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2012S-274b-ProjectIdeas

Some possible project ideas and associated papers. You do not need to choose something on this list; it is just a list of possibilities to get you started. You may structure your project exploration around a general problem type, algorithm, or data set, but should explore around your problem, testing thoroughly or comparing to alternatives.

You should turn in a write-up (< 10 pages) describing your project and its outcomes, similar to a research-level publication (journal or CS conference). This is due by 5pm Tuesday 6/12, to EEE.

Gaussian and Gaussian-like models:

• Covariance selection in Gaussian models (learning sparse inverse covariance structures)
  • L1-regression for variable selection, http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aos/1152540754
  • Graphical Lasso, http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~tibs/ftp/graph.pdf
• Gaussian copula models (Gaussian covariance with non-Gaussian marginal distributions)
  • http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/papers/volume10/liu09a/liu09a.pdf, http://www.stat.washington.edu/research/reports/2009/tr555.pdf
• Stable distribution models
  • http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.5325

Discrete models:

• CDF models (model a cumulative distribution rather than a PDF)
  • http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/papers/volume12/huang11a/huang11a.pdf
• Conditional random fields
  • Intro, http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.4088
• Structured prediction / Max-margin networks
• Deep belief networks
  • http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/csc2515/deeprefs.html
• Contrastive divergence

Learning structure

• Structural EM
  • http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~nir/Abstracts/Fr2.html
• Thin junction trees (structure learning with bounded tree-width)
  • http://books.nips.cc/papers/files/nips14/AA50.pdf, http://books.nips.cc/papers/files/nips20/NIPS2007_1021.pdf
• Independence testing based structure estimation
  • http://www.jair.org/media/2773/live-2773-4523-jair.pdf

Latent variable models

• Spectral methods
  • http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.0683, http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.1283

More ideas from other schools:

• http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~guestrin/Class/10708/projects.html
• http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~taskar/courses/cis620-sp09/spring07_projects.html