CAREER: A New Neat Framework for Statistical Machine Learning

人工智能（AI）研究的钟摆周期性地在所谓的“简洁”或数学上严格的方法和“邋遢”或更临时的方法之间摇摆。近年来，科学和工程各个领域的真实数据日益复杂，涉及大量变量，导致了更加粗糙的方法的涌现。该提案通过利用机器学习方法两个最流行的子领域（图形模型和高维统计方法）的最新发展，为这种现代环境开发了一个通用的“简洁”框架。这些发展的共同点是，复杂的模型参数被表示为简单组件的叠加，然后用于易于处理的推理和学习。我们的统一框架不仅产生了这些发展的统一图片，而且还提供了处理此类高维数据的更新方法。因此，无论使用统计机器学习方法（例如基因组学、自然语言处理和图像分析等），这项研究都会影响整个科学和工程领域的问题。统计机器学习问题的统一框架的工作与对学生进行我们所谓的“计算”思维培训的推动高度结合。这结合了解决现代统计人工智能应用领域固有的有限计算和有限数据问题所需的计算和统计思维。该提案还为基于组件的课程开发了一个基础设施，其中包含相关组织的讲座模块组件。

The pendulum in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research has periodically swung from so called "neat" or mathematically rigorous approaches, and "scruffy" or more adhoc approaches. In recent years, real-world data across varied fields of science and engineering are increasingly complex, and involve a large number of variables, which has resulted in a surge of scruffier methods. This proposal develops a general "neat" framework for such modern settings by leveraging state of the art developments in two of the most popular subfields of machine learning methods: graphical models and high-dimensional statistical methods. These developments have in common that a complex model parameter is expressed as a superposition of simple components, which is then leveraged for tractable inference and learning.Our unified framework results not only in a unified picture of these developments but also provides newer methods to work with such high-dimensional data. The research thus impacts problems across science and engineering wherever statistical machine learning approaches are being used (such as genomics, natural language processing and image analysis, to name a few). The work on a unified framework for statistical machine learning problems is highly coupled with a push for imparting training to students on what we call "comptastical" thinking. This combines both computational and statistical thinking required for addressing the problems of limited computation and limited data inherent in modern statistical AI application domains. The proposal also develops an infrastructure for component-based courses with relationally organized lecture module components.