Active learning of Gaussian processes with manifold-preserving graph reduction

As a recently proposed machine learning method, active learning of Gaussian processes can effectively use a small number of labeled examples to train a classifier, which in turn is used to select the most informative examples from unlabeled data for manual labeling. However, in the process of example selection, active learning usually need consider all the unlabeled data without exploiting the structural space connectivity among them. This will decrease the classification accuracy to some extent since the selected points may not be the most informative. To overcome this shortcoming, in this paper, we present a method which applies the manifold-preserving graph reduction (MPGR) algorithm to the traditional active learning method of Gaussian processes. MPGR is a simple and efficient example sparsification algorithm which can construct a subset to represent the global structure and simultaneously eliminate the influence of noisy points and outliers. Thereby, when actively selecting examples to label, we just choose from the subset constructed by MPGR instead of the whole unlabeled data. We report experimental results on multiple data sets which demonstrate that our method obtains better classification performance compared with the original active learning method of Gaussian processes.     

Active learning SVM with regularization path for image classification

In classification problems, many different active learning techniques are often adopted to find the most informative samples for labeling in order to save human labors. Among them, active learning support vector machine (SVM) is one of the most representative approaches, in which model parameter is usually set as a fixed default value during the whole learning process. Note that model parameter is closely related to the training set. Hence dynamic parameter is desirable to make a satisfactory learning performance. To target this issue, we proposed a novel algorithm, called active learning SVM with regularization path, which can fit the entire solution path of SVM for every value of model parameters. In this algorithm, we first traced the entire solution path of the current classifier to find a series of candidate model parameters, and then used unlabeled samples to select the best model parameter. Besides, in the initial phase of training, we constructed a training sample sets by using an improved K-medoids cluster algorithm. Experimental results conducted from real-world data sets showed the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for image classification problems.     

主动学习的多标签图像在线分类

目的在多标签有监督学习框架中,构建具有较强泛化性能的分类器需要大量已标注训练样本,而实际应用中已标注样本少且获取代价十分昂贵。针对多标签图像分类中已标注样本数量不足和分类器再学习效率低的问题,提出一种结合主动学习的多标签图像在线分类算法。方法基于min-max理论,采用查询最具代表性和最具信息量的样本挑选策略主动地选择待标注样本,且基于KKT(Karush-Kuhn-Tucker)条件在线地更新多标签图像分类器。结果在4个公开的数据集上,采用4种多标签分类评价指标对本文算法进行评估。实验结果表明,本文采用的样本挑选方法比随机挑选样本方法和基于间隔的采样方法均占据明显优势;当分类器达到相同或相近的分类准确度时,利用本文的样本挑选策略选择的待标注样本数目要明显少于采用随机挑选样本方法和基于间隔的采样方法所需查询的样本数。结论本文算法一方面可以减少获取已标注样本所需的人工标注代价;另一方面也避免了传统的分类器重新训练时利用所有数据所产生的学习效率低下的问题,达到了当新数据到来时可实时更新分类器的目的。     

基于动态可行域划分的SVM主动学习

针对传统SVM主动学习中批量采样方法的不足,提出了动态可行域划分算法.从特征空间与参数空间的对偶关系入手,深入分析SVM主动学习的本质,将特征空间中对样本的标注视为参数空间中对可行域的划分;通过综合利用当前分类模型和先前标注样本两方面信息,动态地优化可行域划分方案,以确保选取的样本对模型改进的价值,最终实现更为高效的选择性采样.实验结果表明,基于动态可行域划分的SVM主动学习算法能够显著提高所选样本的信息量,从而能够在有限的标注代价下大幅提高其分类性能.     

PEBL: Web page classification without negative examples

Web page classification is one of the essential techniques for Web mining because classifying Web pages of an interesting class is often the first step of mining the Web. However, constructing a classifier for an interesting class requires laborious preprocessing such as collecting positive and negative training examples. For instance, in order to construct a "homepage" classifier, one needs to collect a sample of homepages (positive examples) and a sample of nonhomepages (negative examples). In particular, collecting negative training examples requires arduous work and caution to avoid bias. The paper presents a framework, called positive example based learning (PEBL), for Web page classification which eliminates the need for manually collecting negative training examples in preprocessing. The PEBL framework applies an algorithm, called mapping-convergence (M-C), to achieve high classification accuracy (with positive and unlabeled data) as high as that of a traditional SVM (with positive and negative data). M-C runs in two stages: the mapping stage and convergence stage. In the mapping stage, the algorithm uses a weak classifier that draws an initial approximation of "strong" negative data. Based on the initial approximation, the convergence stage iteratively runs an internal classifier (e.g., SVM) which maximizes margins to progressively improve the approximation of negative data. Thus, the class boundary eventually converges to the true boundary of the positive class in the feature space. We present the M-C algorithm with supporting theoretical and experimental justifications. Our experiments show that, given the same set of positive examples; the M-C algorithm outperforms one-class SVMs, and it is almost as accurate as the traditional SVMs.     

