Feature learning in the presence of a mixed type of variables, numerical and categorical types, is an important issue for related modeling problems. For simple neighborhood queries under mixed data space, standard practice is to consider numerical and categorical variables separately and combining them based on some suitable distance functions. Alternatives, such as Kernel learning or Principal Component do not explicitly consider the inter-dependence structure among the mixed type of variables. In this work, we propose a novel strategy to explicitly model the probabilistic dependence structure among the mixed type of variables by an undirected graph. Spectral decomposition of the graph Laplacian provides the desired feature transformation. The Eigen spectrum of the transformed feature space shows increased separability and more prominent clusterability among the observations. The main novelty of our paper lies in capturing interactions of the mixed feature type in an unsupervised framework using a graphical model. We numerically validate the implications of the feature learning strategy
University of Oxford（牛津大学）；Amazon（亚马逊）；RMIT University（皇家墨尔本理工大学）
High-dimensional black-box optimisation remains an important yet notoriously challenging problem. Despite the success of Bayesian optimisation methods on continuous domains, domains that are categorical, or that mix continuous and categorical variables, remain challenging. We propose a novel solution -- we combine local optimisation with a tailored kernel design, effectively handling high-dimensional categorical and mixed search spaces, whilst retaining sample efficiency. We further derive convergence guarantee for the proposed approach. Finally, we demonstrate empirically that our method outp…
Many real-world optimisation problems are defined over both categorical and continuous variables, yet efficient optimisation methods such asBayesian Optimisation (BO) are not designed tohandle such mixed-variable search spaces. Recent approaches to this problem cast the selection of the categorical variables as a bandit problem, operating independently alongside a BO component which optimises the continuous variables. In this paper, we adopt a holistic view and aim to consolidate optimisation of the categorical and continuous sub-spaces under a single acquisition metric. We derive candidates f…
We consider analysis of relational data (a matrix), in which the rows correspond to subjects (e.g., people) and the columns correspond to attributes. The elements of the matrix may be a mix of real and categorical. Each subject and attribute is characterized by a latent binary feature vector, and an inferred matrix maps each row-column pair of binary feature vectors to an observed matrix element. The latent binary features of the rows are modeled via a multivariate Gaussian distribution with low-rank covariance matrix, and the Gaussian random variables are mapped to latent binary features via …
High-dimensional mixed-categorical Gaussian processes with application to multidisciplinary design optimization for a green aircraft
ONERA（法国航空航天研究院）；Université de Toulouse（图卢兹大学）；ISAE-SUPAERO（法国高等航空航天学院）；Polytechnique Montréal（蒙特利尔理工学院）；GERAD（GERAD（蒙特利尔运筹学与决策科学研究组））；ICA（图卢兹计算机科学研究所）；INSA（法国国立应用科学学院）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；MINES ALBI（阿尔比矿业学校）；UPS（图卢兹第三大学）
United Arab Emirates University（阿拉伯联合酋长国大学）；Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, University Health Network（多伦多康复研究所，大学健康网络）
Mixed datasets consist of both numeric and categorical attributes. Various k-means-based clustering algorithms have been developed for these datasets. Generally, these algorithms use random partition as a starting point, which tends to produce different clustering results for different runs. In this paper, we propose, initKmix, a novel algorithm for finding an initial partition for k-means-based clustering algorithms for mixed datasets. In the initKmix algorithm, a k-means-based clustering algorithm is run many times, and in each run, one of the attributes is used to create initial clusters fo…
Datasets with a mixture of numerical and categorical attributes are routinely encountered in many application domains. In this work we examine an approach to clustering such datasets using homogeneity analysis. Homogeneity analysis determines a euclidean representation of the data. This can be analyzed by leveraging the large body of tools and techniques for data with a euclidean representation. Experiments conducted as part of this study suggest that this approach can be useful in the analysis and exploration of big datasets with a mixture of numerical and categorical attributes.
