Time-inhomogeneous hidden Bernoulli model

Time-inhomogeneous hidden Bernoulli model

Time-inhomogeneous hidden Bernoulli model (TI-HBM) is an alternative to hidden Markov model (HMM) for automatic speech recognition. Contrary to HMM, the state transition process in TI-HBM is not a Markov-dependent process, rather it is a generalized Bernoulli (an independent) process. This difference leads to elimination of dynamic programming at state-level in TI-HBM decoding process. Thus, the computational complexity of TI-HBM for probability evaluation and state estimation is O ( N L ) {\displaystyle O(NL)} (instead of O ( N 2 L ) {\displaystyle O(N^{2}L)} in the HMM case, where N {\displaystyle N} and L {\displaystyle L} are number of states and observation sequence length respectively). The TI-HBM is able to model acoustic-unit duration (e.g. phone/word duration) by using a built-in parameter named survival probability. The TI-HBM is simpler and faster than HMM in a phoneme recognition task, but its performance is comparable to HMM. For details, see [1] or [2].

RCUDA

rCUDA, which stands for Remote CUDA, is a type of middleware software framework for remote GPU virtualization. Fully compatible with the CUDA application programming interface (API), it allows the allocation of one or more CUDA-enabled GPUs to a single application. Each GPU can be part of a cluster or running inside of a virtual machine. The approach is aimed at improving performance in GPU clusters that are lacking full utilization. GPU virtualization reduces the number of GPUs needed in a cluster, and in turn, leads to a lower cost configuration – less energy, acquisition, and maintenance. The recommended distributed acceleration architecture is a high performance computing cluster with GPUs attached to only a few of the cluster nodes. When a node without a local GPU executes an application needing GPU resources, remote execution of the kernel is supported by data and code transfers between local system memory and remote GPU memory. rCUDA is designed to accommodate this client-server architecture. On one end, clients employ a library of wrappers to the high-level CUDA Runtime API, and on the other end, there is a network listening service that receives requests on a TCP port. Several nodes running different GPU-accelerated applications can concurrently make use of the whole set of accelerators installed in the cluster. The client forwards the request to one of the servers, which accesses the GPU installed in that computer and executes the request in it. Time-multiplexing the GPU, or in other words sharing it, is accomplished by spawning different server processes for each remote GPU execution request. == rCUDA v20.07 == The rCUDA middleware enables the concurrent usage of CUDA-compatible devices remotely. rCUDA employs either the InfiniBand network or the socket API for the communication between clients and servers. rCUDA can be useful in three different environments: Clusters. To reduce the number of GPUs installed in High Performance Clusters. This leads to energy savings, as well as other related savings like acquisition costs, maintenance, space, cooling, etc. Academia. In commodity networks, to offer access to a few high performance GPUs concurrently to many students. Virtual Machines. To enable the access to the CUDA facilities on the physical machine. The current version of rCUDA (v20.07) supports CUDA version 9.0, excluding graphics interoperability. rCUDA v20.07 targets the Linux OS (for 64-bit architectures) on both client and server sides. CUDA applications do not need any change in their source code in order to be executed with rCUDA.

Blockmodeling linked networks

Blockmodeling linked networks is an approach in blockmodeling in analysing the linked networks. Such approach is based on the generalized multilevel blockmodeling approach. The main objective of this approach is to achieve clustering of the nodes from all involved sets, while at the same time using all available information. At the same time, all one-mode and two-node networks, that are connected, are blockmodeled, which results in obtaining only one clustering, using nodes from each sets. Each cluster ideally contains only nodes from one set, which also allows the modeling of the links among clusters from different sets (through two-mode networks). This approach was introduced by Aleš Žiberna in 2014. Blockmodeling linked networks can be done using: separate analysis: blockmodeling each level separately; conversion approach: converting all one-mode networks to the same level and joining with two-mode networks; a true multilevel approach: one-mode and two-mode networks are blockmodeled at the same time, resulting in one clustering for nodes from each level.