结合Tri-training半监督学习和凸壳向量的SVM主动学习算法*

为解决监督学习过程中难以获得大量带有类标记样本且样本数据标记代价较高的问题,结合主动学习和半监督学习方法,提出基于Tri-training半监督学习和凸壳向量的SVM主动学习算法.通过计算样本集的壳向量,选择最有可能成为支持向量的壳向量进行标记.为解决以往主动学习算法在选择最富有信息量的样本标记后,不再进一步利用未标记样本的问题,将Tri-training半监督学习方法引入SVM主动学习过程,选择类标记置信度高的未标记样本加入训练样本集,利用未标记样本集中有利于学习器的信息.在UCI数据集上的实验表明,文中算法在标记样本较少时获得分类准确率较高和泛化性能较好的SVM分类器,降低SVM训练学习的样本标记代价.     

Neighborhood preserving D-optimal design for active learning and its application to terrain classification

In many real-world applications, labeled data are usually expensive to get, while there may be a large amount of unlabeled data. To reduce the labeling cost, active learning attempts to discover the most informative data points for labeling. The challenge is which unlabeled samples should be labeled to improve the classifier the most. Classical optimal experimental design algorithms are based on least-square errors over the labeled samples only while the unlabeled points are ignored. In this paper, we propose a novel active learning algorithm called neighborhood preserving D-optimal design. Our algorithm is based on a neighborhood preserving regression model which simultaneously minimizes the least-square error on the measured samples and preserves the neighborhood structure of the data space. It selects the most informative samples which minimize the variance of the regression parameter. We also extend our algorithm to nonlinear case by using kernel trick. Experimental results on terrain classification show the effectiveness of proposed approach.     

基于平均期望间隔的多标签分类主动学习方法

针对多标签主动学习速度较慢的问题,提出一种基于平均期望间隔的多标签分类的主动学习方法。计算支持向量机分类器中的期望间隔,并将其作为样本选择标准。实验结果表明,该方法在分类精度、Hamming Loss、Coverage等评价标准上优于基于决策值和后验概率等主动学习策略,能更好地评价未标记样本,有效提高分类精度和速度。     

一种基于SVM和主动学习的图像检索方法

主动学习已被证明是提升基于内容图像检索性能的一种重要技术。而相关反馈技术可以有效地减少用户标注。提出一种主动学习算法,带权Co-ASVM,用于改进相关反馈中样本选择的性能。颜色和纹理可以认为是一张图片的两个充分不相关的视图,分别计算颜色和纹理两种特征空间的权值,并在两种特征空间上分别进行SVM学习,对未标注样本进行分类;为了减少反馈样本的冗余,提出一种K-means聚类的主动反馈策略,将未标注样本返回给用户标注。实验表明,该图像检索方法有较高的准确性,并且有不错的检索效果。     

Transfer active learning by querying committee简

In real applications of inductive learning for classifi cation, labeled instances are often defi cient, and labeling them by an oracle is often expensive and time-consuming. Active learning on a single task aims to select only informative unlabeled instances for querying to improve the classifi cation accuracy while decreasing the querying cost. However, an inevitable problem in active learning is that the informative measures for selecting queries are commonly based on the initial hypotheses sampled from only a few labeled instances. In such a circumstance, the initial hypotheses are not reliable and may deviate from the true distribution underlying the target task. Consequently, the informative measures will possibly select irrelevant instances. A promising way to compensate this problem is to borrow useful knowledge from other sources with abundant labeled information, which is called transfer learning. However, a signifi cant challenge in transfer learning is how to measure the similarity between the source and the target tasks. One needs to be aware of different distributions or label assignments from unrelated source tasks;otherwise, they will lead to degenerated performance while transferring. Also, how to design an effective strategy to avoid selecting irrelevant samples to query is still an open question. To tackle these issues, we propose a hybrid algorithm for active learning with the help of transfer learning by adopting a divergence measure to alleviate the negative transfer caused by distribution differences. To avoid querying irrelevant instances, we also present an adaptive strategy which could eliminate unnecessary instances in the input space and models in the model space. Extensive experiments on both the synthetic and the real data sets show that the proposed algorithm is able to query fewer instances with a higher accuracy and that it converges faster than the state-of-the-art methods.     

