Fast online graph clustering via Erd?s-Rényi mixture

In the context of graph clustering, we consider the problem of simultaneously estimating both the partition of the graph nodes and the parameters of an underlying mixture of affiliation networks. In numerous applications the rapid increase of data size over time makes classical clustering algorithms too slow because of the high computational cost. In such situations online clustering algorithms are an efficient alternative to classical batch algorithms. We present an original online algorithm for graph clustering based on a Erd?s-Rényi graph mixture. The relevance of the algorithm is illustrated, using both simulated and real data sets. The real data set is a network extracted from the French political blogosphere and presents an interesting community organization.     

Who is LB1? Discriminant analysis for the classification of specimens

Many problems in paleontology reduce to finding those features that best discriminate among a set of classes. A clear example is the classification of new specimens. However, these classifications are generally challenging because the number of discriminant features and the number of samples are limited. This has been the fate of LB1, a new specimen found in the Liang Bua Cave of Flores. Several authors have attributed LB1 to a new species of Homo, H. floresiensis. According to this hypothesis, LB1 is either a member of the early Homo group or a descendent of an ancestor of the Asian H. erectus. Detractors have put forward an alternate hypothesis, which stipulates that LB1 is in fact a microcephalic modern human. In this paper, we show how we can employ a new Bayes optimal discriminant feature extraction technique to help resolve this type of issues. In this process, we present three types of experiments. First, we use this Bayes optimal discriminant technique to develop a model of morphological (shape) evolution from Australopiths to H. sapiens. LB1 fits perfectly in this model as a member of the early Homo group. Second, we build a classifier based on the available cranial and mandibular data appropriately normalized for size and volume. Again, LB1 is most similar to early Homo. Third, we build a brain endocast classifier to show that LB1 is not within the normal range of variation in H. sapiens. These results combined support the hypothesis of a very early shared ancestor for LB1 and H. erectus, and illustrate how discriminant analysis approaches can be successfully used to help classify newly discovered specimens.     

Type-2 fuzzy Gaussian mixture models

This paper presents a new extension of Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) based on type-2 fuzzy sets (T2 FSs) referred to as T2 FGMMs. The estimated parameters of the GMM may not accurately reflect the underlying distributions of the observations because of insufficient and noisy data in real-world problems. By three-dimensional membership functions of T2 FSs, T2 FGMMs use footprint of uncertainty (FOU) as well as interval secondary membership functions to handle GMMs uncertain mean vector or uncertain covariance matrix, and thus GMMs parameters vary anywhere in an interval with uniform possibilities. As a result, the likelihood of the T2 FGMM becomes an interval rather than a precise real number to account for GMMs uncertainty. These interval likelihoods are then processed by the generalized linear model (GLM) for classification decision-making. In this paper we focus on the role of the FOU in pattern classification. Multi-category classification on different data sets from UCI repository shows that T2 FGMMs are consistently as good as or better than GMMs in case of insufficient training data, and are also insensitive to different areas of the FOU. Based on T2 FGMMs, we extend hidden Markov models (HMMs) to type-2 fuzzy HMMs (T2 FHMMs). Phoneme classification in the babble noise shows that T2 FHMMs outperform classical HMMs in terms of the robustness and classification rate. We also find that the larger area of the FOU in T2 FHMMs with uncertain mean vectors performs better in classification when the signal-to-noise ratio is lower.     

Shape from shading using graph cuts

In this paper, we investigate the applicability of graph cuts to the SFS (shape-from-shading) problem. We propose a new semi-global method for SFS using graph cuts. The new algorithm combines the local method proposed by Lee and Rosenfeld [C.H. Lee, A. Rosenfeld, Improved methods of estimating shape from shading using the light source coordinate system, Artif. Intell. 26 (1985) 125-143] and a global method using an energy minimization technique. By employing a new global energy minimization formulation, the convex/concave ambiguity problem of Lee and Rosenfeld's method can be resolved efficiently. A new combinatorial optimization technique, the graph cuts method, is used for the minimization of the proposed energy functional. Experimental results on a variety of synthetic and real-world images show that the proposed algorithm reconstructs the 3-D shape of objects very efficiently.     

