Myanmar RTD

The Myanmar Roundtable Discussion was hosted by the Tun Foundation Bank at The Chatrium Hotel in Yangon on 2 April 2010.

The discussants were U Thein Oo, president of Myanmar Computer Federation, Dr Myo Thant Tyn, president of Myanmar NGO Network, and U Tin Nyo, director general of Basic Education.

Comments from Discussants

The time has come for ASEAN to enhance the use of ICT and for a standardized ICT system to be introduced among ASEAN member countries. Steps should be taken to ensure the readiness of member countries to fulfil the necessary infrastructure requirements that would enable them to use ICT effectively. There was emphasis placed on the use of ICT to promote education by aiding teaching and learning.

Open Forum

Attention should be placed on the use of ICT as a tool to improve the ASEAN process and supplement the conventional modes of operation within ASEAN, such as face-to-face meetings, when possible. It was pointed out that ASEAN has not taken advantage of existing ICT tools, especially now when the cost of applications is not a major concern since these have become less expensive.

Government leaders in Myanmar should be urged to recognize the importance of ICT in fostering regional community building. This would lead to reconsidering the manner by which ICT is used at both state and grass roots levels. It was stressed that the government should learn that ICT diffusion results in democratization as it promotes free flow of information and is becoming increasingly important and powerful in sending messages to large numbers of people. However, participants did not see human capacity development as a problem since ICT has become relevant and, therefore, familiar among ASEAN youth.

Participants

1. Dr U Myint

2. U Aye Lwin

3. Daw Moe Marlar

4. U Than Lwin

5. U Paw Lwin Sein

6. U Tun Ohn

7. U Ohn Kyaw

8. Daw Sein Nwe Aye

9. U Thein Oo

10. U Tin Win Aung[…]

Introduction

Machine learning refers to the design of computer algorithms for gaining new knowledge, improving existing knowledge, and making predictions or decisions based on empirical data. Applications of machine learning include speech recognition [164, 275], image recognition [60, 110], medical diagnosis [309], language understanding [50], biological sequence analysis [85], and many other fields. The most important requirement for an algorithm in machine learning is its ability to make accurate predictions or correct decisions when presented with instances or data not seen before.

Classification of data is a common task in machine learning. It consists of finding a function z = G(y) that assigns to each data sample y its class label z. If the range of the function is discrete, it is called a classifier, otherwise it is called a regression function. For each class label z, we can define the acceptance region Az such that y ∈ Az if and only if z = G(y). An error occurs if the classifier assigns a wrong class to y. The probability of classification error

is called the generalization error in machine learning, where Z denotes the actual class to which the observation variable Y belongs. The classifier that minimizes the generalization error is called the Bayes classifier and the minimized ε(G) is called the Bayes error. In practical applications, we generally do not know the probability distribution of (Y, Z).

In this chapter we will study statistical methods to estimate parameters and procedures to test the goodness of fit of a model to the experimental data. We are primarily concerned with computational algorithms for these methods and procedures. The expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm for maximum-likelihood estimation is discussed in detail.

Classical numerical methods for estimation

As we stated earlier, it is often the case that a maximum-likelihood estimate (MLE) cannot be found analytically. Thus, numerical methods for computing the MLE are important. Finding the maximum of a likelihood function is an optimization problem. There are a number of optimization algorithms and software packages. In this and the next sections we will discuss several important methods that are pertinent to maximization of a likelihood function: the method of moments, the minimum χ2method, the minimum Kullback–Leibler divergence method, and the Newton–Raphson algorithm. In Section 19.2 we give a full account of the EM algorithm, because of its rather recent development and its increasing applications in signal processing and other science and engineering fields.

Method of moments

This method is typically used to estimate unknown parameters of a distribution function by equating the sample mean, sample variance, and other higher moments calculated from data to the corresponding moments expressed in the parameters of interest.

Introduction

Although it is convenient for conceptual and theoretical purposes to think of signals as general functions of time, in practice they are usually acquired, processed, stored and transmitted as discrete and finite time samples. We need to study this sampling process carefully to determine to what extent a sampling or discretization allows us to reconstruct the original information in the signal. Furthermore, real signals such as speech or images are not arbitrary functions. Depending on the type of signal, they have special structure. No one would confuse the output of a random number generator with human speech. It is also important to understand the extent to which we can compress the basic information in the signal to minimize storage space and maximize transmission time.

Shannon sampling is one approach to these issues. In that approach we model real signals as functions f(t) in L2(ℝ) that are bandlimited. Thus if the frequency support of f(ω) is contained in the interval [-Ω, Ω] and we sample the signal at discrete time intervals with equal spacing less than 1/2πΩ, i.e., faster than the Nyquist rate, we can reconstruct the original signal exactly from the discrete samples. This method will work provided hardware exists to sample the signal at the required rate. Increasingly this is a problem because modern technologies can generate signals of higher bandwidth than existing hardware can sample.

