Tag: work

  • Graph Spectra and Clustering

    I describe how the spectrum of the graph built from a dataset can indicate its clustered-ness.

  • Matching Pearson Correlations

    In this post I switch to matching Pearson correlations, rather than covariances, and then generalize to the scalar product of an arbitrary function of the outputs.

  • A Free Connectivity Non-Solution

    In this post I explore one possible unconstrained connectivity solution that turns out to not work.

  • The Logic of Free Connectivity

    In this post we try to understand the diagonal term and the two rank-1 terms that we find when we fit connectivity without any constraints.

  • Quantization

    In this post we try to understand the diagonal connectivity solutions by quantizing the elements to the three values $[0,1,z]$.

  • Decorrelation through gain control

    Decorrelation is typically thought to require lateral interactions. But how much can we achieve just by gain control?

  • Inference by decorrelation

    We frequently observe decorrelation in projection neuron responses. This has often been linked to either redundancy reduction, or pattern separation. Can we make an explicit link to inference? A simple case to consider is $\ell_2$ regularized MAP inference, where $$ \log p(x|y) = L(x,y) = {1 \over 2\sigma^2} \|y – A x\|_2^2 + {\gamma \over…

  • Changing regularization, II

    Today I went back to trying to understand the solution when using the original regularization. While doing so it occurred to me that if I use a slightly different regularization, I can get a closed-form solution for the feedforward connectivity $Z$, and without most (though not all) of the problems I was having in my…

  • Changing regularization

    This morning it occurred to me that the problems we’re having with our equation \begin{align}S^2 Z^2 S^2 – S C S = \lambda (Z^{-1} – I)\label{main}\tag{1}\end{align} are due to the regularizer we use, $\|Z – I\|_F^2$. This regularizer makes the default behavior of the feedforward connections passing the input directly to the output. But it’s…

  • Wrangling quartics, V

    Yesterday I went to discuss the problem with one of my colleagues. He had the interesting idea of modelling $S$, and especially $S^2$, as low rank, in particular as $S = s_1 e_1 e_1^T$. That is, shifting the focus on $S$ from $Z$. I tried this out today, and although it didn’t quite pan out,…

  • Wrangling quartics, IV

    I’m trying to make some sense of $$ {1 \over \la’} \left(S^2 \wt Z_{UU} S^2 – S \wt C_{VV} S\right) + I = \wt Z_{UU}^{-1}. \label{start}\tag{1}$$ Below I’m going to drop all the tildes and subscripts, for clarity. If we left multiply by $Z$ we get $$ {1 \over \la’} Z(S^2 Z^2 S^2 – S…

  • Wrangling quartics, III

    We are trying to understand the connectivity solutions $Z$ found when minimizing the objective $$ {1 \over 2 n^2 } \|X^T Z^T Z X – C\|_F^2 + {\la \over 2 m^2}\|Z – I\|_F^2.$$ Recap We found in the previous post that solutions satisfy$$ {1 \over \la’} \left(S^2 \wt Z_{UU}^2 S^2 – S \wt C_{VV} S…

  • Wrangling quartics, II

    In the last post on this topic, we saw that when optimizing the objective$$ {1 \over 2 n^2 } \|X^T Z^T Z X – C\|_F^2 + {\la \over 2 m^2}\|Z – I\|_F^2,$$ any solution $Z$ is symmetric and satisfies $${2 \over n^2} \left( XX^T Z^2 XX^T – X C X^T\right) + {\la \over m^2} I…