Softplus

In mathematics and machine learning, the softplus function is f ( x ) = ln ⁡ ( 1 + e x ) . {\displaystyle f(x)=\ln(1+e^{x}).} It is a smooth approximation (in fact, an analytic function) to the ramp function, which is known as the rectifier or ReLU (rectified linear unit) in machine learning. For large negative x {\displaystyle x} it is ln ⁡ ( 1 + e x ) = ln ⁡ ( 1 + ϵ ) ⪆ ln ⁡ 1 = 0 {\displaystyle \ln(1+e^{x})=\ln(1+\epsilon )\gtrapprox \ln 1=0} , so just above 0, while for large positive x {\displaystyle x} it is ln ⁡ ( 1 + e x ) ⪆ ln ⁡ ( e x ) = x {\displaystyle \ln(1+e^{x})\gtrapprox \ln(e^{x})=x} , so just above x {\displaystyle x} . The names softplus and SmoothReLU are used in machine learning. The name "softplus" (2000), by analogy with the earlier softmax (1989) is presumably because it is a smooth (soft) approximation of the positive part of x, which is sometimes denoted with a superscript plus, x + := max ( 0 , x ) {\displaystyle x^{+}:=\max(0,x)} . == Alternative forms == This function can be approximated as: ln ⁡ ( 1 + e x ) ≈ { ln ⁡ 2 , x = 0 , x 1 − e − x / ln ⁡ 2 , x ≠ 0 {\displaystyle \ln \left(1+e^{x}\right)\approx {\begin{cases}\ln 2,&x=0,\\[6pt]{\frac {x}{1-e^{-x/\ln 2}}},&x\neq 0\end{cases}}} By making the change of variables x = y ln ⁡ ( 2 ) {\displaystyle x=y\ln(2)} , this is equivalent to log 2 ⁡ ( 1 + 2 y ) ≈ { 1 , y = 0 , y 1 − e − y , y ≠ 0. {\displaystyle \log _{2}(1+2^{y})\approx {\begin{cases}1,&y=0,\\[6pt]{\frac {y}{1-e^{-y}}},&y\neq 0.\end{cases}}} A sharpness parameter k {\displaystyle k} may be included: f ( x ) = ln ⁡ ( 1 + e k x ) k , f ′ ( x ) = e k x 1 + e k x = 1 1 + e − k x . {\displaystyle f(x)={\frac {\ln(1+e^{kx})}{k}},\qquad \qquad f'(x)={\frac {e^{kx}}{1+e^{kx}}}={\frac {1}{1+e^{-kx}}}.} Additionally, the softplus function is equivalent to the log of the sigmoid function in the following way: − ln ⁡ ( sigmoid ( − x ) ) = − ln ⁡ ( 1 1 + e x ) = ln ⁡ ( 1 + e x ) = softplus ( x ) {\displaystyle -\ln({\text{sigmoid}}(-x))=-\ln \left({\frac {1}{1+e^{x}}}\right)=\ln \left(1+e^{x}\right)={\text{softplus}}(x)} == Related functions == The derivative of softplus is the standard logistic function: f ′ ( x ) = e x 1 + e x = 1 1 + e − x {\displaystyle f'(x)={\frac {e^{x}}{1+e^{x}}}={\frac {1}{1+e^{-x}}}} The logistic function or the sigmoid function is a smooth approximation of the rectifier, the Heaviside step function. === LogSumExp === The multivariable generalization of single-variable softplus is the LogSumExp with the first argument set to zero: L S E 0 + ⁡ ( x 1 , … , x n ) := LSE ⁡ ( 0 , x 1 , … , x n ) = ln ⁡ ( 1 + e x 1 + ⋯ + e x n ) . {\displaystyle \operatorname {LSE_{0}} ^{+}(x_{1},\dots ,x_{n}):=\operatorname {LSE} (0,x_{1},\dots ,x_{n})=\ln(1+e^{x_{1}}+\cdots +e^{x_{n}}).} The LogSumExp function is LSE ⁡ ( x 1 , … , x n ) = ln ⁡ ( e x 1 + ⋯ + e x n ) , {\displaystyle \operatorname {LSE} (x_{1},\dots ,x_{n})=\ln(e^{x_{1}}+\cdots +e^{x_{n}}),} and its gradient is the softmax; the softmax with the first argument set to zero is the multivariable generalization of the logistic function. Both LogSumExp and softmax are used in machine learning. === Convex conjugate === The convex conjugate (specifically, the Legendre transformation) of the softplus function is the negative binary entropy function (with base e). This is because (following the definition of the Legendre transformation: the derivatives are inverse functions) the derivative of softplus is the logistic function, whose inverse function is the logit, which is the derivative of negative binary entropy. Softplus can be interpreted as logistic loss (as a positive number), so, by duality, minimizing logistic loss corresponds to maximizing entropy. This justifies the principle of maximum entropy as loss minimization.

