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  • Mojito (framework)

    Mojito (framework)

    Mojito is an environment agnostic, Model-View-Controller (MVC) web application framework. It was designed by Yahoo. == Features == Mojito supports agile development of web applications. Mojito has built-in support for unit testing, Internationalization, syntax and coding convention checks. Both server and client components are written in JavaScript. Mojito allows developers designing web applications to leverage the utilities of both configuration and MVC framework. Mojito is capable of running on both JavaScript-enabled web browsers and servers using Node.js because they both utilize JavaScript. Mojito applications mainly consist of two components: JSON Configuration files: these define relationships between code components, assets, routing paths, and framework defaults and are available at the application and mojit level. Directories: these reflect MVC architecture and are used to separate resources such as assets, libraries, middleware, etc. == Architecture == In Mojito, both server and "client" side scripting is done in JavaScript, allowing it to run on both client and server thereby breaking the "front-end back-end barrier." It has both client and server runtimes. === Server runtime === This block houses operations needed by server side components. Services include: Routing rules, HTTP Server, config loader and disk-based loader. === Client runtime === This block houses operations called upon while running client sides components. Services include local storage/cache access and JSON based /URL based loader === Core === Core function can be accessed on client or server. Services include Registry, Dispatcher, Front controller, Resource store. === Container === mojit object comes into the picture. This container also include the services used by mojits. API and Mojito services are the blocks which caters to services needed for execution of mojits. === API (Action Context) === Mojito services are a customizable service block. It offers mojits a range of services which might be needed by mojit to carry out certain actions. These services can be availed at both client and server side. Reusable services can be created and aggregated to the core here. == Mojits == Mojits are the modules of a Mojito application. An application consists of one or more mojits. A mojit encompasses a Model, Views and a Controller defined by JSON configuration files. It includes a View factory where views are created according to the model and a View cache that holds frequently requested views to aid performance. === Application Architecture === A Mojito application is a set of mojits facilitated by configurable JSON files which define the code for model, view and controller. This MVC structure works with API block and Mojito services, and can be deployed at both client and server side. While the application is deployed at client side, it can call server-side modules using binders. Binders are mojit codes that let mojits request services from each other. Mojit Proxy acts as an intermediary between binders and mojit's API (application context) block and other mojits. Controllers are command-issuing units of mojits. Models mirror the core logic and hold data. Applications can have multiple models. They can be centrally accessed from controllers. View files are created in accordance with controllers and models, and are marked-up before they are sent to users as output. === Application Directory Structure === Directory structure of a Mojito application with one mojit: [mojito_app]/ |-- application.json |-- assets/ | `-- favicon.icon |-- yui_modules/ | `-- .{affinity}.js |-- index.js |-- mojits/ | `-- [mojit_name | |-- assets/ | |-- yui_modules/ | | `-- .{affinity}.js | |-- binders/ | | `-- {view_name}.js | |-- controller.{affinity}.js | |-- defaults.json | |-- definition.json | |-- lang/ | | `-- {mojit_name}_{lang}.js | |-- models/ | | `-- {model_name}.{affinity}.js | |-- tests/ | | |-- yui_modules/ | | | `-- {module_name}.{affinity}-tests.js | | |-- controller.{affinity}-tests.js | | `-- models/ | | `-- {model_name}.{affinity}-tests.js | `-- views/ | |-- {view_name}.{view_engine}.html | `-- {view_name}.{device}.{view_engine}.html |-- package.json |-- routes.json (deprecated) |-- server.js == Model, View and Controller == The Model hosts data, which is accessed by the Controller and presented to the View. Controller also handles any client requests for data, in which case controller fetches data from the model and passes the data to the client. All three components are clustered in the mojit. Mojits are physically illustrated by directory structures and an application can have multiple mojits. Every mojit can have one controller, one or more views and zero or more models. === Model === The model it represents the application data and is independent of view or controller. Model contains code to manipulate the data. They are found in the models directory of each mojit. Functions include: Storing information for access by controller. Validation and error handling. Metadata required by the view === Controller === The controller acts like a connecting agent between model and view. It supplies input to Model and after fetching data from model, passes it to View. Functions include Redirection Monitors authentication Web safety Encoding === View === The view acts as a presentation filter by highlighting some model attributes and suppressing others. A view can be understood as a visual permutation of the model. The view renders data received from controller and displays it to the end user.

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  • UIMA

    UIMA

    UIMA ( yoo-EE-mə), short for Unstructured Information Management Architecture, is an OASIS standard for content analytics, originally developed at IBM. It provides a component software architecture for the development, discovery, composition, and deployment of multi-modal analytics for the analysis of unstructured information and integration with search technologies. == Structure == The UIMA architecture can be thought of in four dimensions: It specifies component interfaces in an analytics pipeline. It describes a set of design patterns. It suggests two data representations: an in-memory representation of annotations for high-performance analytics and an XML representation of annotations for integration with remote web services. It suggests development roles allowing tools to be used by users with diverse skills. == Implementations and uses == Apache UIMA, a reference implementation of UIMA, is maintained by the Apache Software Foundation. UIMA is used in a number of software projects: IBM Research's Watson uses UIMA for analyzing unstructured data. The Clinical Text Analysis and Knowledge Extraction System (Apache cTAKES) is a UIMA-based system for information extraction from medical records. DKPro Core is a collection of reusable UIMA components for general-purpose natural language processing.

