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\begin{document}

\begin{center}
{\large  \bf CSNA-2007 Abstracts}
(Ordered alphabetically by first author's name)
\end{center}

The 2007 Meeting of the Classification Society of North America is
Sponsored by National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the UIUC
College of Education, Department of Computer Science, and the Graduate
School of Library and Information Science. Special thanks also to CRC
Press and to Wolfram Research.

\gp

\textbf{How are bullies and victims embedded in the classroom peer
network? : Factors linked to the heterogeneity of their structural
embeddedness}

Hai-Jeong Ahn, Claire Garandeau

University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

\abs
We examined the structural embeddedness of bullies and victims in the
classroom peer network. 3rd and 4th graders (N = 680) completed
within-class peer nominations for bullies, victims, and behavioral
profiles (i.e. aggressive and prosocial behavior). 147 bullies (78
boys) and 150 victims (77 boys) were identified after controlling for
gender and class. Classroom social network structure was determined by
cohesive blocking procedure based on affiliation relationships
(i.e. hang around together). Classroom social network embeddedness
varied across classes. The structural embeddedness of bullies and
victims was heterogeneous. 35\% of bullies and 32\% of victims are
deeply embedded in the classroom social network, but 22\% of bullies
and 30\% of victims are placed outside of the social network. Boy
bullies are more deeply embedded in the peer network than girl
bullies, but no gender differences are found for victims. Black
bullies and victims are more deeply embedded in the classro!  om!
social network structure than non-black bullies and victims. We
analyze classroom racial composition and behavioral profiles of
bullies and victims in order to clarify the heterogeneity of their
structural embeddedness.

\gp \newpage

\textbf{Dimension Reduction Using a Hybrid of PARAMAP and Isomap Procedures}

Ulas Akkucuk, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey

J. Douglas Carroll, Rutgers Business School 

\abs
Dimensionality reduction aims to represent higher dimensional data by
a lower-dimensional structure. A well-known approach by Carroll,
Parametric Mapping (abbreviated PARAMAP) relies on iterative
minimization of a loss function measuring the smoothness or
``continuity'' of the mapping from the lower dimensional representation
to the original data.  This approach was primarily only of theoretical
interest at the time it was developed, since it was computationally
expensive and prone to local optima. The approach was resuscitated
recently with important algorithmic modifications and we will call
this new approach ``PARAMAP-2''. In the earlier PARAMAP approach, when
given data sets that either were ``large'', had added error, irregular
spacing, or all of these features combined, the method tended
essentially always to converge to a clear local optimum, and was
incapable of obtaining the globally optimal solution known to
exist. Using the PARAMAP-2 approach we were able to obtain solutions
we were certain were globally optimal in reasonable computational
time. In this paper we discuss use of a variant of a method called
Isomap to obtain a starting framework, and then adding new points in
batches based on their proximity to landmark points in this initial
framework using the PARAMAP-2 algorithm.  Since Isomap is faster and
less prone to local optimum problems than PARAMAP, and the iterative
process involved in adding new points to the configuration should be
much less time consuming we believe the resulting method should be
much better suited to dealing with large sets of realistically based
data, and more inclined to obtain a satisfactory solution in roughly
order $n^2$  time. One initial test of a version of this new ``PARAMAP-3''
algorithm has been implemented, with very promising results.  In this
paper we will explain the methods of obtaining the framework and the
iterative procedure of mapping in the rest of the points,
demonstrating this methodology on the well-known nonlinear manifolds
such as the sphere and four dimensional torus.

\gp  \newpage

\textbf{On Similarity Indices and Correction for Chance Agreement}

Ahmed N. Albatineh, Nova Southeastern University

Magdalena Niewiadomska-Bugaj, Western Michigan University

Daniel P. Mihalko, Western Michigan University

\abs 
Similarity indices can be used to compare partitions
(clusterings) of a data set.  Many such indices were introduced in the
literature over the years. We are showing that out of 28 indices we
were able to track, there are 22 different ones. Even though their
values differ for the same clusterings compared, after correcting for
agreement attributed to chance only, their values become similar and
some of them even become equivalent. Consequently, the problem of
choice of the index to be used for comparing different clusterings
become less important.

\gp

\textbf{An ordinal impurity function for classification trees when
predicting an ordinal response}

Kellie J. Archer, Department of Biostatistics, Virginia Commonwealth University

\abs
Ensemble methods have been demonstrated to be competitive with other
machine learning approaches for classification and have been described
for nominal, continuous, and survival responses.  However, in a large
number of biomedical applications, the class to be predicted may be
inherently ordinal. Examples of ordinal responses include TNM stage
(I, II, III, IV) and drug toxicity (none, mild, moderate,
severe). While nominal response methods may be applied to ordinal
response data, in so doing some information is lost that may improve
the predictive performance of the classifier. This study examined the
effectiveness of using both an ordinal impurity function for
classification tree growing and bootstrap aggregation. Results using
the ordinal impurity function are compared to those obtained using the
Gini impurity function, Gini impurity with a linear loss, and Gini
impurity with quadratic loss on both simulated and benchmark datasets.

\gp  \newpage

\textbf{Influence analysis in Depth Transvariation based Classification}

Nedret Billor, Asheber Abebe, Asuman Turkmen, and  Sai Nudurapati, 

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Auburn University, AL

\abs
Depth transvariation based classification  is a new
nonparametric classification technique based on classifying a
multivariate data point through maximizing the estimated
transvariation probability of statistical depths.

In this paper we will study the influence of observations
on the misclassification error rate in depth transvariation based
discriminant analysis. We assess the partial influence of the error
rate , which allows us to quantify the effect of observations in the
training sample, based on the performance of the depth
transvariation based classification rule.

We use some simulated data sets as well as some real
examples to evaluate the robustness of error rate based on the depth
transvariation classification rule.

\gp


\textbf{Challenges in the classification of spatial data}

Alexander Brenning, Department of Geography, University of Waterloo,
Ontario, Canada

\abs
While the amount of spatial data available within Geographical Information
Systems is exploding, research on the construction and assessment of
classification techniques for spatial data is still very limited. In the
case of gridded spatial data such as remote-sensing data or landslide
inventories, one common characteristic that neighboring raster cells have
to be considered pseudo-replications representing virtually identical
observations. This phenomenon, and more generally the presence of spatial
autocorrelation, has important implications: (1) Successful classifiers
must avoid over-fitting in the presence of spatial autocorrelation, and
(2) appropriate techniques for the estimation of misclassification error
rates, such as spatial cross-validation or a spatial bootstrap, are needed
for error assessment. Results of classification and estimation techniques
in two different applications are presented: The two