problem). These predictions are then combined by an ensemble method, usually a voting scheme where every class that receives a requisite percentage of votes from individual classifiers (often referred to as the discrimination threshold) is predicted as a present label in the multi-label output. However, more complex ensemble methods exist, such as committee machines. Another variation is the random k-labelsets (RAKEL) algorithm, which uses multiple LP classifiers, each trained on a random subset of the actual labels; label prediction is then carried out by a voting scheme. A set of multi-label classifiers can be used in a similar way to create a multi-label ensemble classifier. In this case, each classifier votes once for each label it predicts rather than for a single label. == Adapted algorithms == Some classification algorithms/models have been adapted to the multi-label task, without requiring problem transformations. Examples of these including for multi-label data are k-nearest neighbors: the ML-kNN algorithm extends the k-NN classifier to multi-label data. decision trees: "Clare" is an adapted C4.5 algorithm for multi-label classification; the modification involves the entropy calculations. MMC, MMDT, and SSC refined MMDT, can classify multi-labeled data based on multi-valued attributes without transforming the attributes into single-values. They are also named multi-valued and multi-labeled decision tree classification methods. kernel methods for vector output neural networks: BP-MLL is an adaptation of the popular back-propagation algorithm for multi-label learning. == Learning paradigms == Based on learning paradigms, the existing multi-label classification techniques can be classified into batch learning and online machine learning. Batch learning algorithms require all the data samples to be available beforehand. It trains the model using the entire training data and then predicts the test sample using the found relationship. The online learning algorithms, on the other hand, incrementally build their models in sequential iterations. In iteration t, an online algorithm receives a sample, xt and predicts its label(s) ŷt using the current model; the algorithm then receives yt, the true label(s) of xt and updates its model based on the sample-label pair: (xt, yt). == Multi-label stream classification == Data streams are possibly infinite sequences of data that continuously and rapidly grow over time. Multi-label stream classification (MLSC) is the version of multi-label classification task that takes place in data streams. It is sometimes also called online multi-label classification. The difficulties of multi-label classification (exponential number of possible label sets, capturing dependencies between labels) are combined with difficulties of data streams (time and memory constraints, addressing infinite stream with finite means, concept drifts). Many MLSC methods resort to ensemble methods in order to increase their predictive performance and deal with concept drifts. Below are the most widely used ensemble methods in the literature: Online Bagging (OzaBagging)-based methods: Observing the probability of having K many of a certain data point in a bootstrap sample is approximately Poisson(1) for big datasets, each incoming data instance in a data stream can be weighted proportional to Poisson(1) distribution to mimic bootstrapping in an online setting. This is called Online Bagging (OzaBagging). Many multi-label methods that use Online Bagging are proposed in the literature, each of which utilizes different problem transformation methods. EBR, ECC, EPS, EBRT, EBMT, ML-Random Rules are examples of such methods. ADWIN Bagging-based methods: Online Bagging methods for MLSC are sometimes combined with explicit concept drift detection mechanisms such as ADWIN (Adaptive Window). ADWIN keeps a variable-sized window to detect changes in the distribution of the data, and improves the ensemble by resetting the components that perform poorly when there is a drift in the incoming data. Generally, the letter 'a' is used as a subscript in the name of such ensembles to indicate the usage of ADWIN change detector. EaBR, EaCC, EaHTPS are examples of such multi-label ensembles. GOOWE-ML-based methods: Interpreting the relevance scores of each component of the ensemble as vectors in the label space and solving a least squares problem at the end of each batch, Geometrically-Optimum Online-Weighted Ensemble for Multi-label Classification (GOOWE-ML) is proposed. The ensemble tries to minimize the distance between the weighted prediction of its components and the ground truth vector for each instance over a batch. Unlike Online Bagging and ADWIN Bagging, GOOWE-ML utilizes a weighted voting scheme where better performing components of the ensemble are given more weight. The GOOWE-ML ensemble grows over time, and the lowest weight component is replaced by a new component when it is full at the end of a batch. GOBR, GOCC, GOPS, GORT are the proposed GOOWE-ML-based multi-label ensembles. Multiple Windows : Here, BR models that use a sliding window are replaced with two windows for each label, one for relevant and one for non-relevant examples. Instances are oversampled or undersampled according to a load factor that is kept

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  • Error-driven learning

    Error-driven learning

    In reinforcement learning, error-driven learning is a method for adjusting a model's (intelligent agent's) parameters based on the difference between its output results and the ground truth. These models stand out as they depend on environmental feedback, rather than explicit labels or categories. They are based on the idea that language acquisition involves the minimization of the prediction error (MPSE). By leveraging these prediction errors, the models consistently refine expectations and decrease computational complexity. Typically, these algorithms are operated by the GeneRec algorithm. Error-driven learning has widespread applications in cognitive sciences and computer vision. These methods have also found successful application in natural language processing (NLP), including areas like part-of-speech tagging, parsing, named entity recognition (NER), machine translation (MT), speech recognition (SR), and dialogue systems. == Formal Definition == Error-driven learning models are ones that rely on the feedback of prediction errors to adjust the expectations or parameters of a model. The key components of error-driven learning include the following: A set S {\displaystyle S} of states representing the different situations that the learner can encounter. A set A {\displaystyle A} of actions that the learner can take in each state. A prediction function P ( s , a ) {\displaystyle P(s,a)} that gives the learner's current prediction of the outcome of taking action a {\displaystyle a} in state s {\displaystyle s} . An error function E ( o , p ) {\displaystyle E(o,p)} that compares the actual outcome o {\displaystyle o} with the prediction p {\displaystyle p} and produces an error value. An update rule U ( p , e ) {\displaystyle U(p,e)} that adjusts the prediction p {\displaystyle p} in light of the error e {\displaystyle e} . == Algorithms == Error-driven learning algorithms refer to a category of reinforcement learning algorithms that leverage the disparity between the real output and the expected output of a system to regulate the system's parameters. Typically applied in supervised learning, these algorithms are provided with a collection of input-output pairs to facilitate the process of generalization. The widely utilized error backpropagation learning algorithm is known as GeneRec, a generalized recirculation algorithm primarily employed for gene prediction in DNA sequences. Many other error-driven learning algorithms are derived from alternative versions of GeneRec. == Applications == === Cognitive science === Simpler error-driven learning models effectively capture complex human cognitive phenomena and anticipate elusive behaviors. They provide a flexible mechanism for modeling the brain's learning process, encompassing perception, attention, memory, and decision-making. By using errors as guiding signals, these algorithms adeptly adapt to changing environmental demands and objectives, capturing statistical regularities and structure. Furthermore, cognitive science has led to the creation of new error-driven learning algorithms that are both biologically acceptable and computationally efficient. These algorithms, including deep belief networks, spiking neural networks, and reservoir computing, follow the principles and constraints of the brain and nervous system. Their primary aim is to capture the emergent properties and dynamics of neural circuits and systems. === Computer vision === Computer vision is a complex task that involves understanding and interpreting visual data, such as images or videos. In the context of error-driven learning, the computer vision model learns from the mistakes it makes during the interpretation process. When an error is encountered, the model updates its internal parameters to avoid making the same mistake in the future. This repeated process of learning from errors helps improve the model's performance over time. For NLP to do well at computer vision, it employs deep learning techniques. This form of computer vision is sometimes called neural computer vision (NCV), since it makes use of neural networks. NCV therefore interprets visual data based on a statistical, trial and error approach and can deal with context and other subtleties of visual data. === Natural Language Processing === ==== Part-of-speech tagging ==== Part-of-speech (POS) tagging is a crucial component in Natural Language Processing (NLP). It helps resolve human language ambiguity at different analysis levels. In addition, its output (tagged data) can be used in various applications of NLP such as information extraction, information retrieval, question Answering, speech eecognition, text-to-speech conversion, partial parsing, and grammar correction. ==== Parsing ==== Parsing in NLP involves breaking down a text into smaller pieces (phrases) based on grammar rules. If a sentence cannot be parsed, it may contain grammatical errors. In the context of error-driven learning, the parser learns from the mistakes it makes during the parsing process. When an error is encountered, the parser updates its internal model to avoid making the same mistake in the future. This iterative process of learning from errors helps improve the parser's performance over time. In conclusion, error-driven learning plays a crucial role in improving the accuracy and efficiency of NLP parsers by allowing them to learn from their mistakes and adapt their internal models accordingly. ==== Named entity recognition (NER) ==== NER is the task of identifying and classifying entities (such as persons, locations, organizations, etc.) in a text. Error-driven learning can help the model learn from its false positives and false negatives and improve its recall and precision on (NER). In the context of error-driven learning, the significance of NER is quite profound. Traditional sequence labeling methods identify nested entities layer by layer. If an error occurs in the recognition of an inner entity, it can lead to incorrect identification of the outer entity, leading to a problem known as error propagation of nested entities. This is where the role of NER becomes crucial in error-driven learning. By accurately recognizing and classifying entities, it can help minimize these errors and improve the overall accuracy of the learning process. Furthermore, deep learning-based NER methods have shown to be more accurate as they are capable of assembling words, enabling them to understand the semantic and syntactic relationship between various words better. ==== Machine translation ==== Machine translation is a complex task that involves converting text from one language to another. In the context of error-driven learning, the machine translation model learns from the mistakes it makes during the translation process. When an error is encountered, the model updates its internal parameters to avoid making the same mistake in the future. This iterative process of learning from errors helps improve the model's performance over time. ==== Speech recognition ==== Speech recognition is a complex task that involves converting spoken language into written text. In the context of error-driven learning, the speech recognition model learns from the mistakes it makes during the recognition process. When an error is encountered, the model updates its internal parameters to avoid making the same mistake in the future. This iterative process of learning from errors helps improve the model's performance over time. ==== Dialogue systems ==== Dialogue systems are a popular NLP task as they have promising real-life applications. They are also complicated tasks since many NLP tasks deserving study are involved. In the context of error-driven learning, the dialogue system learns from the mistakes it makes during the dialogue process. When an error is encountered, the model updates its internal parameters to avoid making the same mistake in the future. This iterative process of learning from errors helps improve the model's performance over time. == Advantages == Error-driven learning has several advantages over other types of machine learning algorithms: They can learn from feedback and correct their mistakes, which makes them adaptive and robust to noise and changes in the data. They can handle large and high-dimensional data sets, as they do not require explicit feature engineering or prior knowledge of the data distribution. They can achieve high accuracy and performance, as they can learn complex and nonlinear relationships between the input and the output. == Limitations == Although error driven learning has its advantages, their algorithms also have the following limitations: They can suffer from overfitting, which means that they memorize the training data and fail to generalize to new and unseen data. This can be mitigated by using regularization techniques, such as adding a penalty term to the loss function, or reducing the complexity of the model. They can be sensitive to the choice of