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  • Policy gradient method

    Policy gradient method

    Policy gradient methods are a class of reinforcement learning algorithms and a sub-class of policy optimization methods. Unlike value-based methods which learn a value function to derive a policy, policy optimization methods directly learn a policy function π {\displaystyle \pi } that selects actions without consulting a value function. For policy gradient to apply, the policy function π θ {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta }} is parameterized by a differentiable parameter θ {\displaystyle \theta } . == Overview == In policy-based RL, the actor is a parameterized policy function π θ {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta }} , where θ {\displaystyle \theta } are the parameters of the actor. The actor takes as argument the state of the environment s {\displaystyle s} and produces a probability distribution π θ ( ⋅ ∣ s ) {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta }(\cdot \mid s)} . If the action space is discrete, then ∑ a π θ ( a ∣ s ) = 1 {\displaystyle \sum _{a}\pi _{\theta }(a\mid s)=1} . If the action space is continuous, then ∫ a π θ ( a ∣ s ) d a = 1 {\displaystyle \int _{a}\pi _{\theta }(a\mid s)\mathrm {d} a=1} . The goal of policy optimization is to find some θ {\displaystyle \theta } that maximizes the expected episodic reward J ( θ ) {\displaystyle J(\theta )} : J ( θ ) = E π θ [ ∑ t = 0 T γ t R t | S 0 = s 0 ] {\displaystyle J(\theta )=\mathbb {E} _{\pi _{\theta }}\left[\sum _{t=0}^{T}\gamma ^{t}R_{t}{\Big |}S_{0}=s_{0}\right]} where γ {\displaystyle \gamma } is the discount factor, R t {\displaystyle R_{t}} is the reward at step t {\displaystyle t} , s 0 {\displaystyle s_{0}} is the starting state, and T {\displaystyle T} is the time-horizon (which can be infinite). The policy gradient is defined as ∇ θ J ( θ ) {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }J(\theta )} . Different policy gradient methods stochastically estimate the policy gradient in different ways. The goal of any policy gradient method is to iteratively maximize J ( θ ) {\displaystyle J(\theta )} by gradient ascent. Since the key part of any policy gradient method is the stochastic estimation of the policy gradient, they are also studied under the title of "Monte Carlo gradient estimation". == REINFORCE == === Policy gradient === The REINFORCE algorithm, introduced by Ronald J. Williams in 1992, was the first policy gradient method. It is based on the identity for the policy gradient ∇ θ J ( θ ) = E π θ [ ∑ t = 0 T ∇ θ ln ⁡ π θ ( A t ∣ S t ) ∑ t = 0 T ( γ t R t ) | S 0 = s 0 ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }J(\theta )=\mathbb {E} _{\pi _{\theta }}\left[\sum _{t=0}^{T}\nabla _{\theta }\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{t}\mid S_{t})\;\sum _{t=0}^{T}(\gamma ^{t}R_{t}){\Big |}S_{0}=s_{0}\right]} which can be improved via the "causality trick" ∇ θ J ( θ ) = E π θ [ ∑ t = 0 T ∇ θ ln ⁡ π θ ( A t ∣ S t ) ∑ τ = t T ( γ τ R τ ) | S 0 = s 0 ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }J(\theta )=\mathbb {E} _{\pi _{\theta }}\left[\sum _{t=0}^{T}\nabla _{\theta }\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{t}\mid S_{t})\sum _{\tau =t}^{T}(\gamma ^{\tau }R_{\tau }){\Big |}S_{0}=s_{0}\right]} Thus, we have an unbiased estimator of the policy gradient: ∇ θ J ( θ ) ≈ 1 N ∑ n = 1 N [ ∑ t = 0 T ∇ θ ln ⁡ π θ ( A t , n ∣ S t , n ) ∑ τ = t T ( γ τ − t R τ , n ) ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }J(\theta )\approx {\frac {1}{N}}\sum _{n=1}^{N}\left[\sum _{t=0}^{T}\nabla _{\theta }\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{t,n}\mid S_{t,n})\sum _{\tau =t}^{T}(\gamma ^{\tau -t}R_{\tau ,n})\right]} where the index n {\displaystyle n} ranges over N {\displaystyle N} rollout trajectories using the policy π θ {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta }} . The score function ∇ θ ln ⁡ π θ ( A t ∣ S t ) {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{t}\mid S_{t})} can be interpreted as the direction in the parameter space that increases the probability of taking action A t {\displaystyle A_{t}} in state S t {\displaystyle S_{t}} . The policy gradient, then, is a weighted average of all possible directions to increase the probability of taking any action in any state, but weighted by reward signals, so that if taking a certain action in a certain state is associated with high reward, then that direction would be highly reinforced, and vice versa. === Algorithm === The REINFORCE algorithm is a loop: Rollout N {\displaystyle N} trajectories in the environment, using π θ t {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta _{t}}} as the policy function. Compute the policy gradient estimation: g i ← 1 N ∑ n = 1 N [ ∑ t = 0 T ∇ θ t ln ⁡ π θ ( A t , n ∣ S t , n ) ∑ τ = t T ( γ τ R τ , n ) ] {\displaystyle g_{i}\leftarrow {\frac {1}{N}}\sum _{n=1}^{N}\left[\sum _{t=0}^{T}\nabla _{\theta _{t}}\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{t,n}\mid S_{t,n})\sum _{\tau =t}^{T}(\gamma ^{\tau }R_{\tau ,n})\right]} Update the policy by gradient ascent: θ i + 1 ← θ i + α i g i {\displaystyle \theta _{i+1}\leftarrow \theta _{i}+\alpha _{i}g_{i}} Here, α i {\displaystyle \alpha _{i}} is the learning rate at update step i {\displaystyle i} . == Variance reduction == REINFORCE is an on-policy algorithm, meaning that the trajectories used for the update must be sampled from the current policy π θ {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta }} . This can lead to high variance in the updates, as the returns R ( τ ) {\displaystyle R(\tau )} can vary significantly between trajectories. Many variants of REINFORCE have been introduced, under the title of variance reduction. === REINFORCE with baseline === A common way for reducing variance is the REINFORCE with baseline algorithm, based on the following identity: ∇ θ J ( θ ) = E π θ [ ∑ t = 0 T ∇ θ ln ⁡ π θ ( A t | S t ) ( ∑ τ = t T ( γ τ R τ ) − b ( S t ) ) | S 0 = s 0 ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }J(\theta )=\mathbb {E} _{\pi _{\theta }}\left[\sum _{t=0}^{T}\nabla _{\theta }\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{t}|S_{t})\left(\sum _{\tau =t}^{T}(\gamma ^{\tau }R_{\tau })-b(S_{t})\right){\Big |}S_{0}=s_{0}\right]} for any function b : States → R {\displaystyle b:{\text{States}}\to \mathbb {R} } . This can be proven by applying the previous lemma. The algorithm uses the modified gradient estimator g i ← 1 N ∑ n = 1 N [ ∑ t = 0 T ∇ θ t ln ⁡ π θ ( A t , n | S t , n ) ( ∑ τ = t T ( γ τ R τ , n ) − b i ( S t , n ) ) ] {\displaystyle g_{i}\leftarrow {\frac {1}{N}}\sum _{n=1}^{N}\left[\sum _{t=0}^{T}\nabla _{\theta _{t}}\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{t,n}|S_{t,n})\left(\sum _{\tau =t}^{T}(\gamma ^{\tau }R_{\tau ,n})-b_{i}(S_{t,n})\right)\right]} and the original REINFORCE algorithm is the special case where b i ≡ 0 {\displaystyle b_{i}\equiv 0} . === Actor-critic methods === If b i {\textstyle b_{i}} is chosen well, such that b i ( S t ) ≈ ∑ τ = t T ( γ τ R τ ) = γ t V π θ i ( S t ) {\textstyle b_{i}(S_{t})\approx \sum _{\tau =t}^{T}(\gamma ^{\tau }R_{\tau })=\gamma ^{t}V^{\pi _{\theta _{i}}}(S_{t})} , this could significantly decrease variance in the gradient estimation. That is, the baseline should be as close to the value function V π θ i ( S t ) {\displaystyle V^{\pi _{\theta _{i}}}(S_{t})} as possible, approaching the ideal of: ∇ θ J ( θ ) = E π θ [ ∑ t = 0 T ∇ θ ln ⁡ π θ ( A t | S t ) ( ∑ τ = t T ( γ τ R τ ) − γ t V π θ ( S t ) ) | S 0 = s 0 ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }J(\theta )=\mathbb {E} _{\pi _{\theta }}\left[\sum _{t=0}^{T}\nabla _{\theta }\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{t}|S_{t})\left(\sum _{\tau =t}^{T}(\gamma ^{\tau }R_{\tau })-\gamma ^{t}V^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{t})\right){\Big |}S_{0}=s_{0}\right]} Note that, as the policy π θ t {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta _{t}}} updates, the value function V π θ i ( S t ) {\displaystyle V^{\pi _{\theta _{i}}}(S_{t})} updates as well, so the baseline should also be updated. One common approach is to train a separate function that estimates the value function, and use that as the baseline. This is one of the actor-critic methods, where the policy function is the actor and the value function is the critic. The Q-function Q π {\displaystyle Q^{\pi }} can also be used as the critic, since ∇ θ J ( θ ) = E π θ [ ∑ 0 ≤ t ≤ T γ t ∇ θ ln ⁡ π θ ( A t | S t ) ⋅ Q π θ ( S t , A t ) | S 0 = s 0 ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }J(\theta )=E_{\pi _{\theta }}\left[\sum _{0\leq t\leq T}\gamma ^{t}\nabla _{\theta }\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{t}|S_{t})\cdot Q^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{t},A_{t}){\Big |}S_{0}=s_{0}\right]} by a similar argument using the tower law. Subtracting the value function as a baseline, we find that the advantage function A π ( S , A ) = Q π ( S , A ) − V π ( S ) {\displaystyle A^{\pi }(S,A)=Q^{\pi }(S,A)-V^{\pi }(S)} can be used as the critic as well: ∇ θ J ( θ ) = E π θ [ ∑ 0 ≤ t ≤ T γ t ∇ θ ln ⁡ π θ ( A t | S t ) ⋅ A π θ ( S t , A t ) | S 0 = s 0 ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }J(\theta )=E_{\pi _{\theta }}\left[\sum _{0\leq t\leq T}\gamma ^{t}\nabla _{\theta }\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{t}|S_{t})\cdot A^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{t},A_{t}){\Big |}S_{0}=s_{0}\right]} In summary, there are many unbiased estimators for ∇ θ J θ {\textstyle \nabla _{\theta }J_{\theta }} , all in the form of: ∇ θ J ( θ ) = E π θ [ ∑ 0 ≤ t ≤ T ∇ θ ln ⁡ π θ ( A t | S t ) ⋅ Ψ t | S 0 = s 0 ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }J(\theta )=E_{\pi _{\theta }}\left[\su

