Publications | Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

Discovery of knowledge from geometric graph databases is of particular importance in chemistry and biology, because chemical compounds and proteins are represented as graphs with 3D geometric coordinates. In such applications, scientists are not interested in the statistics of the whole database. Instead they need information about a novel drug candidate or protein at hand, represented as a query graph. We propose a polynomial-delay algorithm for geometric frequent subgraph retrieval. It enumerates all subgraphs of a single given query graph which are frequent geometric epsilon-subgraphs under the entire class of rigid geometric transformations in a database. By using geometric epsilon-subgraphs, we achieve tolerance against variations in geometry. We compare the proposed algorithm to gSpan on chemical compound data, and we show that for a given minimum support the total number of frequent patterns is substantially limited by requiring geometric matching. Although the computation time per pattern is larger than for non-geometric graph mining, the total time is within a reasonable level even for small minimum support.

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2008

ei Nowozin, S., Tsuda, K. Frequent Subgraph Retrieval in Geometric Graph Databases (180), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2008 (techreport)

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Simultaneous Implicit Surface Reconstruction and Meshing

Giesen, J., Maier, M., Schölkopf, B.

(179), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2008 (techreport)

Abstract

We investigate an implicit method to compute a piecewise linear representation of a surface from a set of sample points. As implicit surface functions we use the weighted sum of piecewise linear kernel functions. For such a function we can partition Rd in such a way that these functions are linear on the subsets of the partition. For each subset in the partition we can then compute the zero level set of the function exactly as the intersection of a hyperplane with the subset.

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ei Giesen, J., Maier, M., Schölkopf, B. Simultaneous Implicit Surface Reconstruction and Meshing (179), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2008 (techreport)

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Taxonomy Inference Using Kernel Dependence Measures

Blaschko, M., Gretton, A.

(181), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2008 (techreport)

Abstract

We introduce a family of unsupervised algorithms, numerical taxonomy clustering, to simultaneously cluster data, and to learn a taxonomy that encodes the relationship between the clusters. The algorithms work by maximizing the dependence between the taxonomy and the original data. The resulting taxonomy is a more informative visualization of complex data than simple clustering; in addition, taking into account the relations between different clusters is shown to substantially improve the quality of the clustering, when compared with state-of-the-art algorithms in the literature (both spectral clustering and a previous dependence maximization approach). We demonstrate our algorithm on image and text data.

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ei Blaschko, M., Gretton, A. Taxonomy Inference Using Kernel Dependence Measures (181), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2008 (techreport)

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Large Scale Variational Inference and Experimental Design for Sparse Generalized Linear Models

Seeger, M., Nickisch, H.

(175), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2008 (techreport)

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ei Seeger, M., Nickisch, H. Large Scale Variational Inference and Experimental Design for Sparse Generalized Linear Models (175), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2008 (techreport)

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Block-Iterative Algorithms for Non-Negative Matrix Approximation

Sra, S.

(176), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2008 (techreport)

Abstract

In this report we present new algorithms for non-negative matrix approximation (NMA), commonly known as the NMF problem. Our methods improve upon the well-known methods of Lee & Seung [19] for both the Frobenius norm as well the Kullback-Leibler divergence versions of the problem. For the latter problem, our results are especially interesting because it seems to have witnessed much lesser algorithmic progress as compared to the Frobenius norm NMA problem. Our algorithms are based on a particular block-iterative acceleration technique for EM, which preserves the multiplicative nature of the updates and also ensures monotonicity. Furthermore, our algorithms also naturally apply to the Bregman-divergence NMA algorithms of Dhillon and Sra [8]. Experimentally, we show that our algorithms outperform the traditional Lee/Seung approach most of the time.

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ei Sra, S. Block-Iterative Algorithms for Non-Negative Matrix Approximation (176), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2008 (techreport)

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Approximation Algorithms for Bregman Clustering Co-clustering and Tensor Clustering

Sra, S., Jegelka, S., Banerjee, A.

