Many applications require the collection of data on different variables or measurements over many system performance metrics. We term those broadly as measures or variables. Often data collection along each measure incurs a cost, thus it is desirable to consider the cost of measures in modeling. This is a fairly new class of problems in the area of cost-sensitive learning. A few attempts have been made to incorporate costs in combining and selecting measures. However, existing studies either do not strictly enforce a budget constraint, or are not the `most' cost effective. With a focus on classification problem, we propose a computationally efficient approach that could find a near optimal model under a given budget by exploring the most `promising' part of the solution space. Instead of outputting a single model, we produce a model schedule -- a list of models, sorted by model costs and expected predictive accuracy. This could be used to choose the model with the best predictive accuracy under a given budget, or to trade off between the budget and the predictive accuracy. Experiments on some benchmark datasets show that our approach compares favorably to competing methods.
From the sampling of data to the initialisation of parameters, randomness is ubiquitous in modern Machine Learning practice. Understanding the statistical fluctuations engendered by the different sources of randomness in prediction is therefore key to understanding robust generalisation. In this manuscript we develop a quantitative and rigorous theory for the study of fluctuations in an ensemble of generalised linear models trained on different, but correlated, features in high-dimensions. In particular, we provide a complete description of the asymptotic joint distribution of the empirical risk minimiser for generic convex loss and regularisation in the high-dimensional limit. Our result encompasses a rich set of classification and regression tasks, such as the lazy regime of overparametrised neural networks, or equivalently the random features approximation of kernels. While allowing to study directly the mitigating effect of ensembling (or bagging) on the bias-variance decomposition of the test error, our analysis also helps disentangle the contribution of statistical fluctuations, and the singular role played by the interpolation threshold that are at the roots of the "double-descent" phenomenon.
It is common practice to use Laplace approximations to compute marginal likelihoods in Bayesian versions of generalised linear models (GLM). Marginal likelihoods combined with model priors are then used in different search algorithms to compute the posterior marginal probabilities of models and individual covariates. This allows performing Bayesian model selection and model averaging. For large sample sizes, even the Laplace approximation becomes computationally challenging because the optimisation routine involved needs to evaluate the likelihood on the full set of data in multiple iterations. As a consequence, the algorithm is not scalable for large datasets. To address this problem, we suggest using a version of a popular batch stochastic gradient descent (BSGD) algorithm for estimating the marginal likelihood of a GLM by subsampling from the data. We further combine the algorithm with Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based methods for Bayesian model selection and provide some theoretical results on the convergence of the estimates. Finally, we report results from experiments illustrating the performance of the proposed algorithm.
In classical federated learning, the clients contribute to the overall training by communicating local updates for the underlying model on their private data to a coordinating server. However, updating and communicating the entire model becomes prohibitively expensive when resource-constrained clients collectively aim to train a large machine learning model. Split learning provides a natural solution in such a setting, where only a small part of the model is stored and trained on clients while the remaining large part of the model only stays at the servers. However, the model partitioning employed in split learning introduces a significant amount of communication cost. This paper addresses this issue by compressing the additional communication using a novel clustering scheme accompanied by a gradient correction method. Extensive empirical evaluations on image and text benchmarks show that the proposed method can achieve up to $490\times$ communication cost reduction with minimal drop in accuracy, and enables a desirable performance vs. communication trade-off.
We revisit widely used preferential Gaussian processes by Chu et al.(2005) and challenge their modelling assumption that imposes rankability of data items via latent utility function values. We propose a generalisation of pgp which can capture more expressive latent preferential structures in the data and thus be used to model inconsistent preferences, i.e. where transitivity is violated, or to discover clusters of comparable items via spectral decomposition of the learned preference functions. We also consider the properties of associated covariance kernel functions and its reproducing kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS), giving a simple construction that satisfies universality in the space of preference functions. Finally, we provide an extensive set of numerical experiments on simulated and real-world datasets showcasing the competitiveness of our proposed method with state-of-the-art. Our experimental findings support the conjecture that violations of rankability are ubiquitous in real-world preferential data.
Predictive models for binary data are fundamental in various fields, and the growing complexity of modern applications has motivated several flexible specifications for modeling the relationship between the observed predictors and the binary responses. A widely-implemented solution is to express the probability parameter via a probit mapping of a Gaussian process indexed by predictors. However, unlike for continuous settings, there is a lack of closed-form results for predictive distributions in binary models with Gaussian process priors. Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and approximation strategies provide common solutions to this problem, but state-of-the-art algorithms are either computationally intractable or inaccurate in moderate-to-high dimensions. In this article, we aim to cover this gap by deriving closed-form expressions for the predictive probabilities in probit Gaussian processes that rely either on cumulative distribution functions of multivariate Gaussians or on functionals of multivariate truncated normals. To evaluate these quantities we develop novel scalable solutions based on tile-low-rank Monte Carlo methods for computing multivariate Gaussian probabilities, and on mean-field variational approximations of multivariate truncated normals. Closed-form expressions for the marginal likelihood and for the posterior distribution of the Gaussian process are also discussed. As shown in simulated and real-world empirical studies, the proposed methods scale to dimensions where state-of-the-art solutions are impractical.