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  • Andrej Mrvar

    Andrej Mrvar

    Andrej Mrvar is a Slovenian computer scientist and a professor at the University of Ljubljana's Faculty of Social Sciences. He is known for his work in network analysis, graph drawing, decision making, virtual reality, timing and data processing of sports competitions. == Education and career == He is well known for his work on Pajek, a free software for analysis and visualization of large networks. Mrvar began work on Pajek in 1996 with Vladimir Batagelj. His book Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek, coauthored with Wouter de Nooy and Vladimir Batagelj, is his most cited work. It was published by Cambridge University Press in three editions (first 2005, second 2011, and third 2018). The book was translated into Japanese (2009) and Chinese (first edition 2012, second 2014). With Anuška Ferligoj, he was a founding co-editor-in-chief of the Metodološki zvezki - Advances in Methodology and Statistics journal. == Awards and honors == Vidmar Award (Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Ljubljana): 1988, 1990 First prizes for contributions (with Vladimir Batagelj) to Graph Drawing Contests in years: 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2005 / Graph Drawing Hall of Fame. Award of University of Ljubljana for contributions in education and research (Svečana listina Univerze v Ljubljani za pomembne dosežke na področju vzgojnoizobraževalnega in znanstvenoraziskovalega dela): 2001 The INSNA's William D. Richards Software award for work on Pajek (with Vladimir Batagelj): 2013 Award of Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana for scientific excellence (Priznanje za znanstveno odličnost): 2013 == Selected publications == Wouter de Nooy, Andrej Mrvar, Vladimir Batagelj, Mark Granovetter (Series Editor), Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences), Cambridge University Press (First Edition: 2005, Second Edition: 2011, Third Edition: 2018 ). Japanese Translation (2010). Chinese Translation (First Edition: 2012, Second Edition: 2014) Andrej Mrvar and Vladimir Batagelj, Analysis and visualization of large networks with program package Pajek. Complex Adaptive Systems Modeling, 4:6. SpringerOpen, 2016 Vladimir Batagelj and Andrej Mrvar, Some Analyses of Erdős Collaboration Graph, Social Networks, 22, 173–186, 2000 Vladimir Batagelj and Andrej Mrvar, A Subquadratic Triad Census Algorithm for Large Sparse Networks with Small Maximum Degree. Social Networks, 23, 237–243, 2001 Patrick Doreian and Andrej Mrvar, A Partitioning Approach to Structural Balance, Social Networks, 18, 149–168, 1996 Patrick Doreian and Andrej Mrvar, Partitioning Signed Social Networks, Social Networks, 31, 1–11, 2009 Andrej Mrvar and Patrick Doreian, Partitioning Signed Two-Mode Networks, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 33, 196–221, 2009 Patrick Doreian and Andrej Mrvar, The international reach of the Koch brothers network. In: Antonyuk, A. and Basov, N. (Eds.): Networks in the Global World V. NetGloW 2020. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, 181, 225–235. Springer, 2021 Patrick Doreian and Andrej Mrvar, Delineating Changes in the Fundamental Structure of Signed Networks, Frontiers in Physics, 294, 1–11, 2021 Patrick Doreian and Andrej Mrvar, Hubs and Authorities in the Koch Brothers Network. Social Networks, Social Networks, 64, 148–157, 2021 Patrick Doreian and Andrej Mrvar, Public issues, policy proposals, social movements, and the interests of the Koch Brothers network of allies, Quality and Quantity, 56, 305–322, 2022 Douglas R. White, Vladimir Batagelj, Andrej Mrvar, Analyzing Large Kinship and Marriage Networks with Pgraph and Pajek. Social Science Computer Review, 17, 245–274, 1999 Ion Georgiou, Ronald Concer, Andrej Mrvar, A Systemic Approach to Sociometric Group Research: Advancing The Work of Leslie Day Zeleny, 1939–1947, Social Networks, 63, 174–200, 2020