Frequent pattern discovery

Frequent pattern discovery (or FP discovery, FP mining, or Frequent itemset mining) is part of knowledge discovery in databases, Massive Online Analysis, and data mining; it describes the task of finding the most frequent and relevant patterns in large datasets. The concept was first introduced for mining transaction databases. Frequent patterns are defined as subsets (itemsets, subsequences, or substructures) that appear in a data set with frequency no less than a user-specified or auto-determined threshold. == Techniques == Techniques for FP mining include: market basket analysis cross-marketing catalog design clustering classification recommendation systems For the most part, FP discovery can be done using association rule learning with particular algorithms Eclat, FP-growth and the Apriori algorithm. Other strategies include: Frequent subtree mining Structure mining Sequential pattern mining and respective specific techniques. Implementations exist for various machine learning systems or modules like MLlib for Apache Spark.

List of monochrome and RGB color formats

This list of monochrome and RGB palettes includes generic repertoires of colors (color palettes) to produce black-and-white and RGB color pictures by a computer's display hardware. RGB is the most common method to produce colors for displays; so these complete RGB color repertoires have every possible combination of R-G-B triplets within any given maximum number of levels per component. Each palette is represented by a series of color patches. When the number of colors is low, a 1-pixel-size version of the palette appears below it, for easily comparing relative palette sizes. Huge palettes are given directly in one-color-per-pixel color patches. For each unique palette, an image color test chart and sample image (truecolor original follows) rendered with that palette (without dithering) are given. The test chart shows the full 256 levels of the red, green, and blue (RGB) primary colors and cyan, magenta, and yellow complementary colors, along with a full 256-level grayscale. Gradients of RGB intermediate colors (orange, lime green, sea green, sky blue, violet, and fuchsia), and a full hue spectrum are also present. Color charts are not gamma corrected. These elements illustrate the color depth and distribution of the colors of any given palette, and the sample image indicates how the color selection of such palettes could represent real-life images. These images are not necessarily representative of how the image would be displayed on the original graphics hardware, as the hardware may have additional limitations regarding the maximum display resolution, pixel aspect ratio and color placement. Implementation of these formats is specific to each machine. Therefore, the number of colors that can be simultaneously displayed in a given text or graphic mode might be different. Also, the actual displayed colors are subject to the output format used - PAL or NTSC, composite or component video, etc. - and might be slightly different. For simulated images and specific hardware and alternate methods to produce colors other than RGB (ex: composite), see the List of 8-bit computer hardware palettes, the List of 16-bit computer hardware palettes and the List of video game console palettes. For various software arrangements and sorts of colors, including other possible full RGB arrangements within 8-bit color depth displays, see the List of software palettes. == Monochrome palettes == These palettes only have some shades of gray, from black to white (considered the darkest and lightest "grays", respectively). The general rule is that those palettes have 2n different shades of gray, where n is the number of bits needed to represent a single pixel. === Monochrome (1-bit grayscale) === Monochrome graphics displays typically have a black background with a white or light gray image, though green and amber monochrome monitors were also common. Such a palette requires only one bit per pixel. Where photo-realism was desired, these early computer systems had a heavy reliance on dithering to make up for the limits of the technology. In some systems, as Hercules and CGA graphic cards for the IBM PC, a bit value of 1 represents white pixels (light on) and a value of 0 the black ones (light off); others, like the Playdate and Atari ST and Apple Macintosh with monochrome monitors, a bit value of 0 means a white pixel (no ink) and a value of 1 means a black pixel (dot of ink), which it approximates to the printing logic. === 2-bit Grayscale === In a 2-bit color palette each pixel's value is represented by 2 bits resulting in a 4-value palette (22 = 4). 