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  • Analogical modeling

    Analogical modeling

    Analogical modeling (AM) is a formal theory of exemplar based analogical reasoning, proposed by Royal Skousen, professor of Linguistics and English language at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. It is applicable to language modeling and other categorization tasks. Analogical modeling is related to connectionism and nearest neighbor approaches, in that it is data-based rather than abstraction-based; but it is distinguished by its ability to cope with imperfect datasets (such as caused by simulated short term memory limits) and to base predictions on all relevant segments of the dataset, whether near or far. In language modeling, AM has successfully predicted empirically valid forms for which no theoretical explanation was known (see the discussion of Finnish morphology in Skousen et al. 2002). == Implementation == === Overview === An exemplar-based model consists of a general-purpose modeling engine and a problem-specific dataset. Within the dataset, each exemplar (a case to be reasoned from, or an informative past experience) appears as a feature vector: a row of values for the set of parameters that define the problem. For example, in a spelling-to-sound task, the feature vector might consist of the letters of a word. Each exemplar in the dataset is stored with an outcome, such as a phoneme or phone to be generated. When the model is presented with a novel situation (in the form of an outcome-less feature vector), the engine algorithmically sorts the dataset to find exemplars that helpfully resemble it, and selects one, whose outcome is the model's prediction. The particulars of the algorithm distinguish one exemplar-based modeling system from another. In AM, we think of the feature values as characterizing a context, and the outcome as a behavior that occurs within that context. Accordingly, the novel situation is known as the given context. Given the known features of the context, the AM engine systematically generates all contexts that include it (all of its supracontexts), and extracts from the dataset the exemplars that belong to each. The engine then discards those supracontexts whose outcomes are inconsistent (this measure of consistency will be discussed further below), leaving an analogical set of supracontexts, and probabilistically selects an exemplar from the analogical set with a bias toward those in large supracontexts. This multilevel search exponentially magnifies the likelihood of a behavior's being predicted as it occurs reliably in settings that specifically resemble the given context. === Analogical modeling in detail === AM performs the same process for each case it is asked to evaluate. The given context, consisting of n variables, is used as a template to generate 2 n {\displaystyle 2^{n}} supracontexts. Each supracontext is a set of exemplars in which one or more variables have the same values that they do in the given context, and the other variables are ignored. In effect, each is a view of the data, created by filtering for some criteria of similarity to the given context, and the total set of supracontexts exhausts all such views. Alternatively, each supracontext is a theory of the task or a proposed rule whose predictive power needs to be evaluated. It is important to note that the supracontexts are not equal peers one with another; they are arranged by their distance from the given context, forming a hierarchy. If a supracontext specifies all of the variables that another one does and more, it is a subcontext of that other one, and it lies closer to the given context. (The hierarchy is not strictly branching; each supracontext can itself be a subcontext of several others, and can have several subcontexts.) This hierarchy becomes significant in the next step of the algorithm. The engine now chooses the analogical set from among the supracontexts. A supracontext may contain exemplars that only exhibit one behavior; it is deterministically homogeneous and is included. It is a view of the data that displays regularity, or a relevant theory that has never yet been disproven. A supracontext may exhibit several behaviors, but contain no exemplars that occur in any more specific supracontext (that is, in any of its subcontexts); in this case it is non-deterministically homogeneous and is included. Here there is no great evidence that a systematic behavior occurs, but also no counterargument. Finally, a supracontext may be heterogeneous, meaning that it exhibits behaviors that are found in a subcontext (closer to the given context), and also behaviors that are not. Where the ambiguous behavior of the nondeterministically homogeneous supracontext was accepted, this is rejected because the intervening subcontext demonstrates that there is a better theory to be found. The heterogeneous supracontext is therefore excluded. This guarantees that we see an increase in meaningfully consistent behavior in the analogical set as we approach the given context. With the analogical set chosen, each appearance of an exemplar (for a given exemplar may appear in several of the analogical supracontexts) is given a pointer to every other appearance of an exemplar within its supracontexts. One of these pointers is then selected at random and followed, and the exemplar to which it points provides the outcome. This gives each supracontext an importance proportional to the square of its size, and makes each exemplar likely to be selected in direct proportion to the sum of the sizes of all analogically consistent supracontexts in which it appears. Then, of course, the probability of predicting a particular outcome is proportional to the summed probabilities of all the exemplars that support it. (Skousen 2002, in Skousen et al. 2002, pp. 11–25, and Skousen 2003, both passim) === Formulas === Given a context with n {\displaystyle n} elements: total number of pairings: n 2 {\displaystyle n^{2}} number of agreements for outcome i: n i 2 {\displaystyle n_{i}^{2}} number of disagreements for outcome i: n i ( n − n i ) {\displaystyle n_{i}(n-n_{i})} total number of agreements: ∑ n i 2 {\displaystyle \sum {n_{i}^{2}}} total number of disagreements: ∑ n i ( n − n i ) = n 2 − ∑ n i 2 {\displaystyle \sum {n_{i}(n-n_{i})}=n^{2}-\sum {n_{i}^{2}}} === Example === This terminology is best understood through an example. In the example used in the second chapter of Skousen (1989), each context consists of three variables with potential values 0-3 Variable 1: 0,1,2,3 Variable 2: 0,1,2,3 Variable 3: 0,1,2,3 The two outcomes for the dataset are e and r, and the exemplars are: 3 1 0 e 0 3 2 r 2 1 0 r 2 1 2 r 3 1 1 r We define a network of pointers like so: The solid lines represent pointers between exemplars with matching outcomes; the dotted lines represent pointers between exemplars with non-matching outcomes. The statistics for this example are as follows: n = 5 {\displaystyle n=5} n r = 4 {\displaystyle n_{r}=4} n e = 1 {\displaystyle n_{e}=1} total number of pairings: n 2 = 25 {\displaystyle n^{2}=25} number of agreements for outcome r: n r 2 = 16 {\displaystyle n_{r}^{2}=16} number of agreements for outcome e: n e 2 = 1 {\displaystyle n_{e}^{2}=1} number of disagreements for outcome r: n r ( n − n r ) = 4 {\displaystyle n_{r}(n-n_{r})=4} number of disagreements for outcome e: n e ( n − n e ) = 4 {\displaystyle n_{e}(n-n_{e})=4} total number of agreements: n r 2 + n e 2 = 17 {\displaystyle n_{r}^{2}+n_{e}^{2}=17} total number of disagreements: n r ( n − n r ) + n e ( n − n e ) = n 2 − ( n r 2 + n e 2 ) = 8 {\displaystyle n_{r}(n-n_{r})+n_{e}(n-n_{e})=n^{2}-(n_{r}^{2}+n_{e}^{2})=8} uncertainty or fraction of disagreement: 8 / 25 = .32 {\displaystyle 8/25=.32} Behavior can only be predicted for a given context; in this example, let us predict the outcome for the context "3 1 2". To do this, we first find all of the contexts containing the given context; these contexts are called supracontexts. We find the supracontexts by systematically eliminating the variables in the given context; with m variables, there will generally be 2 m {\displaystyle 2^{m}} supracontexts. The following table lists each of the sub- and supracontexts; x means "not x", and - means "anything". These contexts are shown in the venn diagram below: The next step is to determine which exemplars belong to which contexts in order to determine which of the contexts are homogeneous. The table below shows each of the subcontexts, their behavior in terms of the given exemplars, and the number of disagreements within the behavior: Analyzing the subcontexts in the table above, we see that there is only 1 subcontext with any disagreements: "3 1 2", which in the dataset consists of "3 1 0 e" and "3 1 1 r". There are 2 disagreements in this subcontext; 1 pointing from each of the exemplars to the other (see the pointer network pictured above). Therefore, only supracontexts containing this subcontext will contain any disagreements. We use a simple rule to identify the homogeneous supraco

