Unsupervised Learning via Total Correlation Explanation

Learning by children and animals occurs effortlessly and largely without obvious supervision. Successes in automating supervised learning have not translated to the more ambiguous realm of unsupervised learning where goals and labels are not provided. Barlow (1961) suggested that the signal that brains leverage for unsupervised learning is dependence, or redundancy, in the sensory environment. Dependence can be characterized using the information-theoretic multivariate mutual information measure called total correlation. The principle of Total Cor-relation Ex-planation (CorEx) is to learn representations of data that "explain" as much dependence in the data as possible. We review some manifestations of this principle along with successes in unsupervised learning problems across diverse domains including human behavior, biology, and language.Comment: Invited contribution for IJCAI 2017 Early Career Spotlight. 5 pages, 1 figur

Relaxed uncertainty relations and information processing

We consider a range of "theories" that violate the uncertainty relation for anti-commuting observables derived in [JMP, 49, 062105 (2008)]. We first show that Tsirelson's bound for the CHSH inequality can be derived from this uncertainty relation, and that relaxing this relation allows for non-local correlations that are stronger than what can be obtained in quantum mechanics. We continue to construct a hierarchy of related non-signaling theories, and show that on one hand they admit superstrong random access encodings and exponential savings for a particular communication problem, while on the other hand it becomes much harder in these theories to learn a state. We show that the existence of these effects stems from the absence of certain constraints on the expectation values of commuting measurements from our non-signaling theories that are present in quantum theory.Comment: 33 pages, 1 figure. v2: improved notation, to appear in QI

Solution of the Boussinesq equations by means of the finite element method

A finite element method is presented for the computation of flows that are influenced by buoyancy forces. The accuracy of several finite elements is studied by solving the Bénard problem and determining the critical Rayleigh number. It is found that the accuracy is greatly enhanced if the shape functions satisfy a certain requirement that arises from the physical nature of the problem

Professional Development\u27s Complex Ecology: Examining a Whole-School Balanced Literacy Professional Development

This descriptive study reports on the structure and implementation of a school wide professional development model in a southwest public elementary school. The professional development effort was designed to support educators’ understanding and teaching of balanced literacy. The paper reports on the components of this professional development and discusses the strengths of this model in relation to educational research and findings on professional development. We conclude by discussing this model from the perspective of involved administration, facilitators, and teachers, as they consider the process of crossing the borders from professional development into their classrooms. The study is strengthened by teachers’ opinions about the model in their school

Black holes are almost optimal quantum cloners

If black holes were able to clone quantum states, a number of paradoxes in black hole physics would disappear. However, the linearity of quantum mechanics forbids exact cloning of quantum states. Here we show that black holes indeed clone incoming quantum states with a fidelity that depends on the black hole's absorption coefficient, without violating the no-cloning theorem because the clones are only approximate. Perfectly reflecting black holes are optimal universal "quantum cloning machines" and operate on the principle of stimulated emission, exactly as their quantum optical counterparts. In the limit of perfect absorption, the fidelity of clones is equal to what can be obtained via quantum state estimation methods. But for any absorption probability less than one, the cloning fidelity is nearly optimal as long as $\omega/T\geq10$, a common parameter for modest-sized black holes.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. To appear in J. Phys.

Letter From the Editor

It is a pleasure to compose a letter to you at the outset of the 2016-2017 academic year. In composing this, my first letter as Managing Editor of ICCTE-J, I envision each of you sitting in front of a screen, scrolling through the latest journal offerings in search of new information or insight. I wonder what brief words I might offer to encourage you in the face of all we undertake to launch a new academic year and deal profitably with life’s many challenges. And I think it is this: we serve a marvelous and sovereign God who loves each one with abandon. This is what grounds us in the educational work of our hands, and is our sustaining grace despite political tumult, racial tensions, social inequities, and all the needs our students carry into our classrooms