Machine Learning is the study of methods for programming computers to learn. Computers are applied to a wide range of tasks, and for most of these it is relatively easy for programmers to design and implement the necessary software. However, there are many tasks for which this is difficult or impossible. These can be divided into four general categories. First, there are problems for which there exist no human experts. For example, in modern automated manufacturing facilities, there is a need to predict machine failures before they occur by analyzing sensor readings. Because the machines are new, there are no human experts who can be interviewed by a programmer to provide the knowledge necessary to build a computer system. A machine learning system can study recorded data and subsequent machine failures and learn prediction rules. Second, there are problems where human experts exist, but where they are unable to explain their expertise. This is the case in many perceptual tasks, such as speech recognition, hand-writing recognition, and natural language understanding. Virtually all humans exhibit expert-level abilities on these tasks, but none of them can describe the detailed steps that they follow as they perform them. Fortunately, humans can provide machines with examples of the inputs and correct outputs for these tasks, so machine learning algorithms can learn to map the inputs to the outputs. Third, there are problems where phenomena are changing rapidly. In finance, for example, people would like to predict the future behavior of the stock market, of consumer purchases, or of exchange rates. These behaviors change frequently, so that even if a programmer could construct a good predictive computer program, it would need to be rewritten frequently. A learning program can relieve the programmer of this burden by constantly modifying and tuning a set of learned prediction rules. Fourth, there are applications that need to be customized for each computer user separately. Consider, for example, a program to filter unwanted electronic mail messages. Different users will need different filters. It is unreasonable to expect each user to program his or her own rules, and it is infeasible to provide every user with a software engineer to keep the rules up-to-date. A machine learning system can learn which mail messages the user rejects and maintain the filtering rules automatically. Machine learning addresses many of the same research questions as the fields of statistics, data mining, and psychology, but with differences of emphasis. Statistics focuses on understanding the phenomena that have generated the data, often with the goal of testing different hypotheses about those phenomena. Data mining seeks to find patterns in the data that are understandable by people. Psychological studies of human learning aspire to understand the mechanisms underlying the various learning behaviors exhibited by people (concept learning, skill acquisition, strategy change, etc.).

Machine learning

Probability Distributions.- Linear Models for Regression.- Linear Models for Classification.- Neural Networks.- Kernel Methods.- Sparse Kernel Machines.- Graphical Models.- Mixture Models and EM.- Approximate Inference.- Sampling Methods.- Continuous Latent Variables.- Sequential Data.- Combining Models.

Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

A morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces

A theory of three-way decisions is constructed based on the notions of acceptance, rejection and noncommitment. It is an extension of the commonly used binary-decision model with an added third option. Three-way decisions play a key role in everyday decision-making and have been widely used in many fields and disciplines. An outline of a theory of three-way decisions is presented by examining its basic ingredients, interpretations, and relationships to other theories.

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An Outline of a Theory of Three-Way Decisions

In this paper, we review the definition and basic properties of the different types of fuzzy sets that have appeared up to now in the literature. We also analyze the relationships between them and enumerate some of the applications in which they have been used.

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A Historical Account of Types of Fuzzy Sets and Their Relationships

Many previous studies on face recognition attempted to seek a precise classifier to achieve a low misclassification error, which is based on an assumption that all misclassification costs are the same. In many real-world scenarios, however, this assumption is not reasonable due to the imbalanced misclassification cost and insufficient high-quality facial image information. To address this issue, we propose a sequential three-way decision method for cost-sensitive face recognition. The proposed method is based on a formal description of granular computing. It develops a sequential strategy in a decision process. In each decision step, it seeks a decision which minimizes the misclassification cost rather than misclassification error, and it incorporates the boundary decision into the decision set such that a delayed decision can be made if available high-quality facial image information is insufficient for a precise decision. To describe the granular information of the facial image in three-way decision steps, we develop a series of image granulation methods based on two-dimensional subspace projection methods including 2DPCA, 2DLDA and 2DLPP. The sequential three-way decisions and granulation methods present an applicable simulation on human decisions in face recognition, which simulate a sequential decision strategy from rough granule to precise granule. The experiments were conducted on two popular facial image database, which validated the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Sequential three-way decision and granulation for cost-sensitive face recognition

Rough set theory has witnessed great success in data mining and knowledge discovery, which provides a good support for decision making on a certain data. However, a practical decision problem always shows diversity under the same circumstance according to different personality of the decision makers. A simplex decision model can not provide a full description on such diverse decisions. In this article, a review of Pawlak rough set models and probabilistic rough set models is presented, and a three-way view decision model based on decision-theoretic rough set model is proposed, in which optimistic decision, pessimistic decision, and equable decision are provided according to the cost of misclassification. The thresholds of probabilistic inclusion are calculated based on minimization of risk cost under respective decision bias. The study not only presents a new theoretic decision model considering the different personality of the decision makers, but also provides a practical explanation and an illustrative example on diverse risk bias decision.

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Huaxiong Li

Papers

Sequential three-way decision and granulation for cost-sensitive face recognition

Risk Decision Making Based on Decision-theoretic Rough Set: A Three-way View Decision Model

Cost-sensitive sequential three-way decision modeling using a deep neural network

Relative reducts in consistent and inconsistent decision tables of the Pawlak rough set model

Intuitionistic fuzzy multigranulation rough sets