We present a novel attention-based model for discrete event data to capture complex non-linear temporal dependence structures. We borrow the idea from the attention mechanism and incorporate it into the point processes' conditional intensity function. We further introduce a novel score function using Fourier kernel embedding, whose spectrum is represented using neural networks, which drastically differs from the traditional dot-product kernel and can capture a more complex similarity structure. We establish our approach's theoretical properties and demonstrate our approach's competitive performance compared to the state-of-the-art for synthetic and real data.
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Big Data Security & Intelligent Processing, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications（南京邮电大学江苏省大数据安全与智能处理重点实验室）；National Engineering Laboratory for Agri-product Quality Traceability, Beijing Technology and Business University（北京工商大学农产品质量安全追溯技术及应用国家工程实验室）；State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University（南京大学计算机软件新技术国家重点实验室）；Jiangsu Key Lab of Image and Video Understanding for Social Security, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology（南京理工大学计算机科学与工程学院江苏省社会安全图像与视频理解重点实验室）
With rising uncertainty in the real world, online Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been receiving increasing attention due to its fast learning capability and improving data efficiency. However, online RL often suffers from complex Value Function Approximation (VFA) and catastrophic interference, creating difficulty for the deep neural network to be applied to an online RL algorithm in a fully online setting. Therefore, a simpler and more adaptive approach is introduced to evaluate value function with the kernel-based model. Sparse representations are superior at handling interference, indicati…
University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；University of California, Los Angeles（加州大学洛杉矶分校）
Multi-head attention empowers the recent success of transformers, the state-of-the-art models that have achieved remarkable success in sequence modeling and beyond. These attention mechanisms compute the pairwise dot products between the queries and keys, which results from the use of unnormalized Gaussian kernels with the assumption that the queries follow a mixture of Gaussian distribution. There is no guarantee that this assumption is valid in practice. In response, we first interpret attention in transformers as a nonparametric kernel regression. We then propose the FourierFormer, a new cl…
The transduction of sequence has been mostly done by recurrent networks, which are computationally demanding and often underestimate uncertainty severely. We propose a computationally efficient attention-based network combined with the Gaussian process regression to generate real-valued sequence, which we call the Attentive-GP. The proposed model not only improves the training efficiency by dispensing recurrence and convolutions but also learns the factorized generative distribution with Bayesian representation. However, the presence of the GP precludes the commonly used mini-batch approach to…
Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT（赫尔辛基信息技术研究所 HIIT）；Aalto University（阿尔托大学）
The expressive power of Gaussian processes depends heavily on the choice of kernel. In this work we propose the novel harmonizable mixture kernel (HMK), a family of expressive, interpretable, non-stationary kernels derived from mixture models on the generalized spectral representation. As a theoretically sound treatment of non-stationary kernels, HMK supports harmonizable covariances, a wide subset of kernels including all stationary and many non-stationary covariances. We also propose variational Fourier features, an inter-domain sparse GP inference framework that offers a representative set …
IBISC；Université d’Évry val d’Essonne（埃松省埃夫里大学）；LTCI；Télécom ParisTech（巴黎电信学院）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；Department of Information and Computer Science（信息与计算机科学系）；Aalto University（阿尔托大学）
Devoted to multi-task learning and structured output learning, operator-valued kernels provide a flexible tool to build vector-valued functions in the context of Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces. To scale up these methods, we extend the celebrated Random Fourier Feature methodology to get an approximation of operator-valued kernels. We propose a general principle for Operator-valued Random Fourier Feature construction relying on a generalization of Bochner's theorem for translation-invariant operator-valued Mercer kernels. We prove the uniform convergence of the kernel approximation for bound…
IRISA, Univ. Bretagne-Sud（布列塔尼南方大学 IRISA）；ETIS UMR 8051, Univ. Paris Seine, Univ. Cergy-Pontoise, ENSEA, CNRS（ETIS UMR 8051，巴黎塞纳大学，塞尔吉-蓬图瓦兹大学，ENSEA，法国国家科学研究中心）