Pohang University of Science and Technology（浦项科技大学）
The variational autoencoder (VAE) is a generative model with continuous latent variables where a pair of probabilistic encoder (bottom-up) and decoder (top-down) is jointly learned by stochastic gradient variational Bayes. We first elaborate Gaussian VAE, approximating the local covariance matrix of the decoder as an outer product of the principal direction at a position determined by a sample drawn from Gaussian distribution. We show that this model, referred to as VAE-ROC, better captures the data manifold, compared to the standard Gaussian VAE where independent multivariate Gaussian was use…
Explicitly accounting for uncertainties is paramount to the safety of engineering structures. Optimization which is often carried out at the early stage of the structural design offers an ideal framework for this task. When the uncertainties are mainly affecting the objective function, robust design optimization is traditionally considered. This work further assumes the existence of multiple and competing objective functions that need to be dealt with simultaneously. The optimization problem is formulated by considering quantiles of the objective functions which allows for the combination of b…
A general fuzzy min-max (GFMM) neural network is one of the efficient neuro-fuzzy systems for classification problems. However, a disadvantage of most of the current learning algorithms for GFMM is that they can handle effectively numerical valued features only. Therefore, this paper provides some potential approaches to adapting GFMM learning algorithms for classification problems with mixed-type or only categorical features as they are very common in practical applications and often carry very useful information. We will compare and assess three main methods of handling datasets with mixed f…
IBM Quantum（IBM量子）；IBM T.J. Watson research center（IBM托马斯·J·沃森研究中心）
We describe the optimization algorithm implemented in the open-source derivative-free solver RBFOpt. The algorithm is based on the radial basis function method of Gutmann and the metric stochastic response surface method of Regis and Shoemaker. We propose several modifications aimed at generalizing and improving these two algorithms: (i) the use of an extended space to represent categorical variables in unary encoding; (ii) a refinement phase to locally improve a candidate solution; (iii) interpolation models without the unisolvence condition, to both help deal with categorical variables, and …
We present the Mixed Likelihood Gaussian process latent variable model (GP-LVM), capable of modeling data with attributes of different types. The standard formulation of GP-LVM assumes that each observation is drawn from a Gaussian distribution, which makes the model unsuited for data with e.g. categorical or nominal attributes. Our model, for which we use a sampling based variational inference, instead assumes a separate likelihood for each observed dimension. This formulation results in more meaningful latent representations, and give better predictive performance for real world data with di…
University of Technology Sydney（悉尼科技大学）；Advanced Analytics Institute（高级分析研究所）；Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology（工程与信息技术学院）
General fuzzy min-max neural network (GFMMNN) is one of the efficient neuro-fuzzy systems for data classification. However, one of the downsides of its original learning algorithms is the inability to handle and learn from the mixed-attribute data. While categorical features encoding methods can be used with the GFMMNN learning algorithms, they exhibit a lot of shortcomings. Other approaches proposed in the literature are not suitable for on-line learning as they require entire training data available in the learning phase. With the rapid change in the volume and velocity of streaming data in …
Anomaly detection aims to identify observations that deviate from the typical pattern of data. Anomalous observations may correspond to financial fraud, health risks, or incorrectly measured data in practice. We show detecting anomalies in high-dimensional mixed data is enhanced through first embedding the data then assessing an anomaly scoring scheme. We focus on unsupervised detection and the continuous and categorical (mixed) variable case. We propose a kurtosis-weighted Factor Analysis of Mixed Data for anomaly detection, FAMDAD, to obtain a continuous embedding for anomaly scoring. We ill…
Target encoding is an effective encoding technique of categorical variables and is often used in machine learning systems for processing tabular data sets with mixed numeric and categorical variables. Recently en enhanced version of this encoding technique was proposed by using conjugate Bayesian modeling. This paper presents a further development of Bayesian encoding method by using sampling techniques, which helps in extracting information from intra-category distribution of the target variable, improves generalization and reduces target leakage.
A Deterministic Information Bottleneck Method for Clustering Mixed-Type Data
Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom（伦敦帝国学院数学系）；School of Education, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece（德莫克利特斯大学教育学院）
Scientific and engineering problems often require the use of artificial intelligence to aid understanding and the search for promising designs. While Gaussian processes (GP) stand out as easy-to-use and interpretable learners, they have difficulties in accommodating big datasets, categorical inputs, and multiple responses, which has become a common challenge for a growing number of data-driven design applications. In this paper, we propose a GP model that utilizes latent variables and functions obtained through variational inference to address the aforementioned challenges simultaneously. The …
United Arab Emirates University（阿联酋大学）；Toronto Rehabilitation Institute（多伦多康复研究所）；University Health Network（大学健康网络）
Mixed data comprises both numeric and categorical features, and mixed datasets occur frequently in many domains, such as health, finance, and marketing. Clustering is often applied to mixed datasets to find structures and to group similar objects for further analysis. However, clustering mixed data is challenging because it is difficult to directly apply mathematical operations, such as summation or averaging, to the feature values of these datasets. In this paper, we present a taxonomy for the study of mixed data clustering algorithms by identifying five major research themes. We then present…
Categorical Data Clustering via Value Order Estimated Distance Metric Learning
School of Computer Science and Technology, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China（广东技术大学计算机科学与技术学院）；Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong SAR China（香港 Baptist大学计算机科学系）；Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Intelligent Information Processing, College of Electronics and Information Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China（广东省智能信息处理重点实验室，电子与信息工程学院，深圳大学，深圳，中国）；School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China（计算机科学与软件工程学院，深圳大学，深圳，中国）；School of Informatics, Xiamen University, Xiamen China（信息学院，厦门大学，厦门中国）
We propose a method that performs anomaly detection and localisation within heterogeneous data using a pairwise undirected mixed graphical model. The data are a mixture of categorical and quantitative variables, and the model is learned over a dataset that is supposed not to contain any anomaly. We then use the model over temporal data, potentially a data stream, using a version of the two-sided CUSUM algorithm. The proposed decision statistic is based on a conditional likelihood ratio computed for each variable given the others. Our results show that this function allows to detect anomalies v…
Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；Southern Methodist University（南卫理公会大学）；Amazon（亚马逊）
We introduce the DP-auto-GAN framework for synthetic data generation, which combines the low dimensional representation of autoencoders with the flexibility of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). This framework can be used to take in raw sensitive data and privately train a model for generating synthetic data that will satisfy similar statistical properties as the original data. This learned model can generate an arbitrary amount of synthetic data, which can then be freely shared due to the post-processing guarantee of differential privacy. Our framework is applicable to unlabeled mixed-ty…
China University of Mining and Technology（中国矿业大学）；Nankai University（南开大学）
Community detection in network analysis is an attractive research area recently. Here, under the degree-corrected mixed membership (DCMM) model, we propose an efficient approach called mixed regularized spectral clustering (Mixed-RSC for short) based on the regularized Laplacian matrix. Mixed-RSC is designed based on an ideal cone structure of the variant for the eigen-decomposition of the population regularized Laplacian matrix. We show that the algorithm is asymptotically consistent under mild conditions by providing error bounds for the inferred membership vector of each node. As a byproduc…