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  • Vision transformer

    Vision transformer

    A vision transformer (ViT) is a transformer designed for computer vision. A ViT decomposes an input image into a series of patches (rather than text into tokens), serializes each patch into a vector, and maps it to a smaller dimension with a single matrix multiplication. These vector embeddings are then processed by a transformer encoder as if they were token embeddings. ViTs were designed as alternatives to convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in computer vision applications. They have different inductive biases, training stability, and data efficiency. Compared to CNNs, ViTs are less data efficient, but have higher capacity. Some of the largest modern computer vision models are ViTs, such as one with 22B parameters. Subsequent to its publication, many variants were proposed, with hybrid architectures with both features of ViTs and CNNs. ViTs have found application in image recognition, image segmentation, weather prediction, and autonomous driving. == History == Transformers were introduced in Attention Is All You Need (2017), and have found widespread use in natural language processing. A 2019 paper applied ideas from the Transformer to computer vision. Specifically, they started with a ResNet, a standard convolutional neural network used for computer vision, and replaced all convolutional kernels by the self-attention mechanism found in a Transformer. It resulted in superior performance. However, it is not a Vision Transformer. In 2020, an encoder-only Transformer was adapted for computer vision, yielding the ViT, which reached state of the art in image classification, overcoming the previous dominance of CNN. The masked autoencoder (2022) extended ViT to work with unsupervised training. The vision transformer and the masked autoencoder, in turn, stimulated new developments in convolutional neural networks. Subsequently, there was cross-fertilization between the previous CNN approach and the ViT approach. In 2021, some important variants of the Vision Transformers were proposed. These variants are mainly intended to be more efficient, more accurate or better suited to a specific domain. Two studies improved efficiency and robustness of ViT by adding a CNN as a preprocessor. The Swin Transformer achieved state-of-the-art results on some object detection datasets such as COCO, by using convolution-like sliding windows of attention mechanism, and the pyramid process in classical computer vision. == Overview == The basic architecture, used by the original 2020 paper, is as follows. In summary, it is a BERT-like encoder-only Transformer. The input image is of type R H × W × C {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{H\times W\times C}} , where H , W , C {\displaystyle H,W,C} are height, width, channel (RGB). It is then split into square-shaped patches of type R P × P × C {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{P\times P\times C}} . For each patch, the patch is pushed through a linear operator, to obtain a vector ("patch embedding"). The position of the patch is also transformed into a vector by "position encoding" (the paper tried no embedding, 1D embedding, 2D embedding, and relative embedding: 1D was adopted). The two vectors are added, then pushed through several Transformer encoders. The attention mechanism in a ViT repeatedly transforms representation vectors of image patches, incorporating more and more semantic relations between image patches in an image. This is analogous to how in natural language processing, as representation vectors flow through a transformer, they incorporate more and more semantic relations between words, from syntax to semantics. The above architecture turns an image into a sequence of vector representations. To use these for downstream applications, an additional head needs to be trained to interpret them. For example, to use it for classification, one can add a shallow MLP on top of it that outputs a probability distribution over classes. The original paper uses a linear-GeLU-linear-softmax network. == Variants == === Original ViT === The original ViT was an encoder-only Transformer supervise-trained to predict the image label from the patches of the image. As in the case of BERT, it uses a special token in the input side, and the corresponding output vector is used as the only input of the final output MLP head. The special token is an architectural hack to allow the model to compress all information relevant for predicting the image label into one vector. Transformers found their initial applications in natural language processing tasks, as demonstrated by language models such as BERT and GPT-3. By contrast the typical image processing system uses a convolutional neural network (CNN). Well-known projects include Xception, ResNet, EfficientNet, DenseNet, and Inception. Transformers measure the relationships between pairs of input tokens (words in the case of text strings), termed attention. The cost is quadratic in the number of tokens. For images, the basic unit of analysis is the pixel. However, computing relationships for every pixel pair in a typical image is prohibitive in terms of memory and computation. Instead, ViT computes relationships among pixels in various small sections of the image (e.g., 16x16 pixels), at a drastically reduced cost. The sections (with positional embeddings) are placed in a sequence. The embeddings are learnable vectors. Each section is arranged into a linear sequence and multiplied by the embedding matrix. The result, with the position embedding is fed to the transformer. === Architectural improvements === ==== Pooling ==== After the ViT processes an image, it produces some embedding vectors. These must be converted to a single class probability prediction by some kind of network. In the original ViT and Masked Autoencoder, they used a dummy [CLS] token, in emulation of the BERT language model. The output at [CLS] is the classification token, which is then processed by a LayerNorm-feedforward-softmax module into a probability distribution. Global average pooling (GAP) does not use the dummy token, but simply takes the average of all output tokens as the classification token. It was mentioned in the original ViT as being equally good. Multihead attention pooling (MAP) applies a multiheaded attention block to pooling. Specifically, it takes as input a list of vectors x 1 , x 2 , … , x n {\displaystyle x_{1},x_{2},\dots ,x_{n}} , which might be thought of as the output vectors of a layer of a ViT. The output from MAP is M u l t i h e a d e d A t t e n t i o n ( Q , V , V ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {MultiheadedAttention} (Q,V,V)} , where q {\displaystyle q} is a trainable query vector, and V {\displaystyle V} is the matrix with rows being x 1 , x 2 , … , x n {\displaystyle x_{1},x_{2},\dots ,x_{n}} . This was first proposed in the Set Transformer architecture. Later papers demonstrated that GAP and MAP both perform better than BERT-like pooling. A variant of MAP was proposed as class attention, which applies MAP, then feedforward, then MAP again. Re-attention was proposed to allow training deep ViT. It changes the multiheaded attention module. === Masked Autoencoder === The Masked Autoencoder took inspiration from denoising autoencoders and context encoders. It has two ViTs put end-to-end. The first one ("encoder") takes in image patches with positional encoding, and outputs vectors representing each patch. The second one (called "decoder", even though it is still an encoder-only Transformer) takes in vectors with positional encoding and outputs image patches again. ==== Training ==== During training, input images (224px x 224 px in the original implementation) are split along a designated number of lines on each axis, producing image patches. A certain percentage of patches are selected to be masked out by mask tokens, while all others are retained in the image. The network is tasked with reconstructing the image from the remaining unmasked patches. Mask tokens in the original implementation are learnable vector quantities. A linear projection with positional embeddings is then applied to the vector of unmasked patches. Experiments varying mask ratio on networks trained on the ImageNet-1K dataset found 75% mask ratios achieved high performance on both finetuning and linear-probing of the encoder's latent space. The MAE processes only unmasked patches during training, increasing the efficiency of data processing in the encoder and lowering the memory usage of the transformer. A less computationally-intensive ViT is used for the decoder in the original implementation of the MAE. Masked patches are added back to the output of the encoder block as mask tokens and both are fed into the decoder. A reconstruction loss is computed for the masked patches to assess network performance. ==== Prediction ==== In prediction, the decoder architecture is discarded entirely. The input image is split into patches by the same algorithm as in training, but no patches are masked out. A linear projection wi