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  • Avid Symphony

    Avid Symphony

    Avid Symphony is non-linear editing software aimed at professionals in the film and television industry. It is available for Microsoft Windows PCs and Apple Macintosh platforms. Symphony is Avid's high end SD/HD finishing platform for long form work, such as documentary and episodic TV. Its interface is based on the same look and feature set as the Media Composer and Xpress systems, but contains the highest level of features and resolution including secondary color correction, uncompressed HD, and higher real-time performance. == Release history == Symphony is the software component of a tightly integrated package that includes specific hardware audio/video interfaces, storage, and the computer, also sold by Avid. Its release history is therefore tightly related to the release of new Avid interface hardware: Symphony was introduced to the market in 1998. It was based on Avid's Meridien hardware, supporting SD only, and was available first only for the PC and later for the Macintosh platforms. Its last release was 5.0.5 which supported Windows 2000 and Mac OS X v10.2. The next major upgrade was Symphony Nitris in 2005, with a redesigned software and integration with the Nitris DNA hardware (PCI-X). It supported 8 bit and 10 bit SD and HD resolutions in both compressed and uncompressed forms, the MXF format and DNxHD codec, and ran only on Windows PC platforms. Symphony Nitris DX, released in 2008, added support for a range of HD codecs, including HDV, XDCAM-HD, DVCPRO HD, and AVC-I, and brought back Mac OS support for OS X 10.5, as well as Windows Vista. Since the introduction of Symphony 6, it can be used in software-only mode (where a Nitris or Nitris DX BOB used to be required), and at the same time, like Media Composer, Symphony was opened up with "Open I/O", allowing users to have Symphony use their third party hardware from companies like AJA, Matrox, BlueFish, Blackmagic Design and MOTU. The last remaining features that differentiate it from Media Composer are Advanced Color Correction (channels, secondary color correction,), Relational Color Correction (corrections based on common clip name, tape name, program track) and Universal HD Mastering (only with Nitris DX hardware). The latter allows cross-conversions of 23.976p or 24p projects sequences to most any other format during Digital Cut. In 2013, Avid announced it would no longer offer Symphony a standalone product. Starting version 7, Symphony will be sold as an option to Media Composer. This optional package (sold at a premium) will contain all the traditional Symphony-only features to any Media Composer install. == Use in movies == The Celibacy, Director: Horacio Bocaranda Avid Media Composer 6 and Avid Symphony 6 Nitris DX American Hardcore, Director: Paul Rachman Avid Xpress Pro and Symphony Summercamp!, Director: Spike Lee Avid Xpress Pro and Symphony When the Levees Broke Avid Media Composer and Symphony Nitris Superman Returns Edited with Mac-based Film Composer XL, but HD screenings prepped with Symphony

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  • Least-squares support vector machine