(177), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2008 (techreport)

Abstract

The Euclidean K-means problem is fundamental to clustering and over the years it has been intensely investigated. More recently, generalizations such as Bregman k-means [8], co-clustering [10], and tensor (multi-way) clustering [40] have also gained prominence. A well-known computational difficulty encountered by these clustering problems is the NP-Hardness of the associated optimization task, and commonly used methods guarantee at most local optimality. Consequently, approximation algorithms of varying degrees of sophistication have been developed, though largely for the basic Euclidean K-means (or `1-norm K-median) problem. In this paper we present approximation algorithms for several Bregman clustering problems by building upon the recent paper of Arthur and Vassilvitskii [5]. Our algorithms obtain objective values within a factor O(logK) for Bregman k-means, Bregman co-clustering, Bregman tensor clustering, and weighted kernel k-means. To our knowledge, except for some special cases, approximation algorithms have not been considered for these general clustering problems. There are several important implications of our work: (i) under the same assumptions as Ackermann et al. [1] it yields a much faster algorithm (non-exponential in K, unlike [1]) for information-theoretic clustering, (ii) it answers several open problems posed by [4], including generalizations to Bregman co-clustering, and tensor clustering, (iii) it provides practical and easy to implement methodsin contrast to several other common approximation approaches.

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ei Sra, S., Jegelka, S., Banerjee, A. Approximation Algorithms for Bregman Clustering Co-clustering and Tensor Clustering (177), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2008 (techreport)

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Combining Appearance and Motion for Human Action Classification in Videos

Dhillon, P., Nowozin, S., Lampert, C.

(174), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2008 (techreport)

Abstract

We study the question of activity classification in videos and present a novel approach for recognizing human action categories in videos by combining information from appearance and motion of human body parts. Our approach uses a tracking step which involves Particle Filtering and a local non - parametric clustering step. The motion information is provided by the trajectory of the cluster modes of a local set of particles. The statistical information about the particles of that cluster over a number of frames provides the appearance information. Later we use a Bag ofWords model to build one histogram per video sequence from the set of these robust appearance and motion descriptors. These histograms provide us characteristic information which helps us to discriminate among various human actions and thus classify them correctly. We tested our approach on the standard KTH and Weizmann human action datasets and the results were comparable to the state of the art. Additionally our approach is able to distinguish between activities that involve the motion of complete body from those in which only certain body parts move. In other words, our method discriminates well between activities with gross motion like running, jogging etc. and local motion like waving, boxing etc.

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ei Dhillon, P., Nowozin, S., Lampert, C. Combining Appearance and Motion for Human Action Classification in Videos (174), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2008 (techreport)

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Example-based Learning for Single-image Super-resolution and JPEG Artifact Removal

Kim, K., Kwon, Y.

(173), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2008 (techreport)

Abstract

This paper proposes a framework for single-image super-resolution and JPEG artifact removal. The underlying idea is to learn a map from input low-quality images (suitably preprocessed low-resolution or JPEG encoded images) to target high-quality images based on example pairs of input and output images. To retain the complexity of the resulting learning problem at a moderate level, a patch-based approach is taken such that kernel ridge regression (KRR) scans the input image with a small window (patch) and produces a patchvalued output for each output pixel location. These constitute a set of candidate images each of which reflects different local information. An image output is then obtained as a convex combination of candidates for each pixel based on estimated confidences of candidates. To reduce the time complexity of training and testing for KRR, a sparse solution is found by combining the ideas of kernel matching pursuit and gradient descent. As a regularized solution, KRR leads to a better generalization than simply storing the examples as it has been done in existing example-based super-resolution algorithms and results in much less noisy images. However, this may introduce blurring and ringing artifacts around major edges as sharp changes are penalized severely. A prior model of a generic image class which takes into account the discontinuity property of images is adopted to resolve this problem. Comparison with existing super-resolution and JPEG artifact removal methods shows the effectiveness of the proposed method. Furthermore, the proposed method is generic in that it has the potential to be applied to many other image enhancement applications.

PDF [BibTex]

ei Kim, K., Kwon, Y. Example-based Learning for Single-image Super-resolution and JPEG Artifact Removal (173), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2008 (techreport)

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Unsupervised Bayesian Time-series Segmentation based on Linear Gaussian State-space Models

Chiappa, S.

