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

Data Mining - Concepts and Techniques.

Most statistical and machine-learning algorithms assume that the data is a random sample drawn from a stationary distribution. Unfortunately, most of the large databases available for mining today violate this assumption. They were gathered over months or years, and the underlying processes generating them changed during this time, sometimes radically. Although a number of algorithms have been proposed for learning time-changing concepts, they generally do not scale well to very large databases. In this paper we propose an efficient algorithm for mining decision trees from continuously-changing data streams, based on the ultra-fast VFDT decision tree learner. This algorithm, called CVFDT, stays current while making the most of old data by growing an alternative subtree whenever an old one becomes questionable, and replacing the old with the new when the new becomes more accurate. CVFDT learns a model which is similar in accuracy to the one that would be learned by reapplying VFDT to a moving window of examples every time a new example arrives, but with O(1) complexity per example, as opposed to O(w), where w is the size of the window. Experiments on a set of large time-changing data streams demonstrate the utility of this approach.

/pdf/mining-time-changing-data-streams-a9kghvc13p.pdf

Mining time-changing data streams

https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~davidc/pubs/NDreview2014.pdf

Review: A review of novelty detection

The recent advances in hardware and software have enabled the capture of different measurements of data in a wide range of fields. These measurements are generated continuously and in a very high fluctuating data rates. Examples include sensor networks, web logs, and computer network traffic. The storage, querying and mining of such data sets are highly computationally challenging tasks. Mining data streams is concerned with extracting knowledge structures represented in models and patterns in non stopping streams of information. The research in data stream mining has gained a high attraction due to the importance of its applications and the increasing generation of streaming information. Applications of data stream analysis can vary from critical scientific and astronomical applications to important business and financial ones. Algorithms, systems and frameworks that address streaming challenges have been developed over the past three years. In this review paper, we present the state-of-the-art in this growing vital field.

/pdf/mining-data-streams-a-review-23tqf6d05o.pdf

Mining data streams: a review

A system and method to take data, which is in the form of an n-dimensional array of binary data where the binary data is comprised of bits that are identified by a bit position within the n-dimensional array, and create one file for each bit position of the binary data while maintaining the bit position identification and to store the bit with the corresponding bit position identification from the binary data within the created filed. Once this bit-sequential format of the data is achieved, the formatted data is structured into a tree format that is data-mining-ready. The formatted data is structured by dividing each of the files containing the binary data into quadrants according to the bit position identification and recording the count of 1-bits for each quadrant on a first level. Then, recursively dividing each of the quadrants into further quadrants and recording the count of 1-bits for each quadrant until all quadrants comprise a pure-1 quadrant or a pure-0 quadrant to form a basic tree structure.

System and method for organizing, compressing and structuring data for data mining readiness

Classification of spatial data streams is crucial, since the training dataset changes often. Building a new classifier each time can be very costly with most techniques. In this situation, k-nearest neighbor (KNN) classification is a very good choice, since no residual classifier needs to be built ahead of time. KNN is extremely simple to implement and lends itself to a wide variety of variations. We propose a new method of KNN classification for spatial data using a new, rich, data-mining-ready structure, the Peano-count-tree (P-tree). We merely perform some AND/OR operations on P-trees to find the nearest neighbors of a new sample and assign the class label. We have fast and efficient algorithms for the AND/OR operations, which reduce the classification time significantly. Instead of taking exactly the k nearest neighbors we form a closed-KNN set. Our experimental results show closed-KNN yields higher classification accuracy as well as significantly higher speed.

k-nearest Neighbor Classification on Spatial Data Streams Using P-trees

Comprehensive vertical sample-based KNN/LSVM classification for gene expression analysis

The Structure of Attractors in Dynamical Systems

Many organizations have large quantities of spatial data collected in various application areas, including remote sensing, geographical information systems (GIS), astronomy, computer cartography, environmental assessment and planning, etc. These data collections are growing rapidly and can therefore be considered as spatial data streams. For data stream classification, time is a major issue. However, these spatial data sets are too large to be classified effectively in a reasonable amount of time using existing methods. In this paper, we developed a new method for decision tree classification on spatial data streams using a data structure called Peano Count Tree (P-tree). The Peano Count Tree is a spatial data organization that provides a lossless compressed representation of a spatial data set and facilitates efficient classification and other data mining techniques. Using P-tree structure, fast calculation of measurements, such as information gain, can be achieved. We compare P-tree based decision tree induction classification and a classical decision tree induction method with respect to the speed at which the classifier can be built (and rebuilt when substantial amounts of new data arrive). Experimental results show that the P-tree method is significantly faster than existing classification methods, making it the preferred method for mining on spatial data streams.

William Perrizo

Papers

System and method for organizing, compressing and structuring data for data mining readiness

k-nearest Neighbor Classification on Spatial Data Streams Using P-trees

Comprehensive vertical sample-based KNN/LSVM classification for gene expression analysis

The Structure of Attractors in Dynamical Systems

Decision tree classification of spatial data streams using Peano Count Trees