Kernel methods are powerful and flexible approach to solve many problems in machine learning. Due to the pairwise evaluations in kernel methods, the complexity of kernel computation grows as the data size increases; thus the applicability of kernel methods is limited for large scale datasets. Random Fourier Features (RFF) has been proposed to scale the kernel method for solving large scale datasets by approximating kernel function using randomized Fourier features. While this method proved very popular, still it exists shortcomings to be effectively used. As RFF samples the randomized features…
School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney（悉尼大学信息技术学院）；The University of Sydney（悉尼大学）
Periodicity is often studied in timeseries modelling with autoregressive methods but is less popular in the kernel literature, particularly for higher dimensional problems such as in textures, crystallography, and quantum mechanics. Large datasets often make modelling periodicity untenable for otherwise powerful non-parametric methods like Gaussian Processes (GPs) which typically incur an $\mathcal{O}(N^3)$ computational burden and, consequently, are unable to scale to larger datasets. To this end we introduce a method termed \emph{Index Set Fourier Series Features} to tractably exploit multiv…
We revisit Rahimi and Recht (2007)'s kernel random Fourier features (RFF) method through the lens of the PAC-Bayesian theory. While the primary goal of RFF is to approximate a kernel, we look at the Fourier transform as a prior distribution over trigonometric hypotheses. It naturally suggests learning a posterior on these hypotheses. We derive generalization bounds that are optimized by learning a pseudo-posterior obtained from a closed-form expression. Based on this study, we consider two learning strategies: The first one finds a compact landmarks-based representation of the data where each …
Kernel learning methods are among the most effective learning methods and have been vigorously studied in the past decades. However, when tackling with complicated tasks, classical kernel methods are not flexible or "rich" enough to describe the data and hence could not yield satisfactory performance. In this paper, via Random Fourier Features (RFF), we successfully incorporate the deep architecture into kernel learning, which significantly boosts the flexibility and richness of kernel machines while keeps kernels' advantage of pairwise handling small data. With RFF, we could establish a deep …
In the univariate setting, using the kernel spectral representation is an appealing approach for generating stationary covariance functions. However, performing the same task for multiple-output Gaussian processes is substantially more challenging. We demonstrate that current approaches to modelling cross-covariances with a spectral mixture kernel possess a critical blind spot. For a given pair of processes, the cross-covariance is not reproducible across the full range of permitted correlations, aside from the special case where their spectral densities are of identical shape. We present a so…
CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Inria Lille - Nord Europe（法国里尔-北欧数字科学研究所）
We propose a Gradient Boosting algorithm for learning an ensemble of kernel functions adapted to the task at hand. Unlike state-of-the-art Multiple Kernel Learning techniques that make use of a pre-computed dictionary of kernel functions to select from, at each iteration we fit a kernel by approximating it as a weighted sum of Random Fourier Features (RFF) and by optimizing their barycenter. This allows us to obtain a more versatile method, easier to setup and likely to have better performance. Our study builds on a recent result showing one can learn a kernel from RFF by computing the minimum…
RFFNet: Large-Scale Interpretable Kernel Methods via Random Fourier Features
Federal University of São Carlos（圣卡洛斯联邦大学）；Universidade de São Paulo（圣保罗大学）；Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação, Universidade de São Paulo（圣保罗大学数学与计算机科学学院）
We show that the error probability of reconstructing kernel matrices from Random Fourier Features for the Gaussian kernel function is at most $\mathcal{O}(R^{2/3} \exp(-D))$, where $D$ is the number of random features and $R$ is the diameter of the data domain. We also provide an information-theoretic method-independent lower bound of $Ω((1-\exp(-R^2)) \exp(-D))$. Compared to prior work, we are the first to show that the error probability for random Fourier features is independent of the dimensionality of data points. As applications of our theory, we obtain dimension-independent bounds for ke…
Quantum Fourier Transform Based Kernel for Solar Irrandiance Forecasting
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)（瑞士联邦理工学院）；Mechanical Engineering Department, Universidad de Chile（智利大学机械工程系）；Departamento de Ingeniería Mecánica y Metalúrgica, Escuela de Ingeniería, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile（智利天主教大学机械工程与冶金系）；Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences, University of California（加州大学风险科学研究所）
École Polytechnique（巴黎综合理工学院）；Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）