2-bit dithering: It has black, white and two intermediate levels of gray as follows: A monochrome 2-bit palette is used on: The Monochrome Display Adapter for the IBM PC NeXT Computer, NeXTcube and NeXTstation monochrome graphic displays. Original Game Boy system portable video game console. Macintosh PowerBook 150 monochrome LC displays. Amiga with A2024 monochrome monitor in high-resolution mode. The original Amazon Kindle The original WonderSwan The Tiger Electronics Game.com portable video game console The original Neo Geo Pocket. === 4-bit Grayscale === In a 4-bit color palette each pixel's value is represented by 4 bits resulting in a 16-value palette (24 = 16): 4-bit grayscale dithering does a fairly good job of reducing visible banding of the level changes: A monochrome 4-bit palette is used on: MOS Technology VDC (on the Commodore 128 with monochrome monitor) Amstrad CPC series with a GT64/GT65 Green Monitor (16 unique green shades) Amstrad CPC Plus series with the MM12 Monochrome monitor (16 shades of grey) Some Apple PowerBooks equipped with monochrome displays like the PowerBook 5300 The original VideoNow === 8-bit Grayscale === In an 8-bit color palette each pixel's value is represented by 8 bits resulting in a 256-value palette (28 = 256). This is usually the maximum number of grays in ordinary monochrome systems; each image pixel occupies a single memory byte. Most scanners can capture images in 8-bit grayscale, and image file formats like TIFF and JPEG natively support this monochrome palette size. Alpha channels employed for video overlay also use (conceptually) this palette. The gray level indicates the opacity of the blended image pixel over the background image pixel. == Dichrome palettes == === 16-bit RG palette === The RG or red–green color space is a color space that uses only two primary colors: red and green. It was used on early color processes for films. It was used as an additive format, similar to the RGB color model but without a blue channel, on processes such as Kinemacolor, Prizma, Technicolor I, Raycol, etc., producing shades of black, red, green and yellow. Alternatively, it was used as a subtractive format on Brewster Color I, Kodachrome I, Prizma II, Technicolor II, etc., producing shades of transparent, red, green and black. Until recently, its primary use was in low-cost light-emitting diode displays in which red and green tended to be far more common than the still nascent blue LED technology, but full-color LEDs with blue have become more common in recent years. ColorCode 3-D, a anaglyph stereoscopic color scheme, uses the RG color space to simulate a broad spectrum of color in one eye, while the blue portion of the spectrum transmits a black-and-white (black-and-blue) image to the other eye to give depth perception. === 16-bit RB palette === === 16-bit GB palette === == Regular RGB palettes == Here are grouped those full RGB hardware palettes that have the same number of binary levels (i.e., the same number of bits) for every red, green and blue components using the full RGB color model. Thus, the total number of colors are always the number of possible levels by component, n, raised to a power of 3: n×n×n = n3. === 3-bit RGB === 3-bit RGB dithering: Systems with a 3-bit RGB palette use 1 bit for each of the red, green and blue color components. That is, each component is either "on" or "off" with no intermediate states. This results in an 8-color palette ((21)3 = 23 = 8) that has black, white, the three RGB primary colors red, green and blue and their correspondent complementary colors cyan, magenta and yellow as follows: The color indices vary between implementations; therefore, index numbers are not given. The 3-bit RGB palette is used by: Text terminals following the ECMA-48 standard (sometimes known as the "ANSI standard", although ANSI X3.128 does not define colors) World System Teletext Level 1/1.5 Videotex Oric computers BBC Micro PC-8801 (up to the MkII) PC-9801 (with original 8086 CPU, before the VM/VX models) Sharp X1 (models before the X1 Turbo Z) Sharp MZ 700 FM-7, FM New 7, FM 77 (before the FM77AV) Sinclair QL Space Invaders Part II (arcade hardware) Macintosh SE (with a color printer or external monitor) Atari 2600 (SECAM version) Color Maximite (PIC32 based microcomputer) Arcadia 2001 PV-1000 Monkey Magic (arcade hardware) VIC-20 (high-res mode) Mouse Trap (arcade hardware) Sanyo MBC-550 series Windows 1.0 (includes dithering) === 6-bit RGB === Systems with a 6-bit RGB palette use 2 bits for each of the red, green, and blue color components. This results in a (22)3 = 43 = 64-color palette as follows: 6-bit RGB systems include the following: Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) for IBM PC/AT (16 colors at once) Sega Master System video game console (32 colors at once) GIME for TRS-80 Color Computer 3 (16 colors at once) Pebble Time smartwatch which has a 6-bit (64 color) e-paper display Parallax Propeller using the reference VGA circuit === 9-bit RGB === Systems with a 9-bit RGB palette use 3 bits for each of the red, green, and blue color components. This results in a (23)3 = 83 = 512-color palette as follows: 9-bit RGB systems include the following: Atari ST (Normally 4 to 16 at once without tricks) MSX2 computers (up to 16 at once) Sega Genesis video game console, (64 colors at once) Sega Nomad TurboGrafx-16 (NEC PC-Engine) ZX Spectrum Next The NEC PC-88