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  • Plate notation

    Plate notation

    In Bayesian inference, plate notation is a method of representing variables that repeat in a graphical model. Instead of drawing each repeated variable individually, a plate or rectangle is used to group variables into a subgraph that repeat together, and a number is drawn on the plate to represent the number of repetitions of the subgraph in the plate. The assumptions are that the subgraph is duplicated that many times, the variables in the subgraph are indexed by the repetition number, and any links that cross a plate boundary are replicated once for each subgraph repetition. == Example == In this example, we consider Latent Dirichlet allocation, a Bayesian network that models how documents in a corpus are topically related. There are two variables not in any plate; α is the parameter of the uniform Dirichlet prior on the per-document topic distributions, and β is the parameter of the uniform Dirichlet prior on the per-topic word distribution. The outermost plate represents all the variables related to a specific document, including θ i {\displaystyle \theta _{i}} , the topic distribution for document i. The M in the corner of the plate indicates that the variables inside are repeated M times, once for each document. The inner plate represents the variables associated with each of the N i {\displaystyle N_{i}} words in document i: z i j {\displaystyle z_{ij}} is the topic distribution for the jth word in document i, and w i j {\displaystyle w_{ij}} is the actual word used. The N in the corner represents the repetition of the variables in the inner plate N j {\displaystyle N_{j}} times, once for each word in document i. The circle representing the individual words is shaded, indicating that each w i j {\displaystyle w_{ij}} is observable, and the other circles are empty, indicating that the other variables are latent variables. The directed edges between variables indicate dependencies between the variables: for example, each w i j {\displaystyle w_{ij}} depends on z i j {\displaystyle z_{ij}} and β. == Extensions == A number of extensions have been created by various authors to express more information than simply the conditional relationships. However, few of these have become standard. Perhaps the most commonly used extension is to use rectangles in place of circles to indicate non-random variables—either parameters to be computed, hyperparameters given a fixed value (or computed through empirical Bayes), or variables whose values are computed deterministically from a random variable. The diagram on the right shows a few more non-standard conventions used in some articles in Wikipedia (e.g. variational Bayes): Variables that are actually random vectors are indicated by putting the vector size in brackets in the middle of the node. Variables that are actually random matrices are similarly indicated by putting the matrix size in brackets in the middle of the node, with commas separating row size from column size. Categorical variables are indicated by placing their size (without a bracket) in the middle of the node. Categorical variables that act as "switches", and which pick one or more other random variables to condition on from a large set of such variables (e.g. mixture components), are indicated with a special type of arrow containing a squiggly line and ending in a T junction. Boldface is consistently used for vector or matrix nodes (but not categorical nodes). == Software implementation == Plate notation has been implemented in various TeX/LaTeX drawing packages, but also as part of graphical user interfaces to Bayesian statistics programs such as BUGS and BayesiaLab and PyMC.

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  • SqueezeNet

    SqueezeNet

    SqueezeNet is a deep neural network for image classification released in 2016. SqueezeNet was developed by researchers at DeepScale, University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University. In designing SqueezeNet, the authors' goal was to create a smaller neural network with fewer parameters while achieving competitive accuracy. Their best-performing model achieved the same accuracy as AlexNet on ImageNet classification, but has a size 510x less than it. == Version history == SqueezeNet was originally released on February 22, 2016. This original version of SqueezeNet was implemented on top of the Caffe deep learning software framework. Shortly thereafter, the open-source research community ported SqueezeNet to a number of other deep learning frameworks. On February 26, 2016, Eddie Bell released a port of SqueezeNet for the Chainer deep learning framework. On March 2, 2016, Guo Haria released a port of SqueezeNet for the Apache MXNet framework. On June 3, 2016, Tammy Yang released a port of SqueezeNet for the Keras framework. In 2017, companies including Baidu, Xilinx, Imagination Technologies, and Synopsys demonstrated SqueezeNet running on low-power processing platforms such as smartphones, FPGAs, and custom processors. As of 2018, SqueezeNet ships "natively" as part of the source code of a number of deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, Apache MXNet, and Apple CoreML. In addition, third party developers have created implementations of SqueezeNet that are compatible with frameworks such as TensorFlow. Below is a summary of frameworks that support SqueezeNet. == Relationship to other networks == === AlexNet === SqueezeNet was originally described in SqueezeNet: AlexNet-level accuracy with 50x fewer parameters and <0.5MB model size. AlexNet is a deep neural network that has 240 MB of parameters, and SqueezeNet has just 5 MB of parameters. This small model size can more easily fit into computer memory and can more easily be transmitted over a computer network. However, it's important to note that SqueezeNet is not a "squeezed version of AlexNet." Rather, SqueezeNet is an entirely different DNN architecture than AlexNet. What SqueezeNet and AlexNet have in common is that both of them achieve approximately the same level of accuracy when evaluated on the ImageNet image classification validation dataset. === Model compression === Model compression (e.g. quantization and pruning of model parameters) can be applied to a deep neural network after it has been trained. In the SqueezeNet paper, the authors demonstrated that a model compression technique called Deep Compression can be applied to SqueezeNet to further reduce the size of the parameter file from 5 MB to 500 KB. Deep Compression has also been applied to other DNNs, such as AlexNet and VGG. == Variants == Some of the members of the original SqueezeNet team have continued to develop resource-efficient deep neural networks for a variety of applications. A few of these works are noted in the following table. As with the original SqueezeNet model, the open-source research community has ported and adapted these newer "squeeze"-family models for compatibility with multiple deep learning frameworks. In addition, the open-source research community has extended SqueezeNet to other applications, including semantic segmentation of images and style transfer.

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  • Discrete diffusion model

