arXiv Machine Learning

What Cosine Similarity of Label Representations Can and Cannot Tell us

arXiv:2603. 29488v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Cosine similarity is often used to measure the similarity of vector representations of neural network models.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 9

Similarity-Distance-Magnitude Activations

arXiv:2509. 12760v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce the Similarity-Distance-Magnitude (SDM) activation function, a more robust and interpretable formulation of the standard softmax activation function, adding Similarity (i.

By Allen Schmaltz
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 24

Binary Classification from Coupled Pairwise Labels

The paper introduces SD-Pcomp learning, a binary classification framework that jointly utilizes Similarity/Dissimilarity (SD) labels and Pairwise Comparison (Pcomp) labels from instance pairs. It proposes an objective function that can be decomposed into either an SD estimator plus ordering information or a Pcomp estimator plus pair-type information, thereby integrating complementary relational cues. Experiments on eight datasets demonstrate that combining both label types improves classification accuracy and AUC compared to using either alone or a simple convex combination.

By Tomoya Tate, Kosuke Sugiyama, Masato Uchida
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 10

Learning Kernels by Alignment for Multiclass Bayes Classification

The paper introduces a framework that learns the kernel used in kernel methods through alignment, leveraging the Collaborative Learning and Inference (CLaI) approach. It demonstrates that CLaI can be interpreted as a kernel alignment process and that its inference stage is equivalent to kernel Bayes classification with Parzen-window density estimation. By replacing cosine similarity with a learned Mahalanobis distance, the authors extend CLaI to multiclass classification, achieving higher accuracy, faster convergence, and lower calibration error on datasets such as CIFAR-10, PathMNIST, and SleepEDF, while also showing connections to Gaussian processes and competitive calibration in sepsis prediction.

By Hollan Haule, Alfredo Gonzalez-Sulser, Javier Escudero
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 2

Post-hoc Alignment of LLM-judges to Human Judgment Distribution

The paper introduces NAPHA, a lightweight post‑hoc alignment method that improves large language model (LLM) predictions of human judgment distributions (HJD) by matching LLM output distributions to HJD through entropy‑based class assignment and specialized alignment models. Experiments on five datasets show that while LLMs perform near human‑level on hard‑label tasks, they struggle with soft‑label predictions, and NAPHA consistently enhances soft‑label accuracy, especially on high‑entropy instances. The study also demonstrates that better entropy class prediction can further boost NAPHA’s effectiveness.

By Sebastian Steindl, Nikos Voskarides, Alberto Gasparin, Diego Marcheggiani
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 3

Bayes-Optimal BER and AUC: Estimation and Evaluation of Estimators

The paper introduces soft‑label‑based estimators for the Bayes‑optimal balanced error rate (BER) and area under the ROC curve (AUC), extending from a clean setting with known class priors to a realistic scenario with unknown priors and corrupted soft labels. It also adapts the FeeBee evaluation framework to assess these estimators without needing the true optimum, providing practical evaluation scores for any estimator of optimal BER or AUC. Experiments on synthetic and real datasets confirm the effectiveness of both the estimators and the evaluation method.

By Ryota Ushio, Takashi Ishida, Masashi Sugiyama
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 14

A Strong Balanced-Softmax Classifier-Retraining Baseline for Long-Tailed Recognition

arXiv:2607. 09832v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-tailed recognition methods often modify losses, margins, or representations to reduce the dominance of frequent classes.

By Juan Terven, Diana Margarita C\'ordova Esparza, Julio Alejandro Romero Gonzalez, Edgar Arturo Ch\'avez Urbiola, Francisco Javier Willars Rodriguez, Juan Bautista Hurtado Ramos, Alfonso Ramirez Pedraza