On the topic of topic modeling: enhancing machine learning approaches with topic features

Speaker: 
Deanna Needell, UCLA
Event time: 
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 - 2:30pm
Location: 
https://yale.zoom.us/j/2188028533 See map
Event description: 

Abstract:
In this talk we touch on several problems in machine learning that can benefit from the use of topic modeling. We present topic modeling based approaches for online prediction problems, computer vision, text generation, and others. While these problems have classical machine learning approaches that work well, we show that by incorporating contextual information via topic features, we obtain enhanced and more realistic results. These classical methods include non-negative matrix and tensor factorization, generative adversarial networks, and even traditional epidemiological SIR models for prediction. In this talk we provide a brief overview of these problems and show how topic features can be used in these settings. We include supporting theoretical and experimental evidence that showcases the broad use of our approaches.

Event Type: 
Applied Mathematics