(171), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2008 (techreport)

Abstract

Unsupervised time-series segmentation in the general scenario in which the number of segment-types and segment boundaries are a priori unknown is a fundamental problem in many applications and requires an accurate segmentation model as well as a way of determining an appropriate number of segment-types. In most approaches, segmentation and determination of number of segment-types are addressed in two separate steps, since the segmentation model assumes a predefined number of segment-types. The determination of number of segment-types is thus achieved by training and comparing several separate models. In this paper, we take a Bayesian approach to a segmentation model based on linear Gaussian state-space models to achieve structure selection within the model. An appropriate prior distribution on the parameters is used to enforce a sparse parametrization, such that the model automatically selects the smallest number of underlying dynamical systems that explain the data well and a parsimonious structure for each dynamical system. As the resulting model is computationally intractable, we introduce a variational approximation, in which a reformulation of the problem enables to use an efficient inference algorithm.

[BibTex]

ei Chiappa, S. Unsupervised Bayesian Time-series Segmentation based on Linear Gaussian State-space Models (171), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2008 (techreport)

[BibTex]

A New Non-monotonic Gradient Projection Method for the Non-negative Least Squares Problem

Kim, D., Sra, S., Dhillon, I.

(TR-08-28), University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA, June 2008 (techreport)

Web [BibTex]

ei Kim, D., Sra, S., Dhillon, I. A New Non-monotonic Gradient Projection Method for the Non-negative Least Squares Problem (TR-08-28), University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA, June 2008 (techreport)

Web [BibTex]

Non-monotonic Poisson Likelihood Maximization

Sra, S., Kim, D., Schölkopf, B.

(170), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2008 (techreport)

Abstract

This report summarizes the theory and some main applications of a new non-monotonic algorithm for maximizing a Poisson Likelihood, which for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is equivalent to minimizing the associated Kullback-Leibler Divergence, and for Transmission Tomography is similar to maximizing the dual of a maximum entropy problem. We call our method non-monotonic maximum likelihood (NMML) and show its application to different problems such as tomography and image restoration. We discuss some theoretical properties such as convergence for our algorithm. Our experimental results indicate that speedups obtained via our non-monotonic methods are substantial.

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ei Sra, S., Kim, D., Schölkopf, B. Non-monotonic Poisson Likelihood Maximization (170), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2008 (techreport)

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A Kernel Method for the Two-sample Problem

Gretton, A., Borgwardt, K., Rasch, M., Schölkopf, B., Smola, A.

(157), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics Tübingen, April 2008 (techreport)

Abstract

We propose a framework for analyzing and comparing distributions, allowing us to design statistical tests to determine if two samples are drawn from different distributions. Our test statistic is the largest difference in expectations over functions in the unit ball of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). We present two tests based on large deviation bounds for the test statistic, while a third is based on the asymptotic distribution of this statistic. The test statistic can be computed in quadratic time, although efficient linear time approximations are available. Several classical metrics on distributions are recovered when the function space used to compute the difference in expectations is allowed to be more general (eg.~a Banach space). We apply our two-sample tests to a variety of problems, including attribute matching for databases using the Hungarian marriage method, where they perform strongly. Excellent performance is also obtained when comparing distributions over graphs, for which these are the first such tests.

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ei Gretton, A., Borgwardt, K., Rasch, M., Schölkopf, B., Smola, A. A Kernel Method for the Two-sample Problem (157), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics Tübingen, April 2008 (techreport)

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Energy Functionals for Manifold-valued Mappings and Their Properties

Hein, M., Steinke, F., Schölkopf, B.

(167), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, January 2008 (techreport)

Abstract

This technical report is merely an extended version of the appendix of Steinke et.al. "Manifold-valued Thin-Plate Splines with Applications in Computer Graphics" (2008) with complete proofs, which had to be omitted due to space restrictions. This technical report requires a basic knowledge of differential geometry. However, apart from that requirement the technical report is self-contained.

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ei Hein, M., Steinke, F., Schölkopf, B. Energy Functionals for Manifold-valued Mappings and Their Properties (167), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, January 2008 (techreport)

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Biologically Inspired Polymer Micro-Patterned Adhesives

Cheung, E., Sitti, M.