Random Fourier features (RFF) represent one of the most popular and wide-spread techniques in machine learning to scale up kernel algorithms. Despite the numerous successful applications of RFFs, unfortunately, quite little is understood theoretically on their optimality and limitations of their performance. Only recently, precise statistical-computational trade-offs have been established for RFFs in the approximation of kernel values, kernel ridge regression, kernel PCA and SVM classification. Our goal is to spark the investigation of optimality of RFF-based approximations in tasks involving …
Kernel methods give powerful, flexible, and theoretically grounded approaches to solving many problems in machine learning. The standard approach, however, requires pairwise evaluations of a kernel function, which can lead to scalability issues for very large datasets. Rahimi and Recht (2007) suggested a popular approach to handling this problem, known as random Fourier features. The quality of this approximation, however, is not well understood. We improve the uniform error bound of that paper, as well as giving novel understandings of the embedding's variance, approximation error, and use in…
We investigate how to train kernel approximation methods that generalize well under a memory budget. Building on recent theoretical work, we define a measure of kernel approximation error which we find to be more predictive of the empirical generalization performance of kernel approximation methods than conventional metrics. An important consequence of this definition is that a kernel approximation matrix must be high rank to attain close approximation. Because storing a high-rank approximation is memory intensive, we propose using a low-precision quantization of random Fourier features (LP-RF…
Starting with the Fourier integral theorem, we present natural Monte Carlo estimators of multivariate functions including densities, mixing densities, transition densities, regression functions, and the search for modes of multivariate density functions (modal regression). Rates of convergence are established and, in many cases, provide superior rates to current standard estimators such as those based on kernels, including kernel density estimators and kernel regression functions. Numerical illustrations are presented.
ICSI（国际计算机科学研究所）；University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；G-STATS Data Science Chair, GIPSA-lab（G-STATS数据科学教席，GIPSA实验室）
This article characterizes the exact asymptotics of random Fourier feature (RFF) regression, in the realistic setting where the number of data samples $n$, their dimension $p$, and the dimension of feature space $N$ are all large and comparable. In this regime, the random RFF Gram matrix no longer converges to the well-known limiting Gaussian kernel matrix (as it does when $N \to \infty$ alone), but it still has a tractable behavior that is captured by our analysis. This analysis also provides accurate estimates of training and test regression errors for large $n,p,N$. Based on these estimates…
Tel Aviv University（特拉维夫大学）；EPFL（洛桑联邦理工学院）；MIT（麻省理工学院）
Random Fourier features is one of the most popular techniques for scaling up kernel methods, such as kernel ridge regression. However, despite impressive empirical results, the statistical properties of random Fourier features are still not well understood. In this paper we take steps toward filling this gap. Specifically, we approach random Fourier features from a spectral matrix approximation point of view, give tight bounds on the number of Fourier features required to achieve a spectral approximation, and show how spectral matrix approximation bounds imply statistical guarantees for kernel…
We present a new framework for online Least Squares algorithms for nonlinear modeling in RKH spaces (RKHS). Instead of implicitly mapping the data to a RKHS (e.g., kernel trick), we map the data to a finite dimensional Euclidean space, using random features of the kernel's Fourier transform. The advantage is that, the inner product of the mapped data approximates the kernel function. The resulting "linear" algorithm does not require any form of sparsification, since, in contrast to all existing algorithms, the solution's size remains fixed and does not increase with the iteration steps. As a r…
Large-scale kernel approximation is an important problem in machine learning research. Approaches using random Fourier features have become increasingly popular [Rahimi and Recht, 2007], where kernel approximation is treated as empirical mean estimation via Monte Carlo (MC) or Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) integration [Yang et al., 2014]. A limitation of the current approaches is that all the features receive an equal weight summing to 1. In this paper, we propose a novel shrinkage estimator from "Stein effect", which provides a data-driven weighting strategy for random features and enjoys theoretic…
The method of "random Fourier features (RFF)" has become a popular tool for approximating the "radial basis function (RBF)" kernel. The variance of RFF is actually large. Interestingly, the variance can be substantially reduced by a simple normalization step as we theoretically demonstrate. We name the improved scheme as the "normalized RFF (NRFF)". We also propose the "generalized min-max (GMM)" kernel as a measure of data similarity. GMM is positive definite as there is an associated hashing method named "generalized consistent weighted sampling (GCWS)" which linearizes this nonlinear kernel…