Traditionally, wireless and optical fiber networks have been designed separately from each other. Wireless networks are aimed at meeting specific service requirements while coping with particular transmission impairments and optimizing the utilization of the system resources to ensure cost-effectiveness and satisfaction for the user. In optical networks, on the other hand, research efforts rather focused on cost reduction, simplicity, and future-proofness against legacy and emerging services and applications by means of optical transparency. Wireless and optical access networks can be thought of as complementary. Optical fiber does not go everywhere, but where it does go, it provides a huge amount of available bandwidth. Wireless access networks, on the other hand, potentially go almost everywhere, but provide a highly bandwidth-constrained transmission channel susceptible to a variety of impairments.

Future broadband access networks not only have to provide access to information when we need it, where we need it, and in whatever format we need it, but also, and arguably more importantly, have to bridge the digital divide and offer simplicity and user-friendliness based on open standards in order to stimulate the design of new applications and services. Toward this end, future broadband access networks must leverage on both optical and wireless technologies and converge them seamlessly, giving rise to fiber-wireless (FiWi) access networks (Aissa and Maier [2007]). FiWi access networks are instrumental in strengthening our information society while avoiding its digital divide.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce key structural concepts that are needed for theoretical transform analysis and are part of the common language of modern signal processing and computer vision. One of the great insights of this approach is the recognition that natural abstractions which occur in analysis, algebra and geometry help to unify the study of the principal objects which occur in modern signal processing. Everything in this book takes place in a vector space, a linear space of objects closed under associative, distributive and commutative laws. The vector spaces we study include vectors in Euclidean and complex space and spaces of functions such as polynomials, integrable functions, approximation spaces such as wavelets and images, spaces of bounded linear operators and compression operators (infinite dimensional). We also need geometrical concepts such as distance and shortest (perpendicular) distance, and sparsity. This chapter first introduces important concepts of vector space and subspace which allow for general ideas of linear independence, span and basis to be defined. Span tells us for example, that a linear space may be generated from a smaller collection of its members by linear combinations. Thereafter, we discuss Riemann integrals and introduce the notion of a normed linear space and metric space. Metric spaces are spaces, nonlinear in general, where a notion of distance and hence limit makes sense. Normed spaces are generalizations of “absolute value” spaces.

Fiber-wireless (FiWi) access networks may be viewed as the endgame of broadband access. FiWi access networks aim at leveraging on the respective strengths of emerging next-generation optical fiber and wireless access technologies and smartly merging them into future-proof broadband solutions. Currently, many research efforts in industry, academia, and various standardization bodies focus on the design and development of next-generation broadband access networks, ranging from short-term evolutionary next-generation passive optical networks with coexistence requirements with installed fiber infrastructures, so-called NG-PON1, to mid-term revolutionary disruptive optical access network architectures without any coexistence requirements, also known as NG-PON2, all the way to 4G mobile WiMAX and cellular long term evolution (LTE) radio access networks. To deliver peak data rates of up to 200 Mb/s per user and realize what some people refer to as the vision of complete fixed-mobile convergence (Ali et al. [2010]) it is crucial to replace today's legacy circuit-switched wireline and microwave backhaul technologies with integrated FiWi broadband access networks. To unleash the full potential of FiWi access networks, emerging optical and wireless access network technologies have to be truly integrated at the physical, data link, network, and/or service layers instead of simply mixing and matching them.

In this chapter we will discuss some important inequalities used in probability and statistics and their applications. They include the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality, Jensen's inequality, Markov and Chebyshev inequalities. We then discuss Chernoff's bounds, followed by an introduction to large deviation theory.

Inequalities frequently used in probability theory

Cauchy–Schwarz inequality

The Cauchy–Schwarz inequality is perhaps the most frequently used inequality in many branches of mathematics, including linear algebra, analysis, and probability theory. In engineering applications, a matched filter and correlation receiver are derived from this inequality. Since the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality holds for a general inner product space, we briefly review its properties and in particular the notion of orthogonality. We assume that the reader is familiar with the notion of field and vector space (e.g., see Birkhoff and MacLane [28] and Hoffman and Kunze [153]). Briefly stated, a field is an algebraic structure with notions of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, satisfying certain axioms. The most commonly used fields are the field of real numbers, the field of complex numbers, and the field of rational numbers, but there is also a finite field, known as a Galois field. Any field may be used as the scalars for a vector space.

The estimation of a random variable or process by observing other random variables or processes is an important problem in communications, signal processing and other science and engineering applications. In Chapter 18 we considered a partially observable RVX = (Y, Z), where the unobservable part Z is called a latent variable. In this chapter we study the problem of estimating the unobserved part using samples of the observed part. In Chapter 18 we also considered the problem of estimating RVs, called random parameters using the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) estimation procedure. When the prior distribution of the random parameter is unknown, we normally assume a uniform distribution, and then the MAP estimate reduces to the maximumlikelihood estimate (MLE) (see Section 18.1.2): if the prior density is not uniform, the MLE is not optimal and does not possess the nice properties described in Section 18.1.2. If an estimator θ = T(X) has a Gaussian distribution N(µ, ∑), its log-likelihood function is a quadratic form (t - µ)⊤ ∑-1(t - µ), and the MLE is obtained by minimizing this quadratic form. If the variance matrix is diagonal, the MLE becomes what is called a minimum weighted square error (MWSE) estimate. If all the diagonal terms of ∑ are equal, the MWSE becomes the minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimate. Thus, the MMSE estimator is optimal only under these assumptions cited above.