EDGEWOOD CHEMICAL BIOLOGICAL CENTER ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND MD, 2008 (techreport)

[BibTex]

pi Cheung, E., Sitti, M. Biologically Inspired Polymer Micro-Patterned Adhesives EDGEWOOD CHEMICAL BIOLOGICAL CENTER ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND MD, 2008 (techreport)

[BibTex]

Efficient inverse kinematics algorithms for highdimensional movement systems

Tevatia, G., Schaal, S.

CLMC Technical Report: TR-CLMC-2008-1, 2008, clmc (techreport)

Abstract

Real-time control of the endeffector of a humanoid robot in external coordinates requires computationally efficient solutions of the inverse kinematics problem. In this context, this paper investigates methods of resolved motion rate control (RMRC) that employ optimization criteria to resolve kinematic redundancies. In particular we focus on two established techniques, the pseudo inverse with explicit optimization and the extended Jacobian method. We prove that the extended Jacobian method includes pseudo-inverse methods as a special solution. In terms of computational complexity, however, pseudo-inverse and extended Jacobian differ significantly in favor of pseudo-inverse methods. Employing numerical estimation techniques, we introduce a computationally efficient version of the extended Jacobian with performance comparable to the original version. Our results are illustrated in simulation studies with a multiple degree-offreedom robot, and were evaluated on an actual 30 degree-of-freedom full-body humanoid robot.

link (url) [BibTex]

am Tevatia, G., Schaal, S. Efficient inverse kinematics algorithms for highdimensional movement systems CLMC Technical Report: TR-CLMC-2008-1, 2008, clmc (techreport)

link (url) [BibTex]

2004

Joint Kernel Maps

Weston, J., Schölkopf, B., Bousquet, O., Mann, .., Noble, W.

(131), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, November 2004 (techreport)

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2004

ei Weston, J., Schölkopf, B., Bousquet, O., Mann, .., Noble, W. Joint Kernel Maps (131), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, November 2004 (techreport)

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Semi-Supervised Induction

Yu, K., Tresp, V., Zhou, D.

(141), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany, August 2004 (techreport)

Abstract

Considerable progress was recently achieved on semi-supervised learning, which differs from the traditional supervised learning by additionally exploring the information of the unlabelled examples. However, a disadvantage of many existing methods is that it does not generalize to unseen inputs. This paper investigates learning methods that effectively make use of both labelled and unlabelled data to build predictive functions, which are defined on not just the seen inputs but the whole space. As a nice property, the proposed method allows effcient training and can easily handle new test points. We validate the method based on both toy data and real world data sets.

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ei Yu, K., Tresp, V., Zhou, D. Semi-Supervised Induction (141), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany, August 2004 (techreport)

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Object categorization with SVM: kernels for local features

Eichhorn, J., Chapelle, O.

(137), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, July 2004 (techreport)

Abstract

In this paper, we propose to combine an efficient image representation based on local descriptors with a Support Vector Machine classifier in order to perform object categorization. For this purpose, we apply kernels defined on sets of vectors. After testing different combinations of kernel / local descriptors, we have been able to identify a very performant one.

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ei Eichhorn, J., Chapelle, O. Object categorization with SVM: kernels for local features (137), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, July 2004 (techreport)

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Hilbertian Metrics and Positive Definite Kernels on Probability Measures

Hein, M., Bousquet, O.

(126), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, July 2004 (techreport)

Abstract

We investigate the problem of defining Hilbertian metrics resp. positive definite kernels on probability measures, continuing previous work. This type of kernels has shown very good results in text classification and has a wide range of possible applications. In this paper we extend the two-parameter family of Hilbertian metrics of Topsoe such that it now includes all commonly used Hilbertian metrics on probability measures. This allows us to do model selection among these metrics in an elegant and unified way. Second we investigate further our approach to incorporate similarity information of the probability space into the kernel. The analysis provides a better understanding of these kernels and gives in some cases a more efficient way to compute them. Finally we compare all proposed kernels in two text and one image classification problem.

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ei Hein, M., Bousquet, O. Hilbertian Metrics and Positive Definite Kernels on Probability Measures (126), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, July 2004 (techreport)

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Kernels, Associated Structures and Generalizations

Hein, M., Bousquet, O.