    Discrete diffusion model

    In machine learning, discrete diffusion models are a class of diffusion models, which themselves are a class of latent variable generative models. Each discrete diffusion model consists of two major components: the forward jump diffusion process, and the reverse jump diffusion process. The goal of diffusion modeling is, given a given dataset and a forward process, to learn a model for the reverse process, such that the reverse process can generate new elements that are distributed similarly as the original dataset. A trained discrete diffusion model can be sampled in many ways, which trades off computational efficiency and sample quality. In general, higher quality data can be obtained, but at the price of higher computational cost. In standard diffusion modeling, the diffusion process takes place over a state space that is continuous space of R n {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{n}} , but over a discrete set S {\displaystyle S} . A discrete set is simply a set where one cannot speak of "infinitesimally close" points. Points can be more or less separated from each other, but the separation is always a finite number. This in particular means the standard framework of continuous diffusion does not apply, since it uses gaussian noise, which is continuous. Nevertheless, an analogous theory can be produced. Discrete diffusion is usually used for language modeling. In practice, the state space S {\displaystyle S} is not only discrete, but finite, so this is what we will assume from now on. == Continuous time Markov process == In the case of continuous state space, during the forward discrete diffusion process, at each step t → t + d t {\displaystyle t\to t+dt} , we mix in an infinitesimal amount of gaussian noise d x t = − 1 2 β ( t ) x t d t + β ( t ) d W t {\displaystyle dx_{t}=-{\frac {1}{2}}\beta (t)x_{t}dt+{\sqrt {\beta (t)}}dW_{t}} . This changes the probability density function, by first a convolution with the density of a gaussian, followed by a scaling. In the case of discrete state space, the gaussian noise must be replaced by a noise that takes values over a finite set. For example, if the noise is the uniform distribution over S {\displaystyle S} , then the probability distribution at time t + d t {\displaystyle t+dt} satisfies q t + d t ( x ) = ( 1 − d t ) q t ( x ) + d t ( 1 | S | ∑ y ∈ S q t ( y ) ) {\displaystyle q_{t+dt}(x)=(1-dt)q_{t}(x)+dt\left({\frac {1}{|S|}}\sum _{y\in S}q_{t}(y)\right)} More succinctly, ∂ t q t ( x ) = − ( 1 − 1 | S | ) q t ( x ) + ∑ y ∈ S , y ≠ x 1 | S | q t ( y ) {\displaystyle \partial _{t}q_{t}(x)=-\left(1-{\frac {1}{|S|}}\right)q_{t}(x)+\sum _{y\in S,y\neq x}{\frac {1}{|S|}}q_{t}(y)} In general, we do not need to convolve with a uniformly distributed noise, but with an arbitrary noise process. That is, we use an arbitrary matrix Q t {\displaystyle Q_{t}} such that ∂ t q t ( y ) = ∑ x ∈ S Q t ( y , x ) q t ( x ) {\displaystyle \partial _{t}q_{t}(y)=\sum _{x\in S}Q_{t}(y,x)q_{t}(x)} where Q t {\displaystyle Q_{t}} is called the rate matrix. Any matrix may be used as a rate matrix if it has non-negative off-diagonals, and each column sums to 0: Q t ( y , x ) ≥ 0 ∀ y ≠ x , ∑ y ∈ S Q t ( y , x ) = 0 ∀ x {\displaystyle Q_{t}(y,x)\geq 0\quad \forall y\neq x,\quad \sum _{y\in S}Q_{t}(y,x)=0\quad \forall x} A continuous time Markov chain (CTMC) is defined by a continuous function Q {\displaystyle Q} that maps any time t ∈ [ 0 , T ) {\displaystyle t\in [0,T)} to a rate matrix Q t {\displaystyle Q_{t}} . Given the function Q {\displaystyle Q} , time-evolution under the CTMC is done as follows: Given state x t {\displaystyle x_{t}} at time t {\displaystyle t} , and given an infinitesimal d t {\displaystyle dt} , the state at t + d t {\displaystyle t+dt} is x t + d t {\displaystyle x_{t+dt}} , such that Pr ( x t + d t | x t ) = { 1 + Q t ( x t + d t , x t ) d t if x t + d t = x t Q t ( x t + d t , x t ) d t else {\displaystyle \Pr(x_{t+dt}|x_{t})={\begin{cases}1+Q_{t}(x_{t+dt},x_{t})dt&{\text{if }}x_{t+dt}=x_{t}\\Q_{t}(x_{t+dt},x_{t})dt&{\text{else}}\end{cases}}} This implies that the probability distribution function evolves according to ∂ t q t ( y ) = ∑ x ∈ S Q t ( y , x ) q t ( x ) {\displaystyle \partial _{t}q_{t}(y)=\sum _{x\in S}Q_{t}(y,x)q_{t}(x)} which is what we previously specified. === Backward process === Similarly to the case of continuous diffusion, in discrete diffusion, there exists a backward diffusion process Q ¯ t {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}_{t}} : s ( x , t ) y := q t ( y ) q t ( x ) , Q ¯ t ( y , x ) := { s ( x , t ) y Q t ( x , y ) if y ≠ x − ∑ y : y ≠ x Q ¯ t ( y , x ) if y = x {\displaystyle s(x,t)_{y}:={\frac {q_{t}(y)}{q_{t}(x)}},\quad {\bar {Q}}_{t}(y,x):={\begin{cases}s(x,t)_{y}Q_{t}(x,y)&{\text{if }}y\neq x\\-\sum _{y:y\neq x}{\bar {Q}}_{t}(y,x)&{\text{if }}y=x\end{cases}}} where s ( x , t ) y {\displaystyle s(x,t)_{y}} should be interpreted as the discrete score or concrete score, since, abusing notation a bit, the score function is ∇ ln ⁡ ρ t ( x ) = 1 d x ( ρ t ( x + d x ) ρ t ( x ) − 1 ) {\displaystyle \nabla \ln \rho _{t}(x)={\frac {1}{dx}}\left({\frac {\rho _{t}(x+dx)}{\rho _{t}(x)}}-1\right)} . If we picture the distribution q t {\displaystyle q_{t}} as a bunch of point-masses, one per state x ∈ S {\displaystyle x\in S} , then the forward diffusion from time t {\displaystyle t} to t + d t {\displaystyle t+dt} is performed by removing Q t ( x , y ) q t ( y ) d t {\displaystyle Q_{t}(x,y)q_{t}(y)dt} from the mass at y {\displaystyle y} and moving it to the mass at x {\displaystyle x} , for each pair x ≠ y {\displaystyle x\neq y} . Thus, the process is reversed in detail by the CTMC defined by Q ¯ {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}} , since Q ¯ t ( y , x ) q t ( x ) = Q t ( x , y ) q t ( y ) {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}_{t}(y,x)q_{t}(x)=Q_{t}(x,y)q_{t}(y)} . Given Q ¯ t {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}_{t}} , if we have a way to sample from q t {\displaystyle q_{t}} , then we can sample from q t − d t {\displaystyle q_{t-dt}} by first sampling x t ∼ q t {\displaystyle x_{t}\sim q_{t}} , then sampling x t − d t {\displaystyle x_{t-dt}} according to Pr ( x t − d t | x t ) = { 1 + Q ¯ t ( x t − d t , x t ) d t if x t − d t = x t Q ¯ t ( x t − d t , x t ) d t else {\displaystyle \Pr(x_{t-dt}|x_{t})={\begin{cases}1+{\bar {Q}}_{t}(x_{t-dt},x_{t})dt&{\text{if }}x_{t-dt}=x_{t}\\{\bar {Q}}_{t}(x_{t-dt},x_{t})dt&{\text{else}}\end{cases}}} === Overall plan of score-matching discrete diffusion modeling === Similar to score-matching continuous diffusion, score-matching discrete diffusion is a method to sample an initial distribution. If we have a certain function s θ {\displaystyle s_{\theta }} that approximates the true score function s θ ( x , t ) y ≈ s ( x , t ) y {\displaystyle s_{\theta }(x,t)_{y}\approx s(x,t)_{y}} , then it allows a corresponding Q ¯ θ {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}^{\theta }} to be defined in the same way. If we also have a base distribution q base {\displaystyle q_{\text{base}}} such that it is easy to sample from, and approximately equal to the true terminal distribution q base ≈ q T {\displaystyle q_{\text{base}}\approx q_{T}} , then we can perform the backward CTMC with Q ¯ θ {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}^{\theta }} and q T θ := q terminal {\displaystyle q_{T}^{\theta }:=q_{\text{terminal}}} . When both approximations are good, the backward CTMC would give q 0 θ ≈ q 0 {\displaystyle q_{0}^{\theta }\approx q_{0}} . This is the idea of score-matching discrete diffusion modeling. If q data {\displaystyle q_{\text{data}}} is sharp, in the sense that for some x , x ′ {\displaystyle x,x'} , we have q data ( x ) ≫ q data ( x ′ ) {\displaystyle q_{\text{data}}(x)\gg q_{\text{data}}(x')} , then the score function would diverge as 1 / t {\displaystyle 1/t} at the t → 0 {\displaystyle t\to 0} limit. To avoid this in practice, it is common to use early stopping, which is to stop the backward process at some time δ > 0 {\displaystyle \delta >0} , and sample from q δ θ {\displaystyle q_{\delta }^{\theta }} instead of q 0 θ {\displaystyle q_{0}^{\theta }} . === Tractable forward processes === The theory of CTMC works for any continuous choice of rate matrices Q {\displaystyle Q} . However, most choices are computationally expensive and cannot be used in practice. In the case of continuous diffusion, the gaussian noise is used for the simple reason that the sum of any number of gaussians is still a gaussian. This allows one to sample any x t ∼ ρ t {\displaystyle x_{t}\sim \rho _{t}} by sampling a single x 0 ∼ ρ 0 {\displaystyle x_{0}\sim \rho _{0}} , followed by a single gaussian noise z ∼ N ( 0 , I ) {\displaystyle z\sim {\mathcal {N}}(0,I)} , and let x t = α ¯ t x 0 + σ t z {\displaystyle x_{t}={\sqrt {{\bar {\alpha }}_{t}}}x_{0}+\sigma _{t}z} , without needing any x s {\displaystyle x_{s}} for any 0 < s < t {\displaystyle 0 Read more →

  • Elasticity (computing)

    Elasticity (computing)

    In computing, elasticity is defined as "the degree to which a system is able to adapt to workload changes by provisioning and de-provisioning resources in an autonomic manner, such that at each point in time the available resources match the current demand as closely as possible". Elasticity is a defining characteristic that differentiates cloud computing from previously proposed distributed computing paradigms, such as grid computing. The dynamic adaptation of capacity, e.g., by altering the use of computing resources, to meet a varying workload is called "elastic computing". In the world of distributed systems, there are several definitions according to the authors; some consider the concepts of scalability a sub-part of elasticity, others as being distinct. == Purpose == Elasticity aims to match the amount of resources allocated to a service with the amount of resources it actually requires, avoiding over- or under-provisioning. Over-provisioning, i.e., allocating more resources than required, should be avoided as it may incur extra costs (monetary, energy, operational, etc.) for unused or underutilized resources. For example, if a website is over-provisioned with two cloud computing resources to handle current demand that only requires one resource, the costs of maintaining the second resource would effectively be wasted. Under-provisioning, i.e., allocating fewer resources than required, must be avoided; otherwise, the service cannot serve its users with a good service. For example, under-provisioning a website may make it seem slow or unreachable, because not enough resources have been allocated to meet current demand. == Example == Elasticity can be illustrated through an example of a service provider who wants to run a website on the cloud. At moment t 0 {\displaystyle t_{0}} , the website is unpopular and a single machine is sufficient to serve all users. At moment t 1 {\displaystyle t_{1}} , the website suddenly becomes popular, and a single machine is no longer sufficient to serve all users. Based on the number of web users simultaneously accessing the website and the resource requirements of the web server, ten machines are needed. An elastic system should immediately detect this condition and provision nine additional machines from the cloud to serve all users responsively. At time t 2 {\displaystyle t_{2}} , the website becomes unpopular again. The ten machines currently allocated to the website are mostly idle and a single machine would be sufficient to serve the few users who are accessing the website. An elastic system should immediately detect this condition and deprovision nine machines, releasing them to the cloud. == Problems == === Resource provisioning time === Resource provisioning takes time. A cloud virtual machine (VM) can be acquired at any time by the user; however, it may take up to several minutes for the acquired VM to be ready to use. The VM startup time is dependent on factors such as image size, VM type, data center location, number of VMs, etc. Cloud providers have different VM startup performance. This implies that any control mechanism designed for elastic applications must consider the time needed for the resource provisioning actions to take effect. === Monitoring elastic applications === Elastic applications can allocate and deallocate resources on demand for specific application components. This makes cloud resources volatile, and traditional monitoring tools which associate monitoring data with a particular resource, such as Ganglia or Nagios, are no longer suitable for monitoring the behavior of elastic applications. For example, during its lifetime, a data storage tier of an elastic application might add and remove data storage VMs due to cost and performance requirements, varying the number of used VMs. Thus, additional information is needed in monitoring elastic applications, such as associating the logical application structure over the underlying virtual infrastructure. This in turn generates other problems, such as data aggregation from multiple VMs towards extracting the behavior of the application component running on top of those VMs, as different metrics may need to be aggregated differently (e.g., CPU usage could be averaged, network transfer might be summed up). === Stakeholder requirements === When deploying applications in cloud infrastructures (IaaS/PaaS), stakeholder requirements need to be considered in order to ensure that elastic behavior meets stakeholder needs. Traditionally, the optimal trade-off between cost and quality or performance is considered; however, for real world cloud users, requirements regarding elastic behavior are more complex and target multiple dimensions of elasticity (e.g., SYBL). === Multiple levels of control === Cloud applications vary in type and complexity, with multiple levels of artifacts deployed in layers. Controlling such structures must take into consideration a variety of issues. For multi-level control, control systems need to consider the impact lower level control has upon higher level ones, and vice versa (e.g., controlling virtual machines, web containers, or web services in the same time), as well as conflicts that may appear between various control strategies from various levels. Elastic strategies on in cloud computing can take advantage of control-theoretic methods (e.g., predictive control has been experimented in cloud computing scenarios by showing considerable advantages with respect to reactive methods). One approach to multi-level elastic clouc control is rSYBL.