Locally linear discriminant embedding: An efficient method for face recognition

In this paper an efficient feature extraction method named as locally linear discriminant embedding (LLDE) is proposed for face recognition. It is well known that a point can be linearly reconstructed by its neighbors and the reconstruction weights are under the sum-to-one constraint in the classical locally linear embedding (LLE). So the constrained weights obey an important symmetry: for any particular data point, they are invariant to rotations, rescalings and translations. The latter two are introduced to the proposed method to strengthen the classification ability of the original LLE. The data with different class labels are translated by the corresponding vectors and those belonging to the same class are translated by the same vector. In order to cluster the data with the same label closer, they are also rescaled to some extent. So after translation and rescaling, the discriminability of the data will be improved significantly. The proposed method is compared with some related feature extraction methods such as maximum margin criterion (MMC), as well as other supervised manifold learning-based approaches, for example ensemble unified LLE and linear discriminant analysis (En-ULLELDA), locally linear discriminant analysis (LLDA). Experimental results on Yale and CMU PIE face databases convince us that the proposed method provides a better representation of the class information and obtains much higher recognition accuracies.     

Locally linear reconstruction for instance-based learning

Instance-based learning (IBL), so called memory-based reasoning (MBR), is a commonly used non-parametric learning algorithm. k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) learning is the most popular realization of IBL. Due to its usability and adaptability, k-NN has been successfully applied to a wide range of applications. However, in practice, one has to set important model parameters only empirically: the number of neighbors (k) and weights to those neighbors. In this paper, we propose structured ways to set these parameters, based on locally linear reconstruction (LLR). We then employed sequential minimal optimization (SMO) for solving quadratic programming step involved in LLR for classification to reduce the computational complexity. Experimental results from 11 classification and eight regression tasks were promising enough to merit further investigation: not only did LLR outperform the conventional weight allocation methods without much additional computational cost, but also LLR was found to be robust to the change of k.     

A superscalar simulation employing poisson distributed stalls

This paper presents a statistical approach to estimating the performance of a superscalar processor. Traditional trace-driven simulators can take a large amount time to conduct a performance evaluation of a machine, especially as the number of instructions increases. The result of this type of simulation is typically tied to the particular trace that was run. Elements such as dependencies, delays, and stalls are all a direct result of the particular trace being run, and can differ from trace to trace. This paper describes a model designed to separate simulation results from a specific trace. Rather than running a trace-driven simulation, a statistical model is employed, more specifically a Poisson distribution, to predict how these types of delay affects performance. Through the use of this statistical model, a performance evaluation can be conducted using a general code model, with specific stall rates, rather than a particular code trace. This model allows simulations to quickly run tens of millions of instructions and evaluate the performance of a particular micro-architecture while at the same time, allowing the flexibility to change the structure of the architecture.     

Web proxy cache replacement scheme based on back-propagation neural network

Web proxy caches are used to reduce the strain of contemporary web traffic on web servers and network bandwidth providers. In this research, a novel approach to web proxy cache replacement which utilizes neural networks for replacement decisions is developed and analyzed. Neural networks are trained to classify cacheable objects from real world data sets using information known to be important in web proxy caching, such as frequency and recency. Correct classification ratios between 0.85 and 0.88 are obtained both for data used for training and data not used for training. Our approach is compared with Least Recently Used (LRU), Least Frequently Used (LFU) and the optimal case which always rates an object with the number of future requests. Performance is evaluated in simulation for various neural network structures and cache conditions. The final neural networks achieve hit rates that are 86.60% of the optimal in the worst case and 100% of the optimal in the best case. Byte-hit rates are 93.36% of the optimal in the worst case and 99.92% of the optimal in the best case. We examine the input-to-output mappings of individual neural networks and analyze the resulting caching strategy with respect to specific cache conditions.     

Distributing test cases more evenly in adaptive random testing

Adaptive random testing (ART) has recently been proposed to enhance the failure-detection capability of random testing. In ART, test cases are not only randomly generated, but also evenly spread over the input domain. Various ART algorithms have been developed to evenly spread test cases in different ways. Previous studies have shown that some ART algorithms prefer to select test cases from the edge part of the input domain rather than from the centre part, that is, inputs do not have equal chance to be selected as test cases. Since we do not know where the failure-causing inputs are prior to testing, it is not desirable for inputs to have different chances of being selected as test cases. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate how to enhance some ART algorithms by offsetting the edge preference, and propose a new family of ART algorithms. A series of simulations have been conducted and it is shown that these new algorithms not only select test cases more evenly, but also have better failure detection capabilities.