    Least-squares support vector machine

    Least-squares support-vector machines (LS-SVM) for statistics and in statistical modeling, are least-squares versions of support-vector machines (SVM), which are a set of related supervised learning methods that analyze data and recognize patterns, and which are used for classification and regression analysis. In this version one finds the solution by solving a set of linear equations instead of a convex quadratic programming (QP) problem for classical SVMs. Least-squares SVM classifiers were proposed by Johan Suykens and Joos Vandewalle. LS-SVMs are a class of kernel-based learning methods. == From support-vector machine to least-squares support-vector machine == Given a training set { x i , y i } i = 1 N {\displaystyle \{x_{i},y_{i}\}_{i=1}^{N}} with input data x i ∈ R n {\displaystyle x_{i}\in \mathbb {R} ^{n}} and corresponding binary class labels y i ∈ { − 1 , + 1 } {\displaystyle y_{i}\in \{-1,+1\}} , the SVM classifier, according to Vapnik's original formulation, satisfies the following conditions: { w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ≥ 1 , if y i = + 1 , w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ≤ − 1 , if y i = − 1 , {\displaystyle {\begin{cases}w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b\geq 1,&{\text{if }}\quad y_{i}=+1,\\w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b\leq -1,&{\text{if }}\quad y_{i}=-1,\end{cases}}} which is equivalent to y i [ w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ] ≥ 1 , i = 1 , … , N , {\displaystyle y_{i}\left[{w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b}\right]\geq 1,\quad i=1,\ldots ,N,} where ϕ ( x ) {\displaystyle \phi (x)} is the nonlinear map from original space to the high- or infinite-dimensional space. === Inseparable data === In case such a separating hyperplane does not exist, we introduce so-called slack variables ξ i {\displaystyle \xi _{i}} such that { y i [ w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ] ≥ 1 − ξ i , i = 1 , … , N , ξ i ≥ 0 , i = 1 , … , N . {\displaystyle {\begin{cases}y_{i}\left[{w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b}\right]\geq 1-\xi _{i},&i=1,\ldots ,N,\\\xi _{i}\geq 0,&i=1,\ldots ,N.\end{cases}}} According to the structural risk minimization principle, the risk bound is minimized by the following minimization problem: min J 1 ( w , ξ ) = 1 2 w T w + c ∑ i = 1 N ξ i , {\displaystyle \min J_{1}(w,\xi )={\frac {1}{2}}w^{T}w+c\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}\xi _{i},} Subject to { y i [ w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ] ≥ 1 − ξ i , i = 1 , … , N , ξ i ≥ 0 , i = 1 , … , N , {\displaystyle {\text{Subject to }}{\begin{cases}y_{i}\left[{w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b}\right]\geq 1-\xi _{i},&i=1,\ldots ,N,\\\xi _{i}\geq 0,&i=1,\ldots ,N,\end{cases}}} To solve this problem, we could construct the Lagrangian function: L 1 ( w , b , ξ , α , β ) = 1 2 w T w + c ∑ i = 1 N ξ i − ∑ i = 1 N α i { y i [ w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ] − 1 + ξ i } − ∑ i = 1 N β i ξ i , {\displaystyle L_{1}(w,b,\xi ,\alpha ,\beta )={\frac {1}{2}}w^{T}w+c\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}{\xi _{i}}-\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}\alpha _{i}\left\{y_{i}\left[{w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b}\right]-1+\xi _{i}\right\}-\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}\beta _{i}\xi _{i},} where α i ≥ 0 , β i ≥ 0 ( i = 1 , … , N ) {\displaystyle \alpha _{i}\geq 0,\ \beta _{i}\geq 0\ (i=1,\ldots ,N)} are the Lagrangian multipliers. The optimal point will be in the saddle point of the Lagrangian function, and then we obtain By substituting w {\displaystyle w} by its expression in the Lagrangian formed from the appropriate objective and constraints, we will get the following quadratic programming problem: max Q 1 ( α ) = − 1 2 ∑ i , j = 1 N α i α j y i y j K ( x i , x j ) + ∑ i = 1 N α i , {\displaystyle \max Q_{1}(\alpha )=-{\frac {1}{2}}\sum \limits _{i,j=1}^{N}{\alpha _{i}\alpha _{j}y_{i}y_{j}K(x_{i},x_{j})}+\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}\alpha _{i},} where K ( x i , x j ) = ⟨ ϕ ( x i ) , ϕ ( x j ) ⟩ {\displaystyle K(x_{i},x_{j})=\left\langle \phi (x_{i}),\phi (x_{j})\right\rangle } is called the kernel function. Solving this QP problem subject to constraints in (1), we will get the hyperplane in the high-dimensional space and hence the classifier in the original space. === Least-squares SVM formulation === The least-squares version of the SVM classifier is obtained by reformulating the minimization problem as min J 2 ( w , b , e ) = μ 2 w T w + ζ 2 ∑ i = 1 N e i 2 , {\displaystyle \min J_{2}(w,b,e)={\frac {\mu }{2}}w^{T}w+{\frac {\zeta }{2}}\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}e_{i}^{2},} subject to the equality constraints y i [ w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ] = 1 − e i , i = 1 , … , N . {\displaystyle y_{i}\left[{w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b}\right]=1-e_{i},\quad i=1,\ldots ,N.} The least-squares SVM (LS-SVM) classifier formulation above implicitly corresponds to a regression interpretation with binary targets y i = ± 1 {\displaystyle y_{i}=\pm 1} . Using y i 2 = 1 {\displaystyle y_{i}^{2}=1} , we have ∑ i = 1 N e i 2 = ∑ i = 1 N ( y i e i ) 2 = ∑ i = 1 N e i 2 = ∑ i = 1 N ( y i − ( w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ) ) 2 , {\displaystyle \sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}e_{i}^{2}=\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}(y_{i}e_{i})^{2}=\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}e_{i}^{2}=\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}\left(y_{i}-(w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b)\right)^{2},} with e i = y i − ( w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ) . {\displaystyle e_{i}=y_{i}-(w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b).} Notice, that this error would also make sense for least-squares data fitting, so that the same end results holds for the regression case. Hence the LS-SVM classifier formulation is equivalent to J 2 ( w , b , e ) = μ E W + ζ E D {\displaystyle J_{2}(w,b,e)=\mu E_{W}+\zeta E_{D}} with E W = 1 2 w T w {\displaystyle E_{W}={\frac {1}{2}}w^{T}w} and E D = 1 2 ∑ i = 1 N e i 2 = 1 2 ∑ i = 1 N ( y i − ( w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ) ) 2 . {\displaystyle E_{D}={\frac {1}{2}}\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}e_{i}^{2}={\frac {1}{2}}\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}\left(y_{i}-(w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b)\right)^{2}.} Both μ {\displaystyle \mu } and ζ {\displaystyle \zeta } should be considered as hyperparameters to tune the amount of regularization versus the sum squared error. The solution does only depend on the ratio γ = ζ / μ {\displaystyle \gamma =\zeta /\mu } , therefore the original formulation uses only γ {\displaystyle \gamma } as tuning parameter. We use both μ {\displaystyle \mu } and ζ {\displaystyle \zeta } as parameters in order to provide a Bayesian interpretation to LS-SVM. The solution of LS-SVM regressor will be obtained after we construct the Lagrangian function: { L 2 ( w , b , e , α ) = J 2 ( w , e ) − ∑ i = 1 N α i { [ w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ] + e i − y i } , = 1 2 w T w + γ 2 ∑ i = 1 N e i 2 − ∑ i = 1 N α i { [ w T ϕ ( x i ) + b ] + e i − y i } , {\displaystyle {\begin{cases}L_{2}(w,b,e,\alpha )\;=J_{2}(w,e)-\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}\alpha _{i}\left\{{\left[{w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b}\right]+e_{i}-y_{i}}\right\},\\\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \;={\frac {1}{2}}w^{T}w+{\frac {\gamma }{2}}\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}e_{i}^{2}-\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}\alpha _{i}\left\{\left[w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b\right]+e_{i}-y_{i}\right\},\end{cases}}} where α i ∈ R {\displaystyle \alpha _{i}\in \mathbb {R} } are the Lagrange multipliers. The conditions for optimality are { ∂ L 2 ∂ w = 0 → w = ∑ i = 1 N α i ϕ ( x i ) , ∂ L 2 ∂ b = 0 → ∑ i = 1 N α i = 0 , ∂ L 2 ∂ e i = 0 → α i = γ e i , i = 1 , … , N , ∂ L 2 ∂ α i = 0 → y i = w T ϕ ( x i ) + b + e i , i = 1 , … , N . {\displaystyle {\begin{cases}{\frac {\partial L_{2}}{\partial w}}=0\quad \to \quad w=\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}\alpha _{i}\phi (x_{i}),\\{\frac {\partial L_{2}}{\partial b}}=0\quad \to \quad \sum \limits _{i=1}^{N}\alpha _{i}=0,\\{\frac {\partial L_{2}}{\partial e_{i}}}=0\quad \to \quad \alpha _{i}=\gamma e_{i},\;i=1,\ldots ,N,\\{\frac {\partial L_{2}}{\partial \alpha _{i}}}=0\quad \to \quad y_{i}=w^{T}\phi (x_{i})+b+e_{i},\,i=1,\ldots ,N.\end{cases}}} Elimination of w {\displaystyle w} and e {\displaystyle e} will yield a linear system instead of a quadratic programming problem: [ 0 1 N T 1 N Ω + γ − 1 I N ] [ b α ] = [ 0 Y ] , {\displaystyle \left[{\begin{matrix}0&1_{N}^{T}\\1_{N}&\Omega +\gamma ^{-1}I_{N}\end{matrix}}\right]\left[{\begin{matrix}b\\\alpha \end{matrix}}\right]=\left[{\begin{matrix}0\\Y\end{matrix}}\right],} with Y = [ y 1 , … , y N ] T {\displaystyle Y=[y_{1},\ldots ,y_{N}]^{T}} , 1 N = [ 1 , … , 1 ] T {\displaystyle 1_{N}=[1,\ldots ,1]^{T}} and α = [ α 1 , … , α N ] T {\displaystyle \alpha =[\alpha _{1},\ldots ,\alpha _{N}]^{T}} . Here, I N {\displaystyle I_{N}} is an N × N {\displaystyle N\times N} identity matrix, and Ω ∈ R N × N {\displaystyle \Omega \in \mathbb {R} ^{N\times N}} is the kernel matrix defined by Ω i j = ϕ ( x i ) T ϕ ( x j ) = K ( x i , x j ) {\displaystyle \Omega _{ij}=\phi (x_{i})^{T}\phi (x_{j})=K(x_{i},x_{j})} . === Kernel function K === For the kernel function K(•, •) one typically has the following choices: Linear kernel : K ( x , x i ) = x i T x , {\displaystyle K(x,x_{i})=x_{i}^{T}x,} Polynomial kernel of degree d {\displaystyle d} : K ( x , x i ) = ( 1 + x i T x / c ) d , {\displaystyle K(x,x_{i})=\left({1+x_{i}^{T}x/c}\right)^{d},} Radial basis function RBF kernel : K ( x , x i ) = exp ⁡ ( − ‖ x − x i ‖ 2 / σ 2 ) , {\displaystyle K(x,x_{i})=\exp \left({-\left\|{x-x_{i}}\right\|^{2}/\sigma ^{2}}\right),} MLP kernel : K ( x , x i ) = tanh ⁡ ( k x i T x + θ ) , {\displaystyle K(x,x_{i})=\tanh \left({k

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  • ImageNets

    ImageNets

    ImageNets is an open source framework for rapid prototyping of machine vision algorithms, developed by the Institute of Automation. == Description == ImageNets is an open source and platform independent (Windows & Linux) framework for rapid prototyping of machine vision algorithms. With the GUI ImageNet Designer, no programming knowledge is required to perform operations on images. A configured ImageNet can be loaded and executed from C++ code without the need for loading the ImageNet Designer GUI to achieve higher execution performance. == History == ImageNets was developed by the Institute of Automation, University of Bremen, Germany. The software was first publicly released in 2010. Originally, ImageNets was developed for the Care-Providing Robot FRIEND but it can be used for a wide range of computer vision applications.