The method of random projection (RP) is the standard technique in machine learning and many other areas, for dimensionality reduction, approximate near neighbor search, compressed sensing, etc. Basically, RP provides a simple and effective scheme for approximating pairwise inner products and Euclidean distances in massive data. Closely related to RP, the method of random Fourier features (RFF) has also become popular, for approximating the Gaussian kernel. RFF applies a specific nonlinear transformation on the projected data from random projections. In practice, using the (nonlinear) Gaussian …
KU Leuven（鲁汶大学）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Cornell University（康奈尔大学）
In this paper, we propose a fast surrogate leverage weighted sampling strategy to generate refined random Fourier features for kernel approximation. Compared to the current state-of-the-art method that uses the leverage weighted scheme [Li-ICML2019], our new strategy is simpler and more effective. It uses kernel alignment to guide the sampling process and it can avoid the matrix inversion operator when we compute the leverage function. Given n observations and s random features, our strategy can reduce the time complexity from O(ns^2+s^3) to O(ns^2), while achieving comparable (or even slightl…
The kernel embedding algorithm is an important component for adapting kernel methods to large datasets. Since the algorithm consumes a major computation cost in the testing phase, we propose a novel teacher-learner framework of learning computation-efficient kernel embeddings from specific data. In the framework, the high-precision embeddings (teacher) transfer the data information to the computation-efficient kernel embeddings (learner). We jointly select informative embedding functions and pursue an orthogonal transformation between two embeddings. We propose a novel approach of constrained …
The use of covariance kernels is ubiquitous in the field of spatial statistics. Kernels allow data to be mapped into high-dimensional feature spaces and can thus extend simple linear additive methods to nonlinear methods with higher order interactions. However, until recently, there has been a strong reliance on a limited class of stationary kernels such as the Matern or squared exponential, limiting the expressiveness of these modelling approaches. Recent machine learning research has focused on spectral representations to model arbitrary stationary kernels and introduced more general represe…
These lecture notes endeavour to collect in one place the mathematical background required to understand the properties of kernels in general and the Random Fourier Features approximation of Rahimi and Recht (NIPS 2007) in particular. We briefly motivate the use of kernels in Machine Learning with the example of the support vector machine. We discuss positive definite and conditionally negative definite kernels in some detail. After a brief discussion of Hilbert spaces, including the Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space construction, we present Mercer's theorem. We discuss the Random Fourier Featu…
In this paper we measured the stability of stochastic gradient method (SGM) for learning an approximated Fourier primal support vector machine. The stability of an algorithm is considered by measuring the generalization error in terms of the absolute difference between the test and the training error. Our problem is to learn an approximated kernel function using random Fourier features for a binary classification problem via online convex optimization settings. For a convex, Lipschitz continuous and smooth loss function, given reasonable number of iterations stochastic gradient method is stabl…
We establish a link between Fourier optics and a recent construction from the machine learning community termed the kernel mean map. Using the Fraunhofer approximation, it identifies the kernel with the squared Fourier transform of the aperture. This allows us to use results about the invertibility of the kernel mean map to provide a statement about the invertibility of Fraunhofer diffraction, showing that imaging processes with arbitrarily small apertures can in principle be invertible, i.e., do not lose information, provided the objects to be imaged satisfy a generic condition. A real world …
Kernel methods represent one of the most powerful tools in machine learning to tackle problems expressed in terms of function values and derivatives due to their capability to represent and model complex relations. While these methods show good versatility, they are computationally intensive and have poor scalability to large data as they require operations on Gram matrices. In order to mitigate this serious computational limitation, recently randomized constructions have been proposed in the literature, which allow the application of fast linear algorithms. Random Fourier features (RFF) are a…