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  • Jackknife variance estimates for random forest

    Jackknife variance estimates for random forest

    In statistics, jackknife variance estimates for random forest are a way to estimate the variance in random forest models, in order to eliminate the bootstrap effects. == Jackknife variance estimates == The sampling variance of bagged learners is: V ( x ) = V a r [ θ ^ ∞ ( x ) ] {\displaystyle V(x)=Var[{\hat {\theta }}^{\infty }(x)]} Jackknife estimates can be considered to eliminate the bootstrap effects. The jackknife variance estimator is defined as: V ^ j = n − 1 n ∑ i = 1 n ( θ ^ ( − i ) − θ ¯ ) 2 {\displaystyle {\hat {V}}_{j}={\frac {n-1}{n}}\sum _{i=1}^{n}({\hat {\theta }}_{(-i)}-{\overline {\theta }})^{2}} In some classification problems, when random forest is used to fit models, jackknife estimated variance is defined as: V ^ j = n − 1 n ∑ i = 1 n ( t ¯ ( − i ) ⋆ ( x ) − t ¯ ⋆ ( x ) ) 2 {\displaystyle {\hat {V}}_{j}={\frac {n-1}{n}}\sum _{i=1}^{n}({\overline {t}}_{(-i)}^{\star }(x)-{\overline {t}}^{\star }(x))^{2}} Here, t ⋆ {\displaystyle t^{\star }} denotes a decision tree after training, t ( − i ) ⋆ {\displaystyle t_{(-i)}^{\star }} denotes the result based on samples without i t h {\displaystyle ith} observation. == Examples == E-mail spam problem is a common classification problem, in this problem, 57 features are used to classify spam e-mail and non-spam e-mail. Applying IJ-U variance formula to evaluate the accuracy of models with m=15,19 and 57. The results shows in paper( Confidence Intervals for Random Forests: The jackknife and the Infinitesimal Jackknife ) that m = 57 random forest appears to be quite unstable, while predictions made by m=5 random forest appear to be quite stable, this results is corresponding to the evaluation made by error percentage, in which the accuracy of model with m=5 is high and m=57 is low. Here, accuracy is measured by error rate, which is defined as: E r r o r R a t e = 1 N ∑ i = 1 N ∑ j = 1 M y i j , {\displaystyle ErrorRate={\frac {1}{N}}\sum _{i=1}^{N}\sum _{j=1}^{M}y_{ij},} Here N is also the number of samples, M is the number of classes, y i j {\displaystyle y_{ij}} is the indicator function which equals 1 when i t h {\displaystyle ith} observation is in class j, equals 0 when in other classes. No probability is considered here. There is another method which is similar to error rate to measure accuracy: l o g l o s s = 1 N ∑ i = 1 N ∑ j = 1 M y i j l o g ( p i j ) {\displaystyle logloss={\frac {1}{N}}\sum _{i=1}^{N}\sum _{j=1}^{M}y_{ij}log(p_{ij})} Here N is the number of samples, M is the number of classes, y i j {\displaystyle y_{ij}} is the indicator function which equals 1 when i t h {\displaystyle ith} observation is in class j, equals 0 when in other classes. p i j {\displaystyle p_{ij}} is the predicted probability of i t h {\displaystyle ith} observation in class j {\displaystyle j} .This method is used in Kaggle These two methods are very similar. == Modification for bias == When using Monte Carlo MSEs for estimating V I J ∞ {\displaystyle V_{IJ}^{\infty }} and V J ∞ {\displaystyle V_{J}^{\infty }} , a problem about the Monte Carlo bias should be considered, especially when n is large, the bias is getting large: E [ V ^ I J B ] − V ^ I J ∞ ≈ n ∑ b = 1 B ( t b ⋆ − t ¯ ⋆ ) 2 B {\displaystyle E[{\hat {V}}_{IJ}^{B}]-{\hat {V}}_{IJ}^{\infty }\approx {\frac {n\sum _{b=1}^{B}(t_{b}^{\star }-{\bar {t}}^{\star })^{2}}{B}}} To eliminate this influence, bias-corrected modifications are suggested: V ^ I J − U B = V ^ I J B − n ∑ b = 1 B ( t b ⋆ − t ¯ ⋆ ) 2 B {\displaystyle {\hat {V}}_{IJ-U}^{B}={\hat {V}}_{IJ}^{B}-{\frac {n\sum _{b=1}^{B}(t_{b}^{\star }-{\bar {t}}^{\star })^{2}}{B}}} V ^ J − U B = V ^ J B − ( e − 1 ) n ∑ b = 1 B ( t b ⋆ − t ¯ ⋆ ) 2 B {\displaystyle {\hat {V}}_{J-U}^{B}={\hat {V}}_{J}^{B}-(e-1){\frac {n\sum _{b=1}^{B}(t_{b}^{\star }-{\bar {t}}^{\star })^{2}}{B}}}

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  • Quickprop

    Quickprop

    Quickprop is an iterative method for determining the minimum of the loss function of an artificial neural network, following an algorithm inspired by the Newton's method. Sometimes, the algorithm is classified to the group of the second order learning methods. It follows a quadratic approximation of the previous gradient step and the current gradient, which is expected to be close to the minimum of the loss function, under the assumption that the loss function is locally approximately square, trying to describe it by means of an upwardly open parabola. The minimum is sought in the vertex of the parabola. The procedure requires only local information of the artificial neuron to which it is applied. The k {\displaystyle k} -th approximation step is given by: Δ ( k ) w i j = Δ ( k − 1 ) w i j ( ∇ i j E ( k ) ∇ i j E ( k − 1 ) − ∇ i j E ( k ) ) {\displaystyle \Delta ^{(k)}\,w_{ij}=\Delta ^{(k-1)}\,w_{ij}\left({\frac {\nabla _{ij}\,E^{(k)}}{\nabla _{ij}\,E^{(k-1)}-\nabla _{ij}\,E^{(k)}}}\right)} Where w i j {\displaystyle w_{ij}} is the weight of input i {\displaystyle i} of neuron j {\displaystyle j} , and E {\displaystyle E} is the loss function. The Quickprop algorithm is an implementation of the error backpropagation algorithm, but the network can behave chaotically during the learning phase due to large step sizes.