One of the main features of interest in analysing the light curves of stars is the underlying periodic behaviour. The corresponding observations are a complex type of time series with unequally spaced time points and are sometimes accompanied by varying measures of accuracy. The main tools for analysing these type of data rely on the periodogram-like functions, constructed with a desired feature so that the peaks indicate the presence of a potential period. In this paper, we explore a particular periodogram for the irregularly observed time series data, similar to Thieler et. al. (2013). We identify the potential periods at the appropriate peaks and more importantly with a quantifiable uncertainty. Our approach is shown to easily generalise to non-parametric methods including a weighted Gaussian process regression periodogram. We also extend this approach to correlated background noise. The proposed method for period detection relies on a test based on quadratic forms with normally distributed components. We implement the saddlepoint approximation, as a faster and more accurate alternative to the simulation-based methods that are currently used. The power analysis of the testing methodology is reported together with applications using light curves from the Hunting Outbursting Young Stars citizen science project.
Context information in search sessions has proven to be useful for capturing user search intent. Existing studies explored user behavior sequences in sessions in different ways to enhance query suggestion or document ranking. However, a user behavior sequence has often been viewed as a definite and exact signal reflecting a user's behavior. In reality, it is highly variable: user's queries for the same intent can vary, and different documents can be clicked. To learn a more robust representation of the user behavior sequence, we propose a method based on contrastive learning, which takes into account the possible variations in user's behavior sequences. Specifically, we propose three data augmentation strategies to generate similar variants of user behavior sequences and contrast them with other sequences. In so doing, the model is forced to be more robust regarding the possible variations. The optimized sequence representation is incorporated into document ranking. Experiments on two real query log datasets show that our proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art methods significantly, which demonstrates the effectiveness of our method for context-aware document ranking.
Counterfactual explanations are usually generated through heuristics that are sensitive to the search's initial conditions. The absence of guarantees of performance and robustness hinders trustworthiness. In this paper, we take a disciplined approach towards counterfactual explanations for tree ensembles. We advocate for a model-based search aiming at "optimal" explanations and propose efficient mixed-integer programming approaches. We show that isolation forests can be modeled within our framework to focus the search on plausible explanations with a low outlier score. We provide comprehensive coverage of additional constraints that model important objectives, heterogeneous data types, structural constraints on the feature space, along with resource and actionability restrictions. Our experimental analyses demonstrate that the proposed search approach requires a computational effort that is orders of magnitude smaller than previous mathematical programming algorithms. It scales up to large data sets and tree ensembles, where it provides, within seconds, systematic explanations grounded on well-defined models solved to optimality.
Model-based methods for recommender systems have been studied extensively in recent years. In systems with large corpus, however, the calculation cost for the learnt model to predict all user-item preferences is tremendous, which makes full corpus retrieval extremely difficult. To overcome the calculation barriers, models such as matrix factorization resort to inner product form (i.e., model user-item preference as the inner product of user, item latent factors) and indexes to facilitate efficient approximate k-nearest neighbor searches. However, it still remains challenging to incorporate more expressive interaction forms between user and item features, e.g., interactions through deep neural networks, because of the calculation cost. In this paper, we focus on the problem of introducing arbitrary advanced models to recommender systems with large corpus. We propose a novel tree-based method which can provide logarithmic complexity w.r.t. corpus size even with more expressive models such as deep neural networks. Our main idea is to predict user interests from coarse to fine by traversing tree nodes in a top-down fashion and making decisions for each user-node pair. We also show that the tree structure can be jointly learnt towards better compatibility with users' interest distribution and hence facilitate both training and prediction. Experimental evaluations with two large-scale real-world datasets show that the proposed method significantly outperforms traditional methods. Online A/B test results in Taobao display advertising platform also demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in production environments.
Machine Learning models become increasingly proficient in complex tasks. However, even for experts in the field, it can be difficult to understand what the model learned. This hampers trust and acceptance, and it obstructs the possibility to correct the model. There is therefore a need for transparency of machine learning models. The development of transparent classification models has received much attention, but there are few developments for achieving transparent Reinforcement Learning (RL) models. In this study we propose a method that enables a RL agent to explain its behavior in terms of the expected consequences of state transitions and outcomes. First, we define a translation of states and actions to a description that is easier to understand for human users. Second, we developed a procedure that enables the agent to obtain the consequences of a single action, as well as its entire policy. The method calculates contrasts between the consequences of a policy derived from a user query, and of the learned policy of the agent. Third, a format for generating explanations was constructed. A pilot survey study was conducted to explore preferences of users for different explanation properties. Results indicate that human users tend to favor explanations about policy rather than about single actions.