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  • Induction of regular languages

    Induction of regular languages

    In computational learning theory, induction of regular languages refers to the task of learning a formal description (e.g. grammar) of a regular language from a given set of example strings. Although E. Mark Gold has shown that not every regular language can be learned this way (see language identification in the limit), approaches have been investigated for a variety of subclasses. They are sketched in this article. For learning of more general grammars, see Grammar induction. == Definitions == A regular language is defined as a (finite or infinite) set of strings that can be described by one of the mathematical formalisms called "finite automaton", "regular grammar", or "regular expression", all of which have the same expressive power. Since the latter formalism leads to shortest notations, it shall be introduced and used here. Given a set Σ of symbols (a.k.a. alphabet), a regular expression can be any of ∅ (denoting the empty set of strings), ε (denoting the singleton set containing just the empty string), a (where a is any character in Σ; denoting the singleton set just containing the single-character string a), r + s (where r and s are, in turn, simpler regular expressions; denoting their set's union) r ⋅ s (denoting the set of all possible concatenations of strings from r's and s's set), r + (denoting the set of n-fold repetitions of strings from r's set, for any n ≥ 1), or r (similarly denoting the set of n-fold repetitions, but also including the empty string, seen as 0-fold repetition). For example, using Σ = {0,1}, the regular expression (0+1+ε)⋅(0+1) denotes the set of all binary numbers with one or two digits (leading zero allowed), while 1⋅(0+1)⋅0 denotes the (infinite) set of all even binary numbers (no leading zeroes). Given a set of strings (also called "positive examples"), the task of regular language induction is to come up with a regular expression that denotes a set containing all of them. As an example, given {1, 10, 100}, a "natural" description could be the regular expression 1⋅0, corresponding to the informal characterization "a 1 followed by arbitrarily many (maybe even none) 0's". However, (0+1) and 1+(1⋅0)+(1⋅0⋅0) is another regular expression, denoting the largest (assuming Σ = {0,1}) and the smallest set containing the given strings, and called the trivial overgeneralization and undergeneralization, respectively. Some approaches work in an extended setting where also a set of "negative example" strings is given; then, a regular expression is to be found that generates all of the positive, but none of the negative examples. == Lattice of automata == Dupont et al. have shown that the set of all structurally complete finite automata generating a given input set of example strings forms a lattice, with the trivial undergeneralized and the trivial overgeneralized automaton as bottom and top element, respectively. Each member of this lattice can be obtained by factoring the undergeneralized automaton by an appropriate equivalence relation. For the above example string set {1, 10, 100}, the picture shows at its bottom the undergeneralized automaton Aa,b,c,d in grey, consisting of states a, b, c, and d. On the state set {a,b,c,d}, a total of 15 equivalence relations exist, forming a lattice. Mapping each equivalence E to the corresponding quotient automaton language L(Aa,b,c,d / E) obtains the partially ordered set shown in the picture. Each node's language is denoted by a regular expression. The language may be recognized by quotient automata w.r.t. different equivalence relations, all of which are shown below the node. An arrow between two nodes indicates that the lower node's language is a proper subset of the higher node's. If both positive and negative example strings are given, Dupont et al. build the lattice from the positive examples, and then investigate the separation border between automata that generate some negative example and such that do not. Most interesting are those automata immediately below the border. In the picture, separation borders are shown for the negative example strings 11 (green), 1001 (blue), 101 (cyan), and 0 (red). Coste and Nicolas present an own search method within the lattice, which they relate to Mitchell's version space paradigm. To find the separation border, they use a graph coloring algorithm on the state inequality relation induced by the negative examples. Later, they investigate several ordering relations on the set of all possible state fusions. Kudo and Shimbo use the representation by automaton factorizations to give a unique framework for the following approaches (sketched below): k-reversible languages and the "tail clustering" follow-up approach, Successor automata and the predecessor-successor method, and pumping-based approaches (framework-integration challenged by Luzeaux, however). Each of these approaches is shown to correspond to a particular kind of equivalence relations used for factorization. == Approaches == === k-reversible languages === Angluin considers so-called "k-reversible" regular automata, that is, deterministic automata in which each state can be reached from at most one state by following a transition chain of length k. Formally, if Σ, Q, and δ denote the input alphabet, the state set, and the transition function of an automaton A, respectively, then A is called k-reversible if: ∀a0, ..., ak ∈ Σ ∀s1, s2 ∈ Q: δ(s1, a0...ak) = δ(s2, a0...ak) ⇒ s1 = s2, where δ means the homomorphic extension of δ to arbitrary words. Angluin gives a cubic algorithm for learning of the smallest k-reversible language from a given set of input words; for k = 0, the algorithm has even almost linear complexity. The required state uniqueness after k + 1 given symbols forces unifying automaton states, thus leading to a proper generalization different from the trivial undergeneralized automaton. This algorithm has been used to learn simple parts of English syntax; later, an incremental version has been provided. Another approach based on k-reversible automata is the tail clustering method. === Successor automata === From a given set of input strings, Vernadat and Richetin build a so-called successor automaton, consisting of one state for each distinct character and a transition between each two adjacent characters' states. For example, the singleton input set {aabbaabb} leads to an automaton corresponding to the regular expression (a+⋅b+). An extension of this approach is the predecessor-successor method which generalizes each character repetition immediately to a Kleene + and then includes for each character the set of its possible predecessors in its state. Successor automata can learn exactly the class of local languages. Since each regular language is the homomorphic image of a local language, grammars from the former class can be learned by lifting, if an appropriate (depending on the intended application) homomorphism is provided. In particular, there is such a homomorphism for the class of languages learnable by the predecessor-successor method. The learnability of local languages can be reduced to that of k-reversible languages. === Early approaches === Chomsky and Miller (1957) used the pumping lemma: they guess a part v of an input string uvw and try to build a corresponding cycle into the automaton to be learned; using membership queries they ask, for appropriate k, which of the strings uw, uvvw, uvvvw, ..., uvkw also belongs to the language to be learned, thereby refining the structure of their automaton. In 1959, Solomonoff generalized this approach to context-free languages, which also obey a pumping lemma. === Cover automata === Câmpeanu et al. learn a finite automaton as a compact representation of a large finite language. Given such a language F, they search a so-called cover automaton A such that its language L(A) covers F in the following sense: L(A) ∩ Σ≤ l = F, where l is the length of the longest string in F, and Σ≤ l denotes the set of all strings not longer than l. If such a cover automaton exists, F is uniquely determined by A and l. For example, F = {ad, read, reread } has l = 6 and a cover automaton corresponding to the regular expression (r⋅e)⋅a⋅d. For two strings x and y, Câmpeanu et al. define x ~ y if xz ∈ F ⇔ yz ∈ F for all strings z of a length such that both xz and yz are not longer than l. Based on this relation, whose lack of transitivity causes considerable technical problems, they give an O(n4) algorithm to construct from F a cover automaton A of minimal state count. Moreover, for union, intersection, and difference of two finite languages they provide corresponding operations on their cover automata. Păun et al. improve the time complexity to O(n2). === Residual automata === For a set S of strings and a string u, the Brzozowski derivative u−1S is defined as the set of all rest-strings obtainable from a string in S by cutting off its prefix u (if possible), formally: u−1S = {v ∈ Σ: uv ∈ S}, cf. picture. Denis et al. define a