(127), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, July 2004 (techreport)

Abstract

This paper gives a survey of results in the mathematical literature on positive definite kernels and their associated structures. We concentrate on properties which seem potentially relevant for Machine Learning and try to clarify some results that have been misused in the literature. Moreover we consider different lines of generalizations of positive definite kernels. Namely we deal with operator-valued kernels and present the general framework of Hilbertian subspaces of Schwartz which we use to introduce kernels which are distributions. Finally indefinite kernels and their associated reproducing kernel spaces are considered.

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ei Hein, M., Bousquet, O. Kernels, Associated Structures and Generalizations (127), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, July 2004 (techreport)

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Kamerakalibrierung und Tiefenschätzung: Ein Vergleich von klassischer Bündelblockausgleichung und statistischen Lernalgorithmen

Sinz, FH.

Wilhelm-Schickard-Institut für Informatik, Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany, March 2004 (techreport)

Abstract

Die Arbeit verleicht zwei Herangehensweisen an das Problem der Sch{\"a}tzung der r{\"a}umliche Position eines Punktes aus den Bildkoordinaten in zwei verschiedenen Kameras. Die klassische Methode der B{\"u}ndelblockausgleichung modelliert zwei Einzelkameras und sch{\"a}tzt deren {\"a}ußere und innere Orientierung mit einer iterativen Kalibrationsmethode, deren Konvergenz sehr stark von guten Startwerten abh{\"a}ngt. Die Tiefensch{\"a}tzung eines Punkts geschieht durch die Invertierung von drei der insgesamt vier Projektionsgleichungen der Einzalkameramodelle. Die zweite Methode benutzt Kernel Ridge Regression und Support Vector Regression, um direkt eine Abbildung von den Bild- auf die Raumkoordinaten zu lernen. Die Resultate zeigen, daß der Ansatz mit maschinellem Lernen, neben einer erheblichen Vereinfachung des Kalibrationsprozesses, zu h{\"o}heren Positionsgenaugikeiten f{\"u}hren kann.

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ei Sinz, FH. Kamerakalibrierung und Tiefenschätzung: Ein Vergleich von klassischer Bündelblockausgleichung und statistischen Lernalgorithmen Wilhelm-Schickard-Institut für Informatik, Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany, March 2004 (techreport)

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Multivariate Regression with Stiefel Constraints

Bakir, G., Gretton, A., Franz, M., Schölkopf, B.

(128), MPI for Biological Cybernetics, Spemannstr 38, 72076, Tuebingen, 2004 (techreport)

Abstract

We introduce a new framework for regression between multi-dimensional spaces. Standard methods for solving this problem typically reduce the problem to one-dimensional regression by choosing features in the input and/or output spaces. These methods, which include PLS (partial least squares), KDE (kernel dependency estimation), and PCR (principal component regression), select features based on different a-priori judgments as to their relevance. Moreover, loss function and constraints are chosen not primarily on statistical grounds, but to simplify the resulting optimisation. By contrast, in our approach the feature construction and the regression estimation are performed jointly, directly minimizing a loss function that we specify, subject to a rank constraint. A major advantage of this approach is that the loss is no longer chosen according to the algorithmic requirements, but can be tailored to the characteristics of the task at hand; the features will then be optimal with respect to this objective. Our approach also allows for the possibility of using a regularizer in the optimization. Finally, by processing the observations sequentially, our algorithm is able to work on large scale problems.

PDF [BibTex]

ei Bakir, G., Gretton, A., Franz, M., Schölkopf, B. Multivariate Regression with Stiefel Constraints (128), MPI for Biological Cybernetics, Spemannstr 38, 72076, Tuebingen, 2004 (techreport)

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Learning from Labeled and Unlabeled Data Using Random Walks

Zhou, D., Schölkopf, B.

Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 2004 (techreport)

Abstract

We consider the general problem of learning from labeled and unlabeled data. Given a set of points, some of them are labeled, and the remaining points are unlabeled. The goal is to predict the labels of the unlabeled points. Any supervised learning algorithm can be applied to this problem, for instance, Support Vector Machines (SVMs). The problem of our interest is if we can implement a classifier which uses the unlabeled data information in some way and has higher accuracy than the classifiers which use the labeled data only. Recently we proposed a simple algorithm, which can substantially benefit from large amounts of unlabeled data and demonstrates clear superiority to supervised learning methods. In this paper we further investigate the algorithm using random walks and spectral graph theory, which shed light on the key steps in this algorithm.

PDF PostScript [BibTex]

ei Zhou, D., Schölkopf, B. Learning from Labeled and Unlabeled Data Using Random Walks Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 2004 (techreport)

PDF PostScript [BibTex]

Behaviour and Convergence of the Constrained Covariance

Gretton, A., Smola, A., Bousquet, O., Herbrich, R., Schölkopf, B., Logothetis, N.

(130), MPI for Biological Cybernetics, 2004 (techreport)

Abstract

We discuss reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS)-based measures of statistical dependence, with emphasis on constrained covariance (COCO), a novel criterion to test dependence of random variables. We show that COCO is a test for independence if and only if the associated RKHSs are universal. That said, no independence test exists that can distinguish dependent and independent random variables in all circumstances. Dependent random variables can result in a COCO which is arbitrarily close to zero when the source densities are highly non-smooth, which can make dependence hard to detect empirically. All current kernel-based independence tests share this behaviour. Finally, we demonstrate exponential convergence between the population and empirical COCO, which implies that COCO does not suffer from slow learning rates when used as a dependence test.

PDF [BibTex]

ei Gretton, A., Smola, A., Bousquet, O., Herbrich, R., Schölkopf, B., Logothetis, N. Behaviour and Convergence of the Constrained Covariance (130), MPI for Biological Cybernetics, 2004 (techreport)

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Confidence Sets for Ratios: A Purely Geometric Approach To Fieller’s Theorem

von Luxburg, U., Franz, V.

(133), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 2004 (techreport)

Abstract

We present a simple, geometric method to construct Fieller's exact confidence sets for ratios of jointly normally distributed random variables. Contrary to previous geometric approaches in the literature, our method is valid in the general case where both sample mean and covariance are unknown. Moreover, not only the construction but also its proof are purely geometric and elementary, thus giving intuition into the nature of the confidence sets.

PDF [BibTex]

ei von Luxburg, U., Franz, V. Confidence Sets for Ratios: A Purely Geometric Approach To Fieller’s Theorem (133), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 2004 (techreport)

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Transductive Inference with Graphs

Zhou, D., Schölkopf, B.

Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 2004, See the improved version Regularization on Discrete Spaces. (techreport)

Abstract

We propose a general regularization framework for transductive inference. The given data are thought of as a graph, where the edges encode the pairwise relationships among data. We develop discrete analysis and geometry on graphs, and then naturally adapt the classical regularization in the continuous case to the graph situation. A new and effective algorithm is derived from this general framework, as well as an approach we developed before.

[BibTex]

ei Zhou, D., Schölkopf, B. Transductive Inference with Graphs Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 2004, See the improved version Regularization on Discrete Spaces. (techreport)

[BibTex]

2003

Support Vector Channel Selection in BCI

Lal, T., Schröder, M., Hinterberger, T., Weston, J., Bogdan, M., Birbaumer, N., Schölkopf, B.

(120), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany, December 2003 (techreport)

Abstract

Designing a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system one can choose from a variety of features that may be useful for classifying brain activity during a mental task. For the special case of classifying EEG signals we propose the usage of the state of the art feature selection algorithms Recursive Feature Elimination [3] and Zero-Norm Optimization [13] which are based on the training of Support Vector Machines (SVM) [11]. These algorithms can provide more accurate solutions than standard filter methods for feature selection [14]. We adapt the methods for the purpose of selecting EEG channels. For a motor imagery paradigm we show that the number of used channels can be reduced significantly without increasing the classification error. The resulting best channels agree well with the expected underlying cortical activity patterns during the mental tasks. Furthermore we show how time dependent task specific information can be visualized.

