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

According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

The concept of an agent has become important in both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and mainstream computer science. Our aim in this paper is to point the reader at what we perceive to be the most important theoretical and practical issues associated with the design and construction of intelligent agents. For convenience, we divide these issues into three areas (though as the reader will see, the divisions are at times somewhat arbitrary). Agent theory is concerned with the question of what an agent is, and the use of mathematical formalisms for representing and reasoning about the properties of agents. Agent architectures can be thought of as software engineering models of agents;researchers in this area are primarily concerned with the problem of designing software or hardware systems that will satisfy the properties specified by agent theorists. Finally, agent languages are software systems for programming and experimenting with agents; these languages may embody principles proposed by theorists. The paper is not intended to serve as a tutorial introduction to all the issues mentioned; we hope instead simply to identify the most important issues, and point to work that elaborates on them. The article includes a short review of current and potential applications of agent technology.

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Intelligent Agents: Theory and Practice

物件導向軟體之架構(Object-Oriented Software Construction)探討

From the Publisher: 
The accessible presentation of this book gives both a general view of the entire computer vision enterprise and also offers sufficient detail to be able to build useful applications. Users learn techniques that have proven to be useful by first-hand experience and a wide range of mathematical methods. A CD-ROM with every copy of the text contains source code for programming practice, color images, and illustrative movies. Comprehensive and up-to-date, this book includes essential topics that either reflect practical significance or are of theoretical importance. Topics are discussed in substantial and increasing depth. Application surveys describe numerous important application areas such as image based rendering and digital libraries. Many important algorithms broken down and illustrated in pseudo code. Appropriate for use by engineers as a comprehensive reference to the computer vision enterprise.

Computer vision : a modern approach = 计算机视觉 : 一种现代的方法

Described are techniques used for detection of inconsistent data structures. The state of a data structure is determined as “inconsistent” in accordance with a defined specification. In the event that a data structure is determined to be inconsistent, the data structure may be repaired. In the event that the repair fails in connection with a read or a write operation, the executing program may optionally take steps to allow the program to continue execution. In connection with a read operation, any value may be returned as a result of the read. In connection with a write operation, the data to be written is discarded such that no write of data is performed and program execution continues. The detection and repairs are determined in accordance with user specifications.

Specification based detection and repair of errors in data structures

Shape analysis is a promising technique for statically verifying and extracting properties of programs that manipulate complex data structures. We introduce a new characterization of constraints that arise in parametric shape analysis based on manipulation of three-valued structures as dataflow facts. We identify an interesting syntactic class of first-order logic formulas that captures the meaning of three-valued structures under concretization. This class is broader than previously introduced classes, allowing for a greater flexibility in the formulation of shape analysis constraints in program annotations and internal analysis representations. Three-valued structures can be viewed as one possible normal form of the formulas in our class. Moreover, we characterize the meaning of three-valued structures under “tight concretization”. We show that the seemingly minor change from concretization to tight concretization increases the expressive power of three-valued structures in such a way that the resulting constraints are closed under all boolean operations. We call the resulting constraints boolean shape analysis constraints. The main technical contribution of this paper is a natural syntactic characterization of boolean shape analysis constraints as arbitrary boolean combinations of first-order sentences of certain form, and an algorithm for transforming such boolean combinations into the normal form that corresponds directly to three-valued structures. Our result holds in the presence of arbitrary shape analysis instrumentation predicates. The result enables the reduction (without any approximation) of the entailment and the equivalence of shape analysis constraints to the satisfiability of shape analysis constraints. When the satisfiability of the constraints is decidable, our result implies that the entailment and the equivalence of the constraints are also decidable, which enables the use of constraints in a compositional shape analysis with a predictable behavior.

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On the Boolean Algebra of Shape Analysis Constraints

Note: MIT CSAIL report number 958Superseded by citeKuncakETAL06DecidingBooleanAlgebraPresburgerArithmetic Reference LARA-REPORT-2004-003 URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0407045 Record created on 2007-08-21, modified on 2017-05-12

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The First-Order Theory of Sets with Cardinality Constraints is Decidable

We have developed a system that accepts a specification of key data structure consistency constraints, then dynamically detects and repairs violations of these constraints. It is possible to write specifications that are not satisfiable or that for other reasons may cause the repair process to not terminate. We present a static specification analysis that determines whether the repair process terminates for a given specification.

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Static specification analysis for termination of specification-based data structure repair

We show that the first-order theory of structural subtyping of non-recursive types is decidable. Let be a language consisting of function symbols (representing type constructors) and C a decidable structure in the relational language L containing a binary relation . C represents primitive types; represents a subtype ordering. We introduce the notion of -term-power of C, which generalizes the structure arising in structural subtyping. The domain of the -term-power of C is the set of -terms over the set of elements of C. We show that the decidability of the first-order theory of C implies the decidability of the first-order theory of the term-power of C. This result implies the decidability of the first-order theory of structural subtyping of non-recursive types. Our decision procedure is based on quantifier elimination and makes use of quantifier elimination for term algebras and Feferman-Vaught construction for products of decidable structures. We also explore connections between the theory of structural subtyping of recursive types and monadic second-order theory of tree-like structures. In particular, we give an embedding of the monadic second-order theory of infinite binary tree into the first-order theory of structural subtyping of recursive types.

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Martin Rinard

Papers

Specification based detection and repair of errors in data structures

On the Boolean Algebra of Shape Analysis Constraints

The First-Order Theory of Sets with Cardinality Constraints is Decidable

Static specification analysis for termination of specification-based data structure repair

On the Theory of Structural Subtyping