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  • Seq2seq

    Seq2seq

    Seq2seq is a family of machine learning approaches used for natural language processing. Originally developed by Lê Viết Quốc, a Vietnamese computer scientist and a machine learning pioneer at Google Brain, this framework has become foundational in many modern AI systems. Applications include language translation, image captioning, conversational models, speech recognition, and text summarization. Seq2seq uses sequence transformation: it turns one sequence into another sequence. == History == One naturally wonders if the problem of translation could conceivably be treated as a problem in cryptography. When I look at an article in Russian, I say: 'This is really written in English, but it has been coded in some strange symbols. I will now proceed to decode. seq2seq is an approach to machine translation (or more generally, sequence transduction) with roots in information theory, where communication is understood as an encode-transmit-decode process, and machine translation can be studied as a special case of communication. This viewpoint was elaborated, for example, in the noisy channel model of machine translation. In practice, seq2seq maps an input sequence into a real-numerical vector by using a neural network (the encoder), and then maps it back to an output sequence using another neural network (the decoder). The idea of encoder-decoder sequence transduction had been developed in the early 2010s. The papers most commonly cited as the originators that produced seq2seq are two papers from 2014. In the seq2seq as proposed by them, both the encoder and the decoder were LSTMs. This had the "bottleneck" problem, since the encoding vector has a fixed size, so for long input sequences, information would tend to be lost, as they are difficult to fit into the fixed-length encoding vector. The attention mechanism, proposed in 2014, resolved the bottleneck problem. They called their model RNNsearch, as it "emulates searching through a source sentence during decoding a translation". A problem with seq2seq models at this point was that recurrent neural networks are difficult to parallelize. The 2017 publication of Transformers resolved the problem by replacing the encoding RNN with self-attention Transformer blocks ("encoder blocks"), and the decoding RNN with cross-attention causally-masked Transformer blocks ("decoder blocks"). === Priority dispute === One of the papers cited as the originator for seq2seq is (Sutskever et al 2014), published at Google Brain while they were on Google's machine translation project. The research allowed Google to overhaul Google Translate into Google Neural Machine Translation in 2016. Tomáš Mikolov claims to have developed the idea (before joining Google Brain) of using a "neural language model on pairs of sentences... and then [generating] translation after seeing the first sentence"—which he equates with seq2seq machine translation, and to have mentioned the idea to Ilya Sutskever and Quoc Le (while at Google Brain), who failed to acknowledge him in their paper. Mikolov had worked on RNNLM (using RNN for language modelling) for his PhD thesis, and is more notable for developing word2vec. == Architecture == The main reference for this section is. === Encoder === The encoder is responsible for processing the input sequence and capturing its essential information, which is stored as the hidden state of the network and, in a model with attention mechanism, a context vector. The context vector is the weighted sum of the input hidden states and is generated for every time instance in the output sequences. === Decoder === The decoder takes the context vector and hidden states from the encoder and generates the final output sequence. The decoder operates in an autoregressive manner, producing one element of the output sequence at a time. At each step, it considers the previously generated elements, the context vector, and the input sequence information to make predictions for the next element in the output sequence. Specifically, in a model with attention mechanism, the context vector and the hidden state are concatenated together to form an attention hidden vector, which is used as an input for the decoder. The seq2seq method developed in the early 2010s uses two neural networks: an encoder network converts an input sentence into numerical vectors, and a decoder network converts those vectors to sentences in the target language. The Attention mechanism was grafted onto this structure in 2014 and is shown below. Later it was refined into the encoder-decoder Transformer architecture of 2017. === Training vs prediction === There is a subtle difference between training and prediction. During training time, both the input and the output sequences are known. During prediction time, only the input sequence is known, and the output sequence must be decoded by the network itself. Specifically, consider an input sequence x 1 : n {\displaystyle x_{1:n}} and output sequence y 1 : m {\displaystyle y_{1:m}} . The encoder would process the input x 1 : n {\displaystyle x_{1:n}} step by step. After that, the decoder would take the output from the encoder, as well as the as input, and produce a prediction y ^ 1 {\displaystyle {\hat {y}}_{1}} . Now, the question is: what should be input to the decoder in the next step? A standard method for training is "teacher forcing". In teacher forcing, no matter what is output by the decoder, the next input to the decoder is always the reference. That is, even if y ^ 1 ≠ y 1 {\displaystyle {\hat {y}}_{1}\neq y_{1}} , the next input to the decoder is still y 1 {\displaystyle y_{1}} , and so on. During prediction time, the "teacher" y 1 : m {\displaystyle y_{1:m}} would be unavailable. Therefore, the input to the decoder must be y ^ 1 {\displaystyle {\hat {y}}_{1}} , then y ^ 2 {\displaystyle {\hat {y}}_{2}} , and so on. It is found that if a model is trained purely by teacher forcing, its performance would degrade during prediction time, since generation based on the model's own output is different from generation based on the teacher's output. This is called exposure bias or a train/test distribution shift. A 2015 paper recommends that, during training, randomly switch between teacher forcing and no teacher forcing. === Attention for seq2seq === The attention mechanism is an enhancement introduced by Bahdanau et al. in 2014 to address limitations in the basic Seq2Seq architecture where a longer input sequence results in the hidden state output of the encoder becoming irrelevant for the decoder. It enables the model to selectively focus on different parts of the input sequence during the decoding process. At each decoder step, an alignment model calculates the attention score using the current decoder state and all of the attention hidden vectors as input. An alignment model is another neural network model that is trained jointly with the seq2seq model used to calculate how well an input, represented by the hidden state, matches with the previous output, represented by attention hidden state. A softmax function is then applied to the attention score to get the attention weight. In some models, the encoder states are directly fed into an activation function, removing the need for alignment model. An activation function receives one decoder state and one encoder state and returns a scalar value of their relevance. Consider the seq2seq language English-to-French translation task. To be concrete, let us consider the translation of "the zone of international control ", which should translate to "la zone de contrôle international ". Here, we use the special token as a control character to delimit the end of input for both the encoder and the decoder. An input sequence of text x 0 , x 1 , … {\displaystyle x_{0},x_{1},\dots } is processed by a neural network (which can be an LSTM, a Transformer encoder, or some other network) into a sequence of real-valued vectors h 0 , h 1 , … {\displaystyle h_{0},h_{1},\dots } , where h {\displaystyle h} stands for "hidden vector". After the encoder has finished processing, the decoder starts operating over the hidden vectors, to produce an output sequence y 0 , y 1 , … {\displaystyle y_{0},y_{1},\dots } , autoregressively. That is, it always takes as input both the hidden vectors produced by the encoder, and what the decoder itself has produced before, to produce the next output word: ( h 0 , h 1 , … {\displaystyle h_{0},h_{1},\dots } , "") → "la" ( h 0 , h 1 , … {\displaystyle h_{0},h_{1},\dots } , " la") → "la zone" ( h 0 , h 1 , … {\displaystyle h_{0},h_{1},\dots } , " la zone") → "la zone de" ... ( h 0 , h 1 , … {\displaystyle h_{0},h_{1},\dots } , " la zone de contrôle international") → "la zone de contrôle international " Here, we use the special token as a control character to delimit the start of input for the decoder. The decoding terminates as soon as "" appears in the decoder output. ==