Kernel method

In machine learning, kernel machines are a class of algorithms for pattern analysis, whose best known member is the support-vector machine (SVM). These methods involve using linear classifiers to solve nonlinear problems. The general task of pattern analysis is to find and study general types of relations (for example clusters, rankings, principal components, correlations, classifications) in datasets. For many algorithms that solve these tasks, the data in raw representation have to be explicitly transformed into feature vector representations via a user-specified feature map: in contrast, kernel methods require only a user-specified kernel, i.e., a similarity function over all pairs of data points computed using inner products. The feature map in kernel machines is infinite dimensional but only requires a finite dimensional matrix from user-input according to the representer theorem. Kernel machines are slow to compute for datasets larger than a couple of thousand examples without parallel processing. Kernel methods owe their name to the use of kernel functions, which enable them to operate in a high-dimensional, implicit feature space without ever computing the coordinates of the data in that space, but rather by simply computing the inner products between the images of all pairs of data in the feature space. This operation is often computationally cheaper than the explicit computation of the coordinates. This approach is called the "kernel trick". Kernel functions have been introduced for sequence data, graphs, text, images, as well as vectors. Algorithms capable of operating with kernels include the kernel perceptron, support-vector machines (SVM), Gaussian processes, principal components analysis (PCA), canonical correlation analysis, ridge regression, spectral clustering, linear adaptive filters and many others. Most kernel algorithms are based on convex optimization or eigenproblems and are statistically well-founded. Typically, their statistical properties are analyzed using statistical learning theory (for example, using Rademacher complexity). == Motivation and informal explanation == Kernel methods can be thought of as instance-based learners: rather than learning some fixed set of parameters corresponding to the features of their inputs, they instead "remember" the i {\displaystyle i} -th training example ( x i , y i ) {\displaystyle (\mathbf {x} _{i},y_{i})} and learn for it a corresponding weight w i {\displaystyle w_{i}} . Prediction for unlabeled inputs, i.e., those not in the training set, are treated by the application of a similarity function k {\displaystyle k} , called a kernel, between the unlabeled input x ′ {\displaystyle \mathbf {x'} } and each of the training inputs x i {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} _{i}} . For instance, a kernelized binary classifier typically computes a weighted sum of similarities y ^ = sgn ⁡ ∑ i = 1 n w i y i k ( x i , x ′ ) , {\displaystyle {\hat {y}}=\operatorname {sgn} \sum _{i=1}^{n}w_{i}y_{i}k(\mathbf {x} _{i},\mathbf {x'} ),} where y ^ ∈ { − 1 , + 1 } {\displaystyle {\hat {y}}\in \{-1,+1\}} is the kernelized binary classifier's predicted label for the unlabeled input x ′ {\displaystyle \mathbf {x'} } whose hidden true label y {\displaystyle y} is of interest; k : X × X → R {\displaystyle k\colon {\mathcal {X}}\times {\mathcal {X}}\to \mathbb {R} } is the kernel function that measures similarity between any pair of inputs x , x ′ ∈ X {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} ,\mathbf {x'} \in {\mathcal {X}}} ; the sum ranges over the n labeled examples { ( x i , y i ) } i = 1 n {\displaystyle \{(\mathbf {x} _{i},y_{i})\}_{i=1}^{n}} in the classifier's training set, with y i ∈ { − 1 , + 1 } {\displaystyle y_{i}\in \{-1,+1\}} ; the w i ∈ R {\displaystyle w_{i}\in \mathbb {R} } are the weights for the training examples, as determined by the learning algorithm; the sign function sgn {\displaystyle \operatorname {sgn} } determines whether the predicted classification y ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {y}}} comes out positive or negative. Kernel classifiers were described as early as the 1960s, with the invention of the kernel perceptron. They rose to great prominence with the popularity of the support-vector machine (SVM) in the 1990s, when the SVM was found to be competitive with neural networks on tasks such as handwriting recognition. == Mathematics: the kernel trick == The kernel trick avoids the explicit mapping that is needed to get linear learning algorithms to learn