PDF Web [BibTex]

2003

ei Lal, T., Schröder, M., Hinterberger, T., Weston, J., Bogdan, M., Birbaumer, N., Schölkopf, B. Support Vector Channel Selection in BCI (120), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany, December 2003 (techreport)

PDF Web [BibTex]

Image Reconstruction by Linear Programming

Tsuda, K., Rätsch, G.

(118), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, October 2003 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

ei Tsuda, K., Rätsch, G. Image Reconstruction by Linear Programming (118), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, October 2003 (techreport)

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Ranking on Data Manifolds

Zhou, D., Weston, J., Gretton, A., Bousquet, O., Schölkopf, B.

(113), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany, June 2003 (techreport)

Abstract

The Google search engine has had a huge success with its PageRank web page ranking algorithm, which exploits global, rather than local, hyperlink structure of the World Wide Web using random walk. This algorithm can only be used for graph data, however. Here we propose a simple universal ranking algorithm for vectorial data, based on the exploration of the intrinsic global geometric structure revealed by a huge amount of data. Experimental results from image and text to bioinformatics illustrates the validity of our algorithm.

PDF [BibTex]

ei Zhou, D., Weston, J., Gretton, A., Bousquet, O., Schölkopf, B. Ranking on Data Manifolds (113), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany, June 2003 (techreport)

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Kernel Hebbian Algorithm for Iterative Kernel Principal Component Analysis

Kim, K., Franz, M., Schölkopf, B.

(109), MPI f. biologische Kybernetik, Tuebingen, June 2003 (techreport)

Abstract

A new method for performing a kernel principal component analysis is proposed. By kernelizing the generalized Hebbian algorithm, one can iteratively estimate the principal components in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space with only linear order memory complexity. The derivation of the method, a convergence proof, and preliminary applications in image hyperresolution are presented. In addition, we discuss the extension of the method to the online learning of kernel principal components.

PDF [BibTex]

ei Kim, K., Franz, M., Schölkopf, B. Kernel Hebbian Algorithm for Iterative Kernel Principal Component Analysis (109), MPI f. biologische Kybernetik, Tuebingen, June 2003 (techreport)

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Learning with Local and Global Consistency

Zhou, D., Bousquet, O., Lal, T., Weston, J., Schölkopf, B.

(112), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany, June 2003 (techreport)

Abstract

We consider the learning problem in the transductive setting. Given a set of points of which only some are labeled, the goal is to predict the label of the unlabeled points. A principled clue to solve such a learning problem is the consistency assumption that a classifying function should be sufficiently smooth with respect to the structure revealed by these known labeled and unlabeled points. We present a simple algorithm to obtain such a smooth solution. Our method yields encouraging experimental results on a number of classification problems and demonstrates effective use of unlabeled data.

[BibTex]

ei Zhou, D., Bousquet, O., Lal, T., Weston, J., Schölkopf, B. Learning with Local and Global Consistency (112), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany, June 2003 (techreport)

[BibTex]

Implicit Wiener Series

Franz, M., Schölkopf, B.

(114), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, June 2003 (techreport)

Abstract

The Wiener series is one of the standard methods to systematically characterize the nonlinearity of a neural system. The classical estimation method of the expansion coefficients via cross-correlation suffers from severe problems that prevent its application to high-dimensional and strongly nonlinear systems. We propose a new estimation method based on regression in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space that overcomes these problems. Numerical experiments show performance advantages in terms of convergence, interpretability and system size that can be handled.

PDF [BibTex]

ei Franz, M., Schölkopf, B. Implicit Wiener Series (114), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, June 2003 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

Machine Learning approaches to protein ranking: discriminative, semi-supervised, scalable algorithms

Weston, J., Leslie, C., Elisseeff, A., Noble, W.

(111), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2003 (techreport)

Abstract

A key tool in protein function discovery is the ability to rank databases of proteins given a query amino acid sequence. The most successful method so far is a web-based tool called PSI-BLAST which uses heuristic alignment of a profile built using the large unlabeled database. It has been shown that such use of global information via an unlabeled data improves over a local measure derived from a basic pairwise alignment such as performed by PSI-BLAST's predecessor, BLAST. In this article we look at ways of leveraging techniques from the field of machine learning for the problem of ranking. We show how clustering and semi-supervised learning techniques, which aim to capture global structure in data, can significantly improve over PSI-BLAST.