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  • Structured kNN

    Structured kNN

    Structured k-nearest neighbours (SkNN) is a machine learning algorithm that generalizes k-nearest neighbors (k-NN). k-NN supports binary classification, multiclass classification, and regression, whereas SkNN allows training of a classifier for general structured output. For instance, a data sample might be a natural language sentence, and the output could be an annotated parse tree. Training a classifier consists of showing many instances of ground truth sample-output pairs. After training, the SkNN model is able to predict the corresponding output for new, unseen sample instances; that is, given a natural language sentence, the classifier can produce the most likely parse tree. == Training == As a training set, SkNN accepts sequences of elements with class labels. The type of element does not matter; the only requirement is a defined metric function that gives a distance between each pair of elements of a set. SkNN is based on idea of creating a graph, with each node representing a class label. There is an edge between a pair of nodes if there is a sequence of two elements in the training set with corresponding classes. The first step of SkNN training is the construction of such a graph from training sequences. There are two special nodes in the graph corresponding to sentence beginnings and ends: if a sequence starts with class C, the edge between node START and node C should be created. Like regular k-NN, the second part of SkNN training consists of storing the elements of a training sequence in a certain way. Each element of the training sequences is stored in the node related to the class of the previous element in the sequence. Every first element is stored in the START node. == Inference == Labelling input sequences by SkNN consists of finding the sequence of transitions in the graph, starting from node START. Each transition corresponds to a single element of the input sequence. As a result, the label of each element is determined as the target node label of the transition. The cost of the path is defined as the sum of all transitions, with the cost of transition from node A to node B being the distance from the current input sequence element to the nearest element of class B, stored in node A. Determining an optimal path may be performed using a modified Viterbi algorithm (where the sum of the distances is minimized, unlike the original algorithm which maximizes the product of probabilities).

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  • Santa Fe Trail problem

    Santa Fe Trail problem

    The Santa Fe Trail problem is a genetic programming exercise in which artificial ants search for food pellets according to a programmed set of instructions. The layout of food pellets in the Santa Fe Trail problem has become a standard for comparing different genetic programming algorithms and solutions. One method for programming and testing algorithms on the Santa Fe Trail problem is by using the NetLogo application. There is at least one case of a student creating a Lego robotic ant to solve the problem.

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  • IBM Watsonx

    IBM Watsonx

    Watsonx is a platform by IBM for building and managing artificial intelligence (AI) applications for business use. Released on May 9, 2023, the platform provides software tools and infrastructure for companies to work with both IBM's own AI models and models from third-party sources. The platform consists of three main components: watsonx.ai, a studio for training, validating, and deploying AI models; watsonx.data, a system for storing and managing data used by the models; and watsonx.governance, a toolkit to ensure AI applications are compliant with company policies and regulations. A key feature of the platform is that it can be trained on a company's private data to perform specialized tasks, a process known as fine-tuning. IBM states that this client-specific data is not used to train its own models. == History == Watsonx was introduced on May 9, 2023, at the annual IBM Think conference, as a platform that includes multiple services. Just like Watson AI computer with the similar name, Watsonx was named after Thomas J. Watson, IBM's founder and first CEO. On February 13, 2024, Anaconda partnered with IBM to embed its open-source Python packages into Watsonx. Watsonx is used at ESPN's Fantasy Football App for managing players' performance, and by Italian telecommunications company Wind Tre. It was employed to generate editorial content around nominees during the 66th Annual Grammy Awards. In 2025, Wimbledon integrated IBM watsonx generative AI into its app and website. Integrated with IBM Safer Payments, IBM watsonx has been used in banking sector fraud detection and anti-money laundering (AML) systems. == Services == === watsonx.ai === Watsonx.ai is a platform that allows AI developers to leverage a wide range of LLMs under IBM's own Granite series and others such as Facebook's LLaMA-2, free and open-source model Mistral, and many others present in the Hugging Face community. These models come pre-trained and optimized for various natural language processing (NLP) applications.The platform also allows fine-tuning with its Tuning Studio. === watsonx.data === Watsonx.data is a platform designed to assist clients in addressing issues related to data volume, complexity, cost, and governance.. The platform facilitates seamless data access, whether stored in the cloud or on-premises, through a single entry point. === watsonx.governance === Watsonx.governance is a platform that utilizes IBM's AI capabilities to implement AI lifecycle governance. This helps them manage risks and maintain compliance with evolving AI and industry regulations, while reducing AI bias through automated oversight.

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  • Zé Delivery

    Zé Delivery

    Zé Delivery is a startup developed by Brazilian drinks company AmBev which offers an app for delivering drinks. The app is available for Android and iOS. Created in 2016 by AmBev's ZX Ventures hub, the service has an international presence in Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Panama and the Dominican Republic. It is also present in more than 300 Brazilian cities. Because it has an extensive category of alcoholic beverages, the service is only used by people over 18. It also offers soft drinks, juices, energy drinks and other non-alcoholic beverages.

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  • Confirmatory blockmodeling

    Confirmatory blockmodeling

    Confirmatory blockmodeling is a deductive approach in blockmodeling, where a blockmodel (or part of it) is prespecify before the analysis, and then the analysis is fit to this model. When only a part of analysis is prespecify (like individual cluster(s) or location of the block types), it is called partially confirmatory blockmodeling. This is so-called indirect approach, where the blockmodeling is done on the blockmodel fitting (e.g., a priori hypothesized blockmodel). Opposite approach to the confirmatory blockmodeling is an inductive exploratory blockmodeling.

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  • Liquid state machine

    Liquid state machine

    A liquid state machine (LSM) is a type of reservoir computer that uses a spiking neural network. An LSM consists of a large collection of units (called nodes, or neurons). Each node receives time varying input from external sources (the inputs) as well as from other nodes. Nodes are randomly connected to each other. The recurrent nature of the connections turns the time varying input into a spatio-temporal pattern of activations in the network nodes. The spatio-temporal patterns of activation are read out by linear discriminant units. The soup of recurrently connected nodes will end up computing a large variety of nonlinear functions on the input. Given a large enough variety of such nonlinear functions, it is theoretically possible to obtain linear combinations (using the read out units) to perform whatever mathematical operation is needed to perform a certain task, such as speech recognition or computer vision. The word liquid in the name comes from the analogy drawn to dropping a stone into a still body of water or other liquid. The falling stone will generate ripples in the liquid. The input (motion of the falling stone) has been converted into a spatio-temporal pattern of liquid displacement (ripples). LSMs have been put forward as a way to explain the operation of brains. LSMs are argued to be an improvement over the theory of artificial neural networks because: Circuits are not hard coded to perform a specific task. Continuous time inputs are handled "naturally". Computations on various time scales can be done using the same network. The same network can perform multiple computations. Criticisms of LSMs as used in computational neuroscience are that LSMs don't actually explain how the brain functions. At best they can replicate some parts of brain functionality. There is no guaranteed way to dissect a working network and figure out how or what computations are being performed. There is very little control over the process. == Universal function approximation == If a reservoir has fading memory and input separability, with help of a readout, it can be proven the liquid state machine is a universal function approximator using Stone–Weierstrass theorem.

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