Inverse Ising inference from high-temperature re-weighting of observations

Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) is the bread and butter of system inference for stochastic systems. In some generality, MLE will converge to the correct model in the infinite data limit. In the context of physical approaches to system inference, such as Boltzmann machines, MLE requires the arduous computation of partition functions summing over all configurations, both observed and unobserved. We present here a conceptually and computationally transparent data-driven approach to system inference that is based on the simple question: How should the Boltzmann weights of observed configurations be modified to make the probability distribution of observed configurations close to a flat distribution? This algorithm gives accurate inference by using only observed configurations for systems with a large number of degrees of freedom where other approaches are intractable.

Minimal Perceptrons for Memorizing Complex Patterns

Feedforward neural networks have been investigated to understand learning and memory, as well as applied to numerous practical problems in pattern classification. It is a rule of thumb that more complex tasks require larger networks. However, the design of optimal network architectures for specific tasks is still an unsolved fundamental problem. In this study, we consider three-layered neural networks for memorizing binary patterns. We developed a new complexity measure of binary patterns, and estimated the minimal network size for memorizing them as a function of their complexity. We formulated the minimal network size for regular, random, and complex patterns. In particular, the minimal size for complex patterns, which are neither ordered nor disordered, was predicted by measuring their Hamming distances from known ordered patterns. Our predictions agreed with simulations based on the back-propagation algorithm.