a nonlinear function or decision boundary. For all x {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} } and x ′ {\displaystyle \mathbf {x'} } in the input space X {\displaystyle {\mathcal {X}}} , certain functions k ( x , x ′ ) {\displaystyle k(\mathbf {x} ,\mathbf {x'} )} can be expressed as an inner product in another space V {\displaystyle {\mathcal {V}}} . The function k : X × X → R {\displaystyle k\colon {\mathcal {X}}\times {\mathcal {X}}\to \mathbb {R} } is often referred to as a kernel or a kernel function. The word "kernel" is used in mathematics to denote a weighting function for a weighted sum or integral. Certain problems in machine learning have more structure than an arbitrary weighting function k {\displaystyle k} . The computation is made much simpler if the kernel can be written in the form of a "feature map" φ : X → V {\displaystyle \varphi \colon {\mathcal {X}}\to {\mathcal {V}}} which satisfies k ( x , x ′ ) = ⟨ φ ( x ) , φ ( x ′ ) ⟩ V . {\displaystyle k(\mathbf {x} ,\mathbf {x'} )=\langle \varphi (\mathbf {x} ),\varphi (\mathbf {x'} )\rangle _{\mathcal {V}}.} The key restriction is that ⟨ ⋅ , ⋅ ⟩ V {\displaystyle \langle \cdot ,\cdot \rangle _{\mathcal {V}}} must be a proper inner product. On the other hand, an explicit representation for φ {\displaystyle \varphi } is not necessary, as long as V {\displaystyle {\mathcal {V}}} is an inner product space. The alternative follows from Mercer's theorem: an implicitly defined function φ {\displaystyle \varphi } exists whenever the space X {\displaystyle {\mathcal {X}}} can be equipped with a suitable measure ensuring the function k {\displaystyle k} satisfies Mercer's condition. Mercer's theorem is similar to a generalization of the result from linear algebra that associates an inner product to any positive-definite matrix. In fact, Mercer's condition can be reduced to this simpler case. If we choose as our measure the counting measure μ ( T ) = | T | {\displaystyle \mu (T)=|T|} for all T ⊂ X {\displaystyle T\subset X} , which counts the number of points inside the set T {\displaystyle T} , then the integral in Mercer's theorem reduces to a summation ∑ i = 1 n ∑ j = 1 n k ( x i , x j ) c i c j ≥ 0. {\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{n}\sum _{j=1}^{n}k(\mathbf {x} _{i},\mathbf {x} _{j})c_{i}c_{j}\geq 0.} If this summation holds for all finite sequences of points ( x 1 , … , x n ) {\displaystyle (\mathbf {x} _{1},\dotsc ,\mathbf {x} _{n})} in X {\displaystyle {\mathcal {X}}} and all choices of n {\displaystyle n} real-valued coefficients ( c 1 , … , c n ) {\displaystyle (c_{1},\dots ,c_{n})} (cf. positive definite kernel), then the function k {\displaystyle k} satisfies Mercer's condition. Some algorithms that depend on arbitrary relationships in the native space X {\displaystyle {\mathcal {X}}} would, in fact, have a linear interpretation in a different setting: the range space of φ {\displaystyle \varphi } . The linear interpretation gives us insight about the algorithm. Furthermore, there is often no need to compute φ {\displaystyle \varphi } directly during computation, as is the case with support-vector machines. Some cite this running time shortcut as the primary benefit. Researchers also use it to justify the meanings and properties of existing algorithms. Theoretically, a Gram matrix K ∈ R n × n {\displaystyle \mathbf {K} \in \mathbb {R} ^{n\times n}} with respect to { x 1 , … , x n } {\displaystyle \{\mathbf {x} _{1},\dotsc ,\mathbf {x} _{n}\}} (sometimes also called a "kernel matrix"), where K i j = k ( x i , x j ) {\displaystyle K_{ij}=k(\mathbf {x} _{i},\mathbf {x} _{j})} , must be positive semi-definite (PSD). Empirically, for machine learning heuristics, choices of a function k {\displaystyle k} that do not satisfy Mercer's condition may still perform reasonably if k {\displaystyle k} at least approximates the intuitive idea of similarity. Regardless of whether k {\displaystyle k} is a Mercer kernel, k {\displaystyle k} may still be referred to as a "kernel". If the kernel function k {\displaystyle k} is also a covariance function as used in Gaussian processes, then the Gram matrix K {\displaystyle \mathbf {K} } can also be called a covariance matrix. == Applications == Application areas of kernel methods are diverse and include geostatistics, kriging, inverse distance weighting, 3D reconstruction, bioinformatics, cheminformatics, information extraction and handwriting recognition. == Popular kernels == Fisher kernel Graph kernels Kernel smoother Polynomial kernel Radial basis function kern