Batch Mode Active Learning with Applications to Text Categorization and Image Retrieval

Most machine learning tasks in data classification and information retrieval require manually labeled data examples in the training stage. The goal of active learning is to select the most informative examples for manual labeling in these learning tasks. Most of the previous studies in active learning have focused on selecting a single unlabeled example in each iteration. This could be inefficient, since the classification model has to be retrained for every acquired labeled example. It is also inappropriate for the setup of information retrieval tasks where the user's relevance feedback is often provided for the top K retrieved items. In this paper, we present a framework for batch mode active learning, which selects a number of informative examples for manual labeling in each iteration. The key feature of batch mode active learning is to reduce the redundancy among the selected examples such that each example provides unique information for model updating. To this end, we employ the Fisher information matrix as the measurement of model uncertainty, and choose the set of unlabeled examples that can efficiently reduce the Fisher information of the classification model. We apply our batch mode active learning framework to both text categorization and image retrieval. Promising results show that our algorithms are significantly more effective than the active learning approaches that select unlabeled examples based only on their informativeness for the classification model.     

Active learning with adaptive regularization

In classification problems, active learning is often adopted to alleviate the laborious human labeling efforts, by finding the most informative samples to query the labels. One of the most popular query strategy is selecting the most uncertain samples for the current classifier. The performance of such an active learning process heavily relies on the learned classifier before each query. Thus, stepwise classifier model/parameter selection is quite critical, which is, however, rarely studied in the literature. In this paper, we propose a novel active learning support vector machine algorithm with adaptive model selection. In this algorithm, before each new query, we trace the full solution path of the base classifier, and then perform efficient model selection using the unlabeled samples. This strategy significantly improves the active learning efficiency with comparatively inexpensive computational cost. Empirical results on both artificial and real world benchmark data sets show the encouraging gains brought by the proposed algorithm in terms of both classification accuracy and computational cost.     

一种基于聚类的PU主动文本分类方法

文本分类是信息检索的关键问题之一.提取更多的可信反例和构造准确高效的分类器是PU(positive andunlabeled)文本分类的两个重要问题.然而,在现有的可信反例提取方法中,很多方法提取的可信反例数量较少,构建的分类器质量有待提高.分别针对这两个重要步骤提供了一种基于聚类的半监督主动分类方法.与传统的反例提取方法不同,利用聚类技术和正例文档应与反例文档共享尽可能少的特征项这一特点,从未标识数据集中尽可能多地移除正例,从而可以获得更多的可信反例.结合SVM 主动学习和改进的Rocchio 构建分类器,并采用改进的TFIDF(term frequency inverse document frequency)进行特征提取,可以显著提高分类的准确度.分别在3 个不同的数据集中测试了分类结果(RCV1,Reuters-21578,20 Newsgoups).实验结果表明,基于聚类寻找可信反例可以在保持较低错误率的情况下获取更多的可信反例,而且主动学习方法的引入也显著提升了分类精度.     

自适应主动半监督学习方法

主动学习从大量无标记样本中挑选样本交给专家标记.现有的批抽样主动学习算法主要受3个限制：（1）一些主动学习方法基于单选择准则或对数据、模型设定假设,这类方法很难找到既有不确定性又有代表性的未标记样本;（2）现有批抽样主动学习方法的性能很大程度上依赖于样本之间相似性度量的准确性,例如预定义函数或差异性衡量;（3）噪声标签问题一直影响批抽样主动学习算法的性能.提出一种基于深度学习批抽样的主动学习方法.通过深度神经网络生成标记和未标记样本的学习表示和采用标签循环模式,使得标记样本与未标记样本建立联系,再回到相同标签的标记样本.这样同时考虑了样本的不确定性和代表性,并且算法对噪声标签具有鲁棒性.在提出的批抽样主动学习方法中,算法使用的子模块函数确保选择的样本集合具有多样性.此外,自适应参数的优化,使得主动学习算法可以自动平衡样本的不确定性和代表性.将提出的主动学习方法应用到半监督分类和半监督聚类中,实验结果表明,所提出的主动学习方法的性能优于现有的一些先进的方法.     