PDF [BibTex]

ei Weston, J., Leslie, C., Elisseeff, A., Noble, W. Machine Learning approaches to protein ranking: discriminative, semi-supervised, scalable algorithms (111), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2003 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

The Geometry Of Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis

Kuss, M., Graepel, T.

(108), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, May 2003 (techreport)

Abstract

Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is a classical multivariate method concerned with describing linear dependencies between sets of variables. After a short exposition of the linear sample CCA problem and its analytical solution, the article proceeds with a detailed characterization of its geometry. Projection operators are used to illustrate the relations between canonical vectors and variates. The article then addresses the problem of CCA between spaces spanned by objects mapped into kernel feature spaces. An exact solution for this kernel canonical correlation (KCCA) problem is derived from a geometric point of view. It shows that the expansion coefficients of the canonical vectors in their respective feature space can be found by linear CCA in the basis induced by kernel principal component analysis. The effect of mappings into higher dimensional feature spaces is considered critically since it simplifies the CCA problem in general. Then two regularized variants of KCCA are discussed. Relations to other methods are illustrated, e.g., multicategory kernel Fisher discriminant analysis, kernel principal component regression and possible applications thereof in blind source separation.

PDF [BibTex]

ei Kuss, M., Graepel, T. The Geometry Of Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis (108), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, May 2003 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

The Kernel Mutual Information

Gretton, A., Herbrich, R., Smola, A.

Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, April 2003 (techreport)

Abstract

We introduce two new functions, the kernel covariance (KC) and the kernel mutual information (KMI), to measure the degree of independence of several continuous random variables. The former is guaranteed to be zero if and only if the random variables are pairwise independent; the latter shares this property, and is in addition an approximate upper bound on the mutual information, as measured near independence, and is based on a kernel density estimate. We show that Bach and Jordan‘s kernel generalised variance (KGV) is also an upper bound on the same kernel density estimate, but is looser. Finally, we suggest that the addition of a regularising term in the KGV causes it to approach the KMI, which motivates the introduction of this regularisation. The performance of the KC and KMI is verified in the context of instantaneous independent component analysis (ICA), by recovering both artificial and real (musical) signals following linear mixing.

PostScript [BibTex]

ei Gretton, A., Herbrich, R., Smola, A. The Kernel Mutual Information Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, April 2003 (techreport)

PostScript [BibTex]

A Note on Parameter Tuning for On-Line Shifting Algorithms

Bousquet, O.

Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, 2003 (techreport)

Abstract

In this short note, building on ideas of M. Herbster [2] we propose a method for automatically tuning the parameter of the FIXED-SHARE algorithm proposed by Herbster and Warmuth [3] in the context of on-line learning with shifting experts. We show that this can be done with a memory requirement of $O(nT)$ and that the additional loss incurred by the tuning is the same as the loss incurred for estimating the parameter of a Bernoulli random variable.

PDF PostScript [BibTex]

ei Bousquet, O. A Note on Parameter Tuning for On-Line Shifting Algorithms Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, 2003 (techreport)

PDF PostScript [BibTex]

Interactive Images

Toyama, K., Schölkopf, B.

(MSR-TR-2003-64), Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK, 2003 (techreport)

Abstract

Interactive Images are a natural extension of three recent developments: digital photography, interactive web pages, and browsable video. An interactive image is a multi-dimensional image, displayed two dimensions at a time (like a standard digital image), but with which a user can interact to browse through the other dimensions. One might consider a standard video sequence viewed with a video player as a simple interactive image with time as the third dimension. Interactive images are a generalization of this idea, in which the third (and greater) dimensions may be focus, exposure, white balance, saturation, and other parameters. Interaction is handled via a variety of modes including those we call ordinal, pixel-indexed, cumulative, and comprehensive. Through exploration of three novel forms of interactive images based on color, exposure, and focus, we will demonstrate the compelling nature of interactive images.

Web [BibTex]

ei Toyama, K., Schölkopf, B. Interactive Images (MSR-TR-2003-64), Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK, 2003 (techreport)

Web [BibTex]

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