Part of a series on |
Machine learning and data mining |
---|
Structured prediction or structured (output) learning is an umbrella term for supervised machine learning techniques that involves predicting structured objects, rather than scalar discrete or real values. [1]
Similar to commonly used supervised learning techniques, structured prediction models are typically trained by means of observed data in which the true prediction value is used to adjust model parameters. Due to the complexity of the model and the interrelations of predicted variables the process of prediction using a trained model and of training itself is often computationally infeasible and approximate inference and learning methods are used.
For example, the problem of translating a natural language sentence into a syntactic representation such as a parse tree can be seen as a structured prediction problem [2] in which the structured output domain is the set of all possible parse trees. Structured prediction is also used in a wide variety of application domains including bioinformatics, natural language processing, speech recognition, and computer vision.
Sequence tagging is a class of problems prevalent in natural language processing, where input data are often sequences (e.g. sentences of text). The sequence tagging problem appears in several guises, e.g. part-of-speech tagging and named entity recognition. In POS tagging, for example, each word in a sequence must receive a "tag" (class label) that expresses its "type" of word:
The main challenge of this problem is to resolve ambiguity: the word "sentence" can also be a verb in English, and so can "tagged".
While this problem can be solved by simply performing classification of individual tokens, that approach does not take into account the empirical fact that tags do not occur independently; instead, each tag displays a strong conditional dependence on the tag of the previous word. This fact can be exploited in a sequence model such as a hidden Markov model or conditional random field [2] that predicts the entire tag sequence for a sentence, rather than just individual tags, by means of the Viterbi algorithm.
Probabilistic graphical models form a large class of structured prediction models. In particular, Bayesian networks and random fields are popular. Other algorithms and models for structured prediction include inductive logic programming, case-based reasoning, structured SVMs, Markov logic networks, Probabilistic Soft Logic, and constrained conditional models. Main techniques:
One of the easiest ways to understand algorithms for general structured prediction is the structured perceptron of Collins. [3] This algorithm combines the perceptron algorithm for learning linear classifiers with an inference algorithm (classically the Viterbi algorithm when used on sequence data) and can be described abstractly as follows. First define a "joint feature function" Φ(x, y) that maps a training sample x and a candidate prediction y to a vector of length n (x and y may have any structure; n is problem-dependent, but must be fixed for each model). Let GEN be a function that generates candidate predictions. Then:
In practice, finding the argmax over will be done using an algorithm such as Viterbi or an algorithm such as max-sum, rather than an exhaustive search through an exponentially large set of candidates.
The idea of learning is similar to multiclass perceptron.
Supervised learning (SL) is a paradigm in machine learning where input objects and a desired output value train a model. The training data is processed, building a function that maps new data on expected output values. An optimal scenario will allow for the algorithm to correctly determine output values for unseen instances. This requires the learning algorithm to generalize from the training data to unseen situations in a "reasonable" way. This statistical quality of an algorithm is measured through the so-called generalization error.
In machine learning, support vector machines are supervised learning models with associated learning algorithms that analyze data for classification and regression analysis. Developed at AT&T Bell Laboratories by Vladimir Vapnik with colleagues SVMs are one of the most robust prediction methods, being based on statistical learning frameworks or VC theory proposed by Vapnik and Chervonenkis (1974). Given a set of training examples, each marked as belonging to one of two categories, an SVM training algorithm builds a model that assigns new examples to one category or the other, making it a non-probabilistic binary linear classifier. SVM maps training examples to points in space so as to maximise the width of the gap between the two categories. New examples are then mapped into that same space and predicted to belong to a category based on which side of the gap they fall.
A hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process with unobservable ("hidden") states. As part of the definition, HMM requires that there be an observable process whose outcomes are "influenced" by the outcomes of in a known way. Since cannot be observed directly, the goal is to learn about by observing HMM has an additional requirement that the outcome of at time must be "influenced" exclusively by the outcome of at and that the outcomes of and at must be conditionally independent of at given at time
In the field of machine learning, the goal of statistical classification is to use an object's characteristics to identify which class it belongs to. A linear classifier achieves this by making a classification decision based on the value of a linear combination of the characteristics. An object's characteristics are also known as feature values and are typically presented to the machine in a vector called a feature vector. Such classifiers work well for practical problems such as document classification, and more generally for problems with many variables (features), reaching accuracy levels comparable to non-linear classifiers while taking less time to train and use.
Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. While similar, pattern recognition (PR) is not to be confused with pattern machines (PM) which may possess (PR) capabilities but their primary function is to distinguish and create emergent pattern. PR has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphics and machine learning. Pattern recognition has its origins in statistics and engineering; some modern approaches to pattern recognition include the use of machine learning, due to the increased availability of big data and a new abundance of processing power.
In machine learning, the perceptron is an algorithm for supervised learning of binary classifiers. A binary classifier is a function which can decide whether or not an input, represented by a vector of numbers, belongs to some specific class. It is a type of linear classifier, i.e. a classification algorithm that makes its predictions based on a linear predictor function combining a set of weights with the feature vector.