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  • Spiking neural network

    Spiking neural network

    Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are artificial neural networks (ANN) that mimic natural neural networks. These models leverage timing of discrete spikes as the main information carrier. In addition to neuronal and synaptic state, SNNs incorporate the concept of time into their operating model. The idea is that neurons in the SNN do not transmit information at each propagation cycle (as it happens with typical multi-layer perceptron networks), but rather transmit information only when a membrane potential—an intrinsic quality of the neuron related to its membrane electrical charge—reaches a specific value, called the threshold. When the membrane potential reaches the threshold, the neuron fires, and generates a signal that travels to other neurons which, in turn, increase or decrease their potentials in response to this signal. A neuron model that fires at the moment of threshold crossing is also called a spiking neuron model. While spike rates can be considered the analogue of the variable output of a traditional ANN, neurobiology research indicated that high speed processing cannot be performed solely through a rate-based scheme. For example humans can perform an image recognition task requiring no more than 10ms of processing time per neuron through the successive layers (going from the retina to the temporal lobe). This time window is too short for rate-based encoding. The precise spike timings in a small set of spiking neurons also has a higher information coding capacity compared with a rate-based approach. The most prominent spiking neuron model is the leaky integrate-and-fire model. In that model, the momentary activation level (modeled as a differential equation) is normally considered to be the neuron's state, with incoming spikes pushing this value higher or lower, until the state eventually either decays or—if the firing threshold is reached—the neuron fires. After firing, the state variable is reset to a lower value. Various decoding methods exist for interpreting the outgoing spike train as a real-value number, relying on either the frequency of spikes (rate-code), the time-to-first-spike after stimulation, or the interval between spikes. == History == Many multi-layer artificial neural networks are fully connected, receiving input from every neuron in the previous layer and signalling every neuron in the subsequent layer. Although these networks have achieved breakthroughs, they do not match biological networks and do not mimic neurons. The biology-inspired Hodgkin–Huxley model of a spiking neuron was proposed in 1952. This model described how action potentials are initiated and propagated. Communication between neurons, which requires the exchange of chemical neurotransmitters in the synaptic gap, is described in models such as the integrate-and-fire model, FitzHugh–Nagumo model (1961–1962), and Hindmarsh–Rose model (1984). The leaky integrate-and-fire model (or a derivative) is commonly used as it is easier to compute than Hodgkin–Huxley. While the notion of an artificial spiking neural network became popular only in the twenty-first century, studies between 1980 and 1995 supported the concept. The first models of this type of ANN appeared to simulate non-algorithmic intelligent information processing systems. However, the notion of the spiking neural network as a mathematical model was first worked on in the early 1970s. As of 2019 SNNs lagged behind ANNs in accuracy, but the gap is decreasing, and has vanished on some tasks. == Underpinnings == Information in the brain is represented as action potentials (neuron spikes), which may group into spike trains or coordinated waves. A fundamental question of neuroscience is to determine whether neurons communicate by a rate or temporal code. Temporal coding implies that a single spiking neuron can replace hundreds of hidden units on a conventional neural net. SNNs define a neuron's current state as its potential (possibly modeled as a differential equation). An input pulse causes the potential to rise and then gradually decline. Encoding schemes can interpret these pulse sequences as a number, considering pulse frequency and pulse interval. Using the precise time of pulse occurrence, a neural network can consider more information and offer better computing properties. SNNs compute in the continuous domain. Such neurons test for activation only when their potentials reach a certain value. When a neuron is activated, it produces a signal that is passed to connected neurons, accordingly raising or lowering their potentials. The SNN approach produces a continuous output instead of the binary output of traditional ANNs. Pulse trains are not easily interpretable, hence the need for encoding schemes. However, a pulse train representation may be more suited for processing spatiotemporal data (or real-world sensory data classification). SNNs connect neurons only to nearby neurons so that they process input blocks separately (similar to CNN using filters). They consider time by encoding information as pulse trains so as not to lose information. This avoids the complexity of a recurrent neural network (RNN). Impulse neurons are more powerful computational units than traditional artificial neurons. SNNs are theoretically more powerful than so called "second-generation networks" defined as ANNs "based on computational units that apply activation function with a continuous set of possible output values to a weighted sum (or polynomial) of the inputs"; however, SNN training issues and hardware requirements limit their use. Although unsupervised biologically inspired learning methods are available such as Hebbian learning and STDP, no effective supervised training method is suitable for SNNs that can provide better performance than second-generation networks. Spike-based activation of SNNs is not differentiable, thus gradient descent-based backpropagation (BP) is not available. SNNs have much larger computational costs for simulating realistic neural models than traditional ANNs. Pulse-coupled neural networks (PCNN) are often confused with SNNs. A PCNN can be seen as a kind of SNN. Researchers are actively working on various topics. The first concerns differentiability. The expressions for both the forward- and backward-learning methods contain the derivative of the neural activation function which is not differentiable because a neuron's output is either 1 when it spikes, and 0 otherwise. This all-or-nothing behavior disrupts gradients and makes these neurons unsuitable for gradient-based optimization. Approaches to resolving it include: resorting to entirely biologically inspired local learning rules for the hidden units translating conventionally trained "rate-based" NNs to SNNs smoothing the network model to be continuously differentiable defining an SG (Surrogate Gradient) as a continuous relaxation of the real gradients The second concerns the optimization algorithm. Standard BP can be expensive in terms of computation, memory, and communication and may be poorly suited to the hardware that implements it (e.g., a computer, brain, or neuromorphic device). Incorporating additional neuron dynamics such as Spike Frequency Adaptation (SFA) is a notable advance, enhancing efficiency and computational power. These neurons sit between biological complexity and computational complexity. Originating from biological insights, SFA offers significant computational benefits by reducing power usage, especially in cases of repetitive or intense stimuli. This adaptation improves signal/noise clarity and introduces an elementary short-term memory at the neuron level, which in turn, improves accuracy and efficiency. This was mostly achieved using compartmental neuron models. The simpler versions are of neuron models with adaptive thresholds, are an indirect way of achieving SFA. It equips SNNs with improved learning capabilities, even with constrained synaptic plasticity, and elevates computational efficiency. This feature lessens the demand on network layers by decreasing the need for spike processing, thus lowering computational load and memory access time—essential aspects of neural computation. Moreover, SNNs utilizing neurons capable of SFA achieve levels of accuracy that rival those of conventional ANNs, while also requiring fewer neurons for comparable tasks. This efficiency streamlines the computational workflow and conserves space and energy, while maintaining technical integrity. High-performance deep spiking neural networks can operate with 0.3 spikes per neuron. == Applications == SNNs can in principle be applied to the same applications as traditional ANNs. In addition, SNNs can model the central nervous system of biological organisms, such as an insect seeking food without prior knowledge of the environment. Due to their relative realism, they can be used to study biological neural circuits. Starting with a hypothesis about the topology of a biological neuronal circuit and its functi

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  • ACLU Mobile Justice

    ACLU Mobile Justice

    ACLU Mobile Justice was a video live streaming application developed for smartphones by various state chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union. It was intended to allow instant, secure video recording and transmission of interactions with, and perceived abuses by, law enforcement officers. Since its release by the ACLU of California for California residents, other versions of the app have been released for 16 other states and the District of Columbia by their ACLU chapters. It was discontinued in February 2025.

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    LIBSVM and LIBLINEAR are two popular open source machine learning libraries, both developed at the National Taiwan University and both written in C++ though with a C API. LIBSVM implements the sequential minimal optimization (SMO) algorithm for kernelized support vector machines (SVMs), supporting classification and regression. LIBLINEAR implements linear SVMs and logistic regression models trained using a coordinate descent algorithm. The SVM learning code from both libraries is often reused in other open source machine learning toolkits, including GATE, KNIME, Orange and scikit-learn. Bindings and ports exist for programming languages such as Java, MATLAB, R, Julia, and Python. It is available in e1071 library in R and scikit-learn in Python. Both libraries are free software released under the 3-clause BSD license.

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  • Discrete diffusion model