Learning model order from labeled and unlabeled data for partially supervised classification, with application to word sense disambiguation

Previous partially supervised classification methods can partition unlabeled data into positive examples and negative examples for a given class by learning from positive labeled examples and unlabeled examples, but they cannot further group the negative examples into meaningful clusters even if there are many different classes in the negative examples. Here we proposed an automatic method to obtain a natural partitioning of mixed data (labeled data + unlabeled data) by maximizing a stability criterion defined on classification results from an extended label propagation algorithm over all the possible values of model order (or the number of classes) in mixed data. Our experimental results on benchmark corpora for word sense disambiguation task indicate that this model order identification algorithm with the extended label propagation algorithm as the base classifier outperforms SVM, a one-class partially supervised classification algorithm, and the model order identification algorithm with semi-supervised k-means clustering as the base classifier when labeled data is incomplete.     

基于SVM主动学习技术的PU文本分类

PU文本分类(以正例和未标识实例集训练分类器的分类方法)关键在于从U(未标识实例)集中提取尽可能多的可靠反例,然后在正例与可靠反例的基础上使用机器学习的方法构造有效分类器,而已有的方法可靠反例的数量少或不可靠,同样构造的分类器也精度不高,基于SVM主动学习技术的PU文本分类算法提出一种利用SVM与改进的Rocchio分类器进行主动学习的PU文本分类方法,并通过spy技术来提高SVM分类器的准确度,解决某些机器学习中训练样本获取代价过大,尤其是反例样本较难获取的实际问题。实验表明,该方法比目前其它的主动学习方法及面向PU的文本分类方法具有更高的准确率和召回率。     

一种基于EM和分类损失的半监督主动DBN学习算法

对于建立动态贝叶斯网络(DBN)分类模型时,带有类标注样本数据集获得困难的问题,提出一种基于EM和分类损失的半监督主动DBN学习算法.半监督学习中的EM算法可以有效利用未标注样本数据来学习DBN分类模型,但是由于迭代过程中易于加入错误的样本分类信息而影响模型的准确性.基于分类损失的主动学习借鉴到EM学习中,可以自主选择有用的未标注样本来请求用户标注,当把这些样本加入训练集后能够最大程度减少模型对未标注样本分类的不确定性.实验表明,该算法能够显著提高DBN学习器的效率和性能,并快速收敛于预定的分类精度.     

Column subset selection for active learning in image classification

Image classification is an important task in computer vision and machine learning. However, it is known that manually labeling images is time-consuming and expensive, but the unlabeled images are easily available. Active learning is a mechanism which tries to determine which unlabeled data points would be the most informative (i.e., improve the classifier the most) if they are labeled and used as training samples. In this paper, we introduce the idea of column subset selection, which aims to select the most representation columns from a data matrix, into active learning and propose a novel active learning algorithm, column subset selection for active learning (CSS_active). CSS_active selects the most representative images to label, then the other images are reconstructed by these labeled images. The goal of CSS_active is to minimize the reconstruction error. Besides, most of the previous active learning approaches are based on linear model, and hence they only consider linear functions. Therefore, they fail to discover the intrinsic geometry in images when the image space is highly nonlinear. Therefore, we provide a kernel-based column subset selection for active learning (KCSS_active) algorithm which performs the active learning in Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS) instead of the original image space to address this problem. Experimental results on Yale, AT&T and COIL20 data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approaches.     

基于自适应数据剪辑策略的Tri-training算法

Tri-training能有效利用无标记样例提高泛化能力.针对Tri-training迭代中无标记样例常被错误标记而形成训练集噪声,导致性能不稳定的缺点,文中提出ADE-Tri-training(Tri-training with Adaptive Data Editing)新算法.它不仅利用RemoveOnly剪辑操作对每次迭代可能产生的误标记样例识别并移除,更重要的是采用自适应策略来确定RemoveOnly触发与抑制的恰当时机.文中证明,PAC理论下自适应策略中一系列判别充分条件可同时确保新训练集规模迭代增大和新假设分类错误率迭代降低更多.UCI数据集上实验结果表明:ADE-Tri-training具有更好的分类泛化性能和健壮性.     

基于SVM的一种新的分类器设计方法*

“半监督学习”方法,利用已经标注好的训练样本和无标注的训练样本一起训练分类器。在标准SVM分类器训练方法中融入这种思想,给分类面附近加入混合数据,提出了一种新的基于SVM的分类器设计方法,并将这种方法应用于小样本数据的分类问题中。实验表明,新的基于SVM的分类器与传统SVM相比较,在分类准确率上有很大提高,同时偏差有所降低。