A Bayesian network is a probabilistic graphical model that represents a set of variables and their conditional dependencies via a directed acyclic graph (DAG). It is one of several forms of causal notation. Bayesian networks are ideal for taking an event that occurred and predicting the likelihood that any one of several possible known causes was the contributing factor. For example, a Bayesian network could represent the probabilistic relationships between diseases and symptoms. Given symptoms, the network can be used to compute the probabilities of the presence of various diseases.
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 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.
Conditional random fields (CRFs) are a class of statistical modeling methods often applied in pattern recognition and machine learning and used for structured prediction. Whereas a classifier predicts a label for a single sample without considering "neighbouring" samples, a CRF can take context into account. To do so, the predictions are modelled as a graphical model, which represents the presence of dependencies between the predictions. What kind of graph is used depends on the application. For example, in natural language processing, "linear chain" CRFs are popular, for which each prediction is dependent only on its immediate neighbours. In image processing, the graph typically connects locations to nearby and/or similar locations to enforce that they receive similar predictions.
Discriminative models, also referred to as conditional models, are a class of logistical models used for classification or regression. They distinguish decision boundaries through observed data, such as pass/fail, win/lose, alive/dead or healthy/sick.
Graphical models have become powerful frameworks for protein structure prediction, protein–protein interaction, and free energy calculations for protein structures. Using a graphical model to represent the protein structure allows the solution of many problems including secondary structure prediction, protein-protein interactions, protein-drug interaction, and free energy calculations.
In statistics, a maximum-entropy Markov model (MEMM), or conditional Markov model (CMM), is a graphical model for sequence labeling that combines features of hidden Markov models (HMMs) and maximum entropy (MaxEnt) models. An MEMM is a discriminative model that extends a standard maximum entropy classifier by assuming that the unknown values to be learnt are connected in a Markov chain rather than being conditionally independent of each other. MEMMs find applications in natural language processing, specifically in part-of-speech tagging and information extraction.
A constrained conditional model (CCM) is a machine learning and inference framework that augments the learning of conditional models with declarative constraints. The constraint can be used as a way to incorporate expressive prior knowledge into the model and bias the assignments made by the learned model to satisfy these constraints. The framework can be used to support decisions in an expressive output space while maintaining modularity and tractability of training and inference.
In machine learning, the kernel perceptron is a variant of the popular perceptron learning algorithm that can learn kernel machines, i.e. non-linear classifiers that employ a kernel function to compute the similarity of unseen samples to training samples. The algorithm was invented in 1964, making it the first kernel classification learner.
In machine learning, Platt scaling or Platt calibration is a way of transforming the outputs of a classification model into a probability distribution over classes. The method was invented by John Platt in the context of support vector machines, replacing an earlier method by Vapnik, but can be applied to other classification models. Platt scaling works by fitting a logistic regression model to a classifier's scores.
Probabilistic Soft Logic (PSL) is a statistical relational learning (SRL) framework for modeling probabilistic and relational domains. It is applicable to a variety of machine learning problems, such as collective classification, entity resolution, link prediction, and ontology alignment. PSL combines two tools: first-order logic, with its ability to succinctly represent complex phenomena, and probabilistic graphical models, which capture the uncertainty and incompleteness inherent in real-world knowledge. More specifically, PSL uses "soft" logic as its logical component and Markov random fields as its statistical model. PSL provides sophisticated inference techniques for finding the most likely answer (i.e. the maximum a posteriori (MAP) state). The "softening" of the logical formulas makes inference a polynomial time operation rather than an NP-hard operation.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to machine learning. Machine learning is a subfield of soft computing within computer science that evolved from the study of pattern recognition and computational learning theory in artificial intelligence. In 1959, Arthur Samuel defined machine learning as a "field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed". Machine learning explores the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data. Such algorithms operate by building a model from an example training set of input observations in order to make data-driven predictions or decisions expressed as outputs, rather than following strictly static program instructions.
Dependency networks (DNs) are graphical models, similar to Markov networks, wherein each vertex (node) corresponds to a random variable and each edge captures dependencies among variables. Unlike Bayesian networks, DNs may contain cycles. Each node is associated to a conditional probability table, which determines the realization of the random variable given its parents.
In network theory, link prediction is the problem of predicting the existence of a link between two entities in a network. Examples of link prediction include predicting friendship links among users in a social network, predicting co-authorship links in a citation network, and predicting interactions between genes and proteins in a biological network. Link prediction can also have a temporal aspect, where, given a snapshot of the set of links at time , the goal is to predict the links at time . Link prediction is widely applicable. In e-commerce, link prediction is often a subtask for recommending items to users. In the curation of citation databases, it can be used for record deduplication. In bioinformatics, it has been used to predict protein-protein interactions (PPI). It is also used to identify hidden groups of terrorists and criminals in security related applications.
In network theory, collective classification is the simultaneous prediction of the labels for multiple objects, where each label is predicted using information about the object's observed features, the observed features and labels of its neighbors, and the unobserved labels of its neighbors. Collective classification problems are defined in terms of networks of random variables, where the network structure determines the relationship between the random variables. Inference is performed on multiple random variables simultaneously, typically by propagating information between nodes in the network to perform approximate inference. Approaches that use collective classification can make use of relational information when performing inference. Examples of collective classification include predicting attributes of individuals in a social network, classifying webpages in the World Wide Web, and inferring the research area of a paper in a scientific publication dataset.