Modelling sequential data is important in many areas of science and engineering. Hidden Markov models (HMMs) and Kalman filter models (KFMs) are popular for this because they are simple and flexible. For example, HMMs have been used for speech recognition and bio-sequence analysis, and KFMs have been used for problems ranging from tracking planes and missiles to predicting the economy. However, HMMs and KFMs are limited in their “expressive power”. Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) generalize HMMs by allowing the state space to be represented in factored form, instead of as a single discrete random variable. DBNs generalize KFMs by allowing arbitrary probability distributions, not just (unimodal) linear-Gaussian. In this thesis, I will discuss how to represent many different kinds of models as DBNs, how to perform exact and approximate inference in DBNs, and how to learn DBN models from sequential data. In particular, the main novel technical contributions of this thesis are as follows: a way of representing Hierarchical HMMs as DBNs, which enables inference to be done in O(T) time instead of O(T 3), where T is the length of the sequence; an exact smoothing algorithm that takes O(log T) space instead of O(T); a simple way of using the junction tree algorithm for online inference in DBNs; new complexity bounds on exact online inference in DBNs; a new deterministic approximate inference algorithm called factored frontier; an analysis of the relationship between the BK algorithm and loopy belief propagation; a way of applying Rao-Blackwellised particle filtering to DBNs in general, and the SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) problem in particular; a way of extending the structural EM algorithm to DBNs; and a variety of different applications of DBNs. However, perhaps the main value of the thesis is its catholic presentation of the field of sequential data modelling.

The Bayes Net Toolbox (BNT) is an open-source Matlab package for directed graphical models. BNT supports many kinds of nodes (probability distributions), exact and approximate inference, parameter and structure learning, and static and dynamic models. BNT is widely used in teaching and research: the web page has received over 28,000 hits since May 2000. In this paper, we discuss a broad spectrum of issues related to graphical models (directed and undirected), and describe, at a high-level, how BNT was designed to cope with them all. We also compare BNT to other software packages for graphical models, and to the nascent OpenBayes effort.

The goal of this article is to review the state-of-the-art tracking methods, classify them into different categories, and identify new trends. Object tracking, in general, is a challenging problem. Difficulties in tracking objects can arise due to abrupt object motion, changing appearance patterns of both the object and the scene, nonrigid object structures, object-to-object and object-to-scene occlusions, and camera motion. Tracking is usually performed in the context of higher-level applications that require the location and/or shape of the object in every frame. Typically, assumptions are made to constrain the tracking problem in the context of a particular application. In this survey, we categorize the tracking methods on the basis of the object and motion representations used, provide detailed descriptions of representative methods in each category, and examine their pros and cons. Moreover, we discuss the important issues related to tracking including the use of appropriate image features, selection of motion models, and detection of objects.

We developed an approach using Bayesian networks to predict protein-protein interactions genome-wide in yeast. Our method naturally weights and combines into reliable predictions genomic features only weakly associated with interaction (e.g., mRNA co-expression, co-essentiality and co-localization). In addition to de novo predictions, it can integrate often noisy, experimental interaction datasets. We observe that at given levels of sensitivity our predictions are more accurate than the existing highthroughput experimental datasets. We validate our predictions with new TAP-tagging experiments. Our analysis, which gives a comprehensive view of yeast interactions, is available at genecensus.org/intint. 2 Many fundamental cellular processes involve protein-protein interactions, and comprehensively identifying them is important to systematically defining the biological role of proteins. New experimental and computational methods have vastly increased the number of known or putative interactions, catalogued in databases (1-7). Much genomic information also relates to interactions indirectly: Interacting proteins are often

This work shows how a dialogue model can be represented as a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) with observations composed of a discrete and continuous component. The continuous component enables the model to directly incorporate a confidence score for automated planning. Using a testbed simulated dialogue management problem, we show how recent optimization techniques are able to find a policy for this continuous POMDP which outperforms a traditional MDP approach. Further, we present a method for automatically improving handcrafted dialogue managers by incorporating POMDP belief state monitoring, including confidence score information. Experiments on the testbed system show significant improvements for several example handcrafted dialogue managers across a range of operating conditions. 1

System identification is the art and science of building mathematical models of dynamic systems from observed input-output data. It can be seen as the interface between the real world of applications and the mathematical world of control theory and model abstractions. As such, it is an ubiquitous necessity for successful applications. System identification is a very large topic, with different techniques that depend on the character of the models to be estimated: linear, nonlinear, hybrid, nonparametric etc. At the same time, the area can be characterized by a small number of leading principles, e.g. to look for sustainable descriptions by proper decisions in the triangle of model complexity, information contents in the data, and effective validation. The area has many facets and there are many approaches and methods. A tutorial or a survey in a few pages is not quite possible. Instead, this presentation aims at giving an overview of the “science ” side, i.e. basic principles and results and at pointing to open problem areas in the practical, “art”, side of how to approach and solve a real problem. 1.

. The state-of-the-art in inductive logic programming is surveyed by analyzing the approach taken by this field over the past 8 years. The analysis investigates the roles of 1) logic programming and machine learning, of 2) theory, techniques and applications, of 3) various technical problems addressed within inductive logic programming. 1 Introduction The term inductive logic programming was first coined by Stephen Muggleton in 1990 [1]. Inductive logic programming is concerned with the study of inductive machine learning within the representations offered by computational logic. Since 1991, annual international workshops have been organized [2-8]. This paper is an attempt to analyze the developments within this field. Particular attention is devoted to the relation between inductive logic programming and its neighboring fields such as machine learning, computational logic and data mining, and to the role that theory, techniques and implementations, and applications play. The analysis...

Abstract. In Datalog, missing values are represented by Skolem constants. More generally, in logic programming missing values, or existentially quantified variables, are represented by terms built from Skolem functors. The CLP(BN) language represents the joint probability distribution over missing values in a database or logic program by using constraints to represent Skolem functions. Algorithms from inductive logic programming (ILP) can be used with only minor modification to learn CLP(BN) programs. An implementation of CLP(BN) is publicly available as part of YAP Prolog at

This work shows how a dialogue model can be represented as a factored Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP). The factored representation has several benefits, such as enabling more nuanced reward functions to be specified. Although our dialogue model is significantly larger than past work using POMDPs, experiments on a small testbed problem demonstrate that recent optimisation techniques scale well and produce policies which outperform a traditional fully-observable Markov Decision Process. This work then shows how a dialogue manager produced with a POMDP optimisation technique may be directly compared to a handcrafted dialogue manager. Experiments on the testbed problem show that automatically generated dialogue managers outperform several handcrafted dialogue managers, and that automatically generated dialogue managers for the testbed problem successfully adapt to changes in speech recognition accuracy. 1

The past few years have witnessed an significant interest in probabilistic logic learning, i.e. in research lying at the intersection of probabilistic reasoning, logical representations, and machine learning. A rich variety of di#erent formalisms and learning techniques have been developed. This paper provides an introductory survey and overview of the stateof -the-art in probabilistic logic learning through the identification of a number of important probabilistic, logical and learning concepts.