Models of document indexing and document retrieval have been extensively studied. The integration of these two classes of models has been the goal of several researchers but it is a very difficult problem. We argue that much of the reason for this is the lack of an adequate indexing model. This suggests that perhaps a better indexing model would help solve the problem. However, we feel that making unwarranted parametric assumptions will not lead to better retrieval performance. Furthermore, making prior assumptions about the similarity of documents is not warranted either. Instead, we propose an approach to retrieval based on probabilistic language modeling. We estimate models for each document individually. Our approach to modeling is non-parametric and integrates document indexing and document retrieval into a single model. One advantage of our approach is that collection statistics which are used heuristically in many other retrieval models are an integral part of our model. We have...

Feature selection is an important problem for pattern classification systems. We study how to select good features according to the maximal statistical dependency criterion based on mutual information. Because of the difficulty in directly implementing the maximal dependency condition, we first derive an equivalent form, called minimal-redundancy-maximal-relevance criterion (mRMR), for first-order incremental feature selection. Then, we present a two-stage feature selection algorithm by combining mRMR and other more sophisticated feature selectors (e.g., wrappers). This allows us to select a compact set of superior features at very low cost. We perform extensive experimental comparison of our algorithm and other methods using three different classifiers (naive Bayes, support vector machine, and linear discriminate analysis) and four different data sets (handwritten digits, arrhythmia, NCI cancer cell lines, and lymphoma tissues). The results confirm that mRMR leads to promising improvement on feature selection and classification accuracy.

Anomaly detection is an important problem that has been researched within diverse research areas and application domains. Many anomaly detection techniques have been specifically developed for certain application domains, while others are more generic. This survey tries to provide a structured and comprehensive overview of the research on anomaly detection. We have grouped existing techniques into different categories based on the underlying approach adopted by each technique. For each category we have identified key assumptions, which are used by the techniques to differentiate between normal and anomalous behavior. When applying a given technique to a particular domain, these assumptions can be used as guidelines to assess the effectiveness of the technique in that domain. For each category, we provide a basic anomaly detection technique, and then show how the different existing techniques in that category are variants of the basic technique. This template provides an easier and succinct understanding of the techniques belonging to each category. Further, for each category, we identify the advantages and disadvantages of the techniques in that category. We also provide a discussion on the computational complexity of the techniques since it is an important issue in real application domains. We hope that this survey will provide a better understanding of the di®erent directions in which research has been done on this topic, and how techniques developed in one area can be applied in domains for which they were not intended to begin with.

We show that surface reconstruction from oriented points can be cast as a spatial Poisson problem. This Poisson formulation considers all the points at once, without resorting to heuristic spatial partitioning or blending, and is therefore highly resilient to data noise. Unlike radial basis function schemes, our Poisson approach allows a hierarchy of locally supported basis functions, and therefore the solution reduces to a well conditioned sparse linear system. We describe a spatially adaptive multiscale algorithm whose time and space complexities are proportional to the size of the reconstructed model. Experimenting with publicly available scan data, we demonstrate reconstruction of surfaces with greater detail than previously achievable.

Instance-based learning techniques typically handle continuous and linear input values well, but often do not handle nominal input attributes appropriately. The Value Difference Metric (VDM) was designed to find reasonable distance values between nominal attribute values, but it largely ignores continuous attributes, requiring discretization to map continuous values into nominal values. This paper proposes three new heterogeneous distance functions, called the Heterogeneous Value Difference Metric (HVDM), the Interpolated Value Difference Metric (IVDM), and the Windowed Value Difference Metric (WVDM). These new distance functions are designed to handle applications with nominal attributes, continuous attributes, or both. In experiments on 48 applications the new distance metrics achieve higher classification accuracy on average than three previous distance functions on those datasets that have both nominal and continuous attributes.

This paper proposes an alternative to maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters of the censored regression (or censored ‘Tobit’) model. The proposed estimator is a generalization of least absolute deviations estimation for the standard linear model, and, unlike estimation methods based on the assumption of normally distributed error terms, the estimator is consistent and asymptoti-cally normal for a wide class of error distributions, and is also robust to heteroscedasticity. The paper gives the regularity conditions and proofs of these large-sample results, and proposes classes of consistent estimators of the asymptotic ovariance matrix for both homoscedastic and hetero-scedastic disturbances. 1.

In applications of graphical models arising in fields such as computer vision, the hidden variables of interest are most naturally specified by continuous, non--Gaussian distributions. However, due to the limitations of existing inf#6F6F3 algorithms, it is of#]k necessary tof#3# coarse, discrete approximations to such models. In this paper, we develop a nonparametric belief propagation (NBP) algorithm, which uses stochastic methods to propagate kernel--based approximations to the true continuous messages. Each NBP message update is based on an efficient sampling procedure which can accomodate an extremely broad class of potentialf#l3]k[[z3 allowing easy adaptation to new application areas. We validate our method using comparisons to continuous BP for Gaussian networks, and an application to the stereo vision problem.

Abstract not found

We propose a new method for the intermodal registration of images using a criterion known as mutual information. Our main contribution is an optimizer that we specifically designed for this criterion. We show that this new optimizer is well adapted to a multiresolution approach because it typically converges in fewer criterion evaluations than other optimizers. We have built a multiresolution image pyramid, along with an interpolation process, an optimizer, and the criterion itself, around the unifying concept of spline-processing. This ensures coherence in the way we model data and yields good performance. We have tested our approach in a variety of experimental conditions and report excellent results. We claim an accuracy of about a hundredth of a pixel under ideal conditions. We are also robust since the accuracy is still about a tenth of a pixel under very noisy conditions. In addition, a blind evaluation of our results compares very favorably to the work of several other researchers.

Pattern recognition generally requires that objects be described in terms of a set of measurable features. The selection and quality of the features representing each pattern has a considerable bearing on the success of subsequent pattern classification. Feature extraction is the process of deriving new features from the original features in order to reduce the cost of feature measurement, increase classifier efficiency, and allow higher classification accuracy. Many current feature extraction techniques involve linear transformations of the original pattern vectors to new vectors of lower dimensionality. While this is useful for data visualization and increasing classification efficiency, it does not necessarily reduce the number of features that must be measured, since each new feature may be a linear combination of all of the features in the original pattern vector. Here we present a new approach to feature extraction in which feature selection, feature extraction, and classifier training are performed simultaneously using a genetic algorithm. The genetic algorithm optimizes a vector of feature weights, which are used to scale the individual features in the original pattern vectors in either a linear or a nonlinear fashion. A masking vector is also employed to perform simultaneous selection of a subset of the features. We employ this technique in combination with the k-nearest-neighbor classification rule, and compare the results with classical feature selection and extraction techniques, including sequential floating forward feature selection, and linear discriminant analysis. We also present results for identification of favorable water binding sites on protein surfaces, an important problem in biochemistry and drug design.