    Discrete diffusion model

    In machine learning, discrete diffusion models are a class of diffusion models, which themselves are a class of latent variable generative models. Each discrete diffusion model consists of two major components: the forward jump diffusion process, and the reverse jump diffusion process. The goal of diffusion modeling is, given a given dataset and a forward process, to learn a model for the reverse process, such that the reverse process can generate new elements that are distributed similarly as the original dataset. A trained discrete diffusion model can be sampled in many ways, which trades off computational efficiency and sample quality. In general, higher quality data can be obtained, but at the price of higher computational cost. In standard diffusion modeling, the diffusion process takes place over a state space that is continuous space of R n {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{n}} , but over a discrete set S {\displaystyle S} . A discrete set is simply a set where one cannot speak of "infinitesimally close" points. Points can be more or less separated from each other, but the separation is always a finite number. This in particular means the standard framework of continuous diffusion does not apply, since it uses gaussian noise, which is continuous. Nevertheless, an analogous theory can be produced. Discrete diffusion is usually used for language modeling. In practice, the state space S {\displaystyle S} is not only discrete, but finite, so this is what we will assume from now on. == Continuous time Markov process == In the case of continuous state space, during the forward discrete diffusion process, at each step t → t + d t {\displaystyle t\to t+dt} , we mix in an infinitesimal amount of gaussian noise d x t = − 1 2 β ( t ) x t d t + β ( t ) d W t {\displaystyle dx_{t}=-{\frac {1}{2}}\beta (t)x_{t}dt+{\sqrt {\beta (t)}}dW_{t}} . This changes the probability density function, by first a convolution with the density of a gaussian, followed by a scaling. In the case of discrete state space, the gaussian noise must be replaced by a noise that takes values over a finite set. For example, if the noise is the uniform distribution over S {\displaystyle S} , then the probability distribution at time t + d t {\displaystyle t+dt} satisfies q t + d t ( x ) = ( 1 − d t ) q t ( x ) + d t ( 1 | S | ∑ y ∈ S q t ( y ) ) {\displaystyle q_{t+dt}(x)=(1-dt)q_{t}(x)+dt\left({\frac {1}{|S|}}\sum _{y\in S}q_{t}(y)\right)} More succinctly, ∂ t q t ( x ) = − ( 1 − 1 | S | ) q t ( x ) + ∑ y ∈ S , y ≠ x 1 | S | q t ( y ) {\displaystyle \partial _{t}q_{t}(x)=-\left(1-{\frac {1}{|S|}}\right)q_{t}(x)+\sum _{y\in S,y\neq x}{\frac {1}{|S|}}q_{t}(y)} In general, we do not need to convolve with a uniformly distributed noise, but with an arbitrary noise process. That is, we use an arbitrary matrix Q t {\displaystyle Q_{t}} such that ∂ t q t ( y ) = ∑ x ∈ S Q t ( y , x ) q t ( x ) {\displaystyle \partial _{t}q_{t}(y)=\sum _{x\in S}Q_{t}(y,x)q_{t}(x)} where Q t {\displaystyle Q_{t}} is called the rate matrix. Any matrix may be used as a rate matrix if it has non-negative off-diagonals, and each column sums to 0: Q t ( y , x ) ≥ 0 ∀ y ≠ x , ∑ y ∈ S Q t ( y , x ) = 0 ∀ x {\displaystyle Q_{t}(y,x)\geq 0\quad \forall y\neq x,\quad \sum _{y\in S}Q_{t}(y,x)=0\quad \forall x} A continuous time Markov chain (CTMC) is defined by a continuous function Q {\displaystyle Q} that maps any time t ∈ [ 0 , T ) {\displaystyle t\in [0,T)} to a rate matrix Q t {\displaystyle Q_{t}} . Given the function Q {\displaystyle Q} , time-evolution under the CTMC is done as follows: Given state x t {\displaystyle x_{t}} at time t {\displaystyle t} , and given an infinitesimal d t {\displaystyle dt} , the state at t + d t {\displaystyle t+dt} is x t + d t {\displaystyle x_{t+dt}} , such that Pr ( x t + d t | x t ) = { 1 + Q t ( x t + d t , x t ) d t if x t + d t = x t Q t ( x t + d t , x t ) d t else {\displaystyle \Pr(x_{t+dt}|x_{t})={\begin{cases}1+Q_{t}(x_{t+dt},x_{t})dt&{\text{if }}x_{t+dt}=x_{t}\\Q_{t}(x_{t+dt},x_{t})dt&{\text{else}}\end{cases}}} This implies that the probability distribution function evolves according to ∂ t q t ( y ) = ∑ x ∈ S Q t ( y , x ) q t ( x ) {\displaystyle \partial _{t}q_{t}(y)=\sum _{x\in S}Q_{t}(y,x)q_{t}(x)} which is what we previously specified. === Backward process === Similarly to the case of continuous diffusion, in discrete diffusion, there exists a backward diffusion process Q ¯ t {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}_{t}} : s ( x , t ) y := q t ( y ) q t ( x ) , Q ¯ t ( y , x ) := { s ( x , t ) y Q t ( x , y ) if y ≠ x − ∑ y : y ≠ x Q ¯ t ( y , x ) if y = x {\displaystyle s(x,t)_{y}:={\frac {q_{t}(y)}{q_{t}(x)}},\quad {\bar {Q}}_{t}(y,x):={\begin{cases}s(x,t)_{y}Q_{t}(x,y)&{\text{if }}y\neq x\\-\sum _{y:y\neq x}{\bar {Q}}_{t}(y,x)&{\text{if }}y=x\end{cases}}} where s ( x , t ) y {\displaystyle s(x,t)_{y}} should be interpreted as the discrete score or concrete score, since, abusing notation a bit, the score function is ∇ ln ⁡ ρ t ( x ) = 1 d x ( ρ t ( x + d x ) ρ t ( x ) − 1 ) {\displaystyle \nabla \ln \rho _{t}(x)={\frac {1}{dx}}\left({\frac {\rho _{t}(x+dx)}{\rho _{t}(x)}}-1\right)} . If we picture the distribution q t {\displaystyle q_{t}} as a bunch of point-masses, one per state x ∈ S {\displaystyle x\in S} , then the forward diffusion from time t {\displaystyle t} to t + d t {\displaystyle t+dt} is performed by removing Q t ( x , y ) q t ( y ) d t {\displaystyle Q_{t}(x,y)q_{t}(y)dt} from the mass at y {\displaystyle y} and moving it to the mass at x {\displaystyle x} , for each pair x ≠ y {\displaystyle x\neq y} . Thus, the process is reversed in detail by the CTMC defined by Q ¯ {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}} , since Q ¯ t ( y , x ) q t ( x ) = Q t ( x , y ) q t ( y ) {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}_{t}(y,x)q_{t}(x)=Q_{t}(x,y)q_{t}(y)} . Given Q ¯ t {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}_{t}} , if we have a way to sample from q t {\displaystyle q_{t}} , then we can sample from q t − d t {\displaystyle q_{t-dt}} by first sampling x t ∼ q t {\displaystyle x_{t}\sim q_{t}} , then sampling x t − d t {\displaystyle x_{t-dt}} according to Pr ( x t − d t | x t ) = { 1 + Q ¯ t ( x t − d t , x t ) d t if x t − d t = x t Q ¯ t ( x t − d t , x t ) d t else {\displaystyle \Pr(x_{t-dt}|x_{t})={\begin{cases}1+{\bar {Q}}_{t}(x_{t-dt},x_{t})dt&{\text{if }}x_{t-dt}=x_{t}\\{\bar {Q}}_{t}(x_{t-dt},x_{t})dt&{\text{else}}\end{cases}}} === Overall plan of score-matching discrete diffusion modeling === Similar to score-matching continuous diffusion, score-matching discrete diffusion is a method to sample an initial distribution. If we have a certain function s θ {\displaystyle s_{\theta }} that approximates the true score function s θ ( x , t ) y ≈ s ( x , t ) y {\displaystyle s_{\theta }(x,t)_{y}\approx s(x,t)_{y}} , then it allows a corresponding Q ¯ θ {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}^{\theta }} to be defined in the same way. If we also have a base distribution q base {\displaystyle q_{\text{base}}} such that it is easy to sample from, and approximately equal to the true terminal distribution q base ≈ q T {\displaystyle q_{\text{base}}\approx q_{T}} , then we can perform the backward CTMC with Q ¯ θ {\displaystyle {\bar {Q}}^{\theta }} and q T θ := q terminal {\displaystyle q_{T}^{\theta }:=q_{\text{terminal}}} . When both approximations are good, the backward CTMC would give q 0 θ ≈ q 0 {\displaystyle q_{0}^{\theta }\approx q_{0}} . This is the idea of score-matching discrete diffusion modeling. If q data {\displaystyle q_{\text{data}}} is sharp, in the sense that for some x , x ′ {\displaystyle x,x'} , we have q data ( x ) ≫ q data ( x ′ ) {\displaystyle q_{\text{data}}(x)\gg q_{\text{data}}(x')} , then the score function would diverge as 1 / t {\displaystyle 1/t} at the t → 0 {\displaystyle t\to 0} limit. To avoid this in practice, it is common to use early stopping, which is to stop the backward process at some time δ > 0 {\displaystyle \delta >0} , and sample from q δ θ {\displaystyle q_{\delta }^{\theta }} instead of q 0 θ {\displaystyle q_{0}^{\theta }} . === Tractable forward processes === The theory of CTMC works for any continuous choice of rate matrices Q {\displaystyle Q} . However, most choices are computationally expensive and cannot be used in practice. In the case of continuous diffusion, the gaussian noise is used for the simple reason that the sum of any number of gaussians is still a gaussian. This allows one to sample any x t ∼ ρ t {\displaystyle x_{t}\sim \rho _{t}} by sampling a single x 0 ∼ ρ 0 {\displaystyle x_{0}\sim \rho _{0}} , followed by a single gaussian noise z ∼ N ( 0 , I ) {\displaystyle z\sim {\mathcal {N}}(0,I)} , and let x t = α ¯ t x 0 + σ t z {\displaystyle x_{t}={\sqrt {{\bar {\alpha }}_{t}}}x_{0}+\sigma _{t}z} , without needing any x s {\displaystyle x_{s}} for any 0 < s < t {\displaystyle 0 Read more →