hunch_net hunch_net-2012 hunch_net-2012-473 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining

473 hunch net-2012-09-29-Vowpal Wabbit, version 7.0


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Introduction: A new version of VW is out . The primary changes are: Learning Reductions : I’ve wanted to get learning reductions working and we’ve finally done it. Not everything is implemented yet, but VW now supports direct: Multiclass Classification –oaa or –ect . Cost Sensitive Multiclass Classification –csoaa or –wap . Contextual Bandit Classification –cb . Sequential Structured Prediction –searn or –dagger In addition, it is now easy to build your own custom learning reductions for various plausible uses: feature diddling, custom structured prediction problems, or alternate learning reductions. This effort is far from done, but it is now in a generally useful state. Note that all learning reductions inherit the ability to do cluster parallel learning. Library interface : VW now has a basic library interface. The library provides most of the functionality of VW, with the limitation that it is monolithic and nonreentrant. These will be improved over


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1 The primary changes are: Learning Reductions : I’ve wanted to get learning reductions working and we’ve finally done it. [sent-2, score-0.444]

2 Not everything is implemented yet, but VW now supports direct: Multiclass Classification –oaa or –ect . [sent-3, score-0.177]

3 Sequential Structured Prediction –searn or –dagger In addition, it is now easy to build your own custom learning reductions for various plausible uses: feature diddling, custom structured prediction problems, or alternate learning reductions. [sent-6, score-1.233]

4 Note that all learning reductions inherit the ability to do cluster parallel learning. [sent-8, score-0.359]

5 Library interface : VW now has a basic library interface. [sent-9, score-0.368]

6 The library provides most of the functionality of VW, with the limitation that it is monolithic and nonreentrant. [sent-10, score-0.488]

7 Windows port : The priority of a windows port jumped way up once we moved to Microsoft . [sent-12, score-1.001]

8 The only feature which we know doesn’t work at present is automatic backgrounding when in daemon mode. [sent-13, score-0.304]

9 New update rule : Stephane visited us this summer, and we fixed the default online update rule so that it is unit invariant. [sent-14, score-0.894]

10 There are also many other small updates including some contributed utilities that aid the process of applying and using VW. [sent-15, score-0.352]

11 Plans for the near future involve improving the quality of various items above, and of course better documentation: several of the reductions are not yet well documented. [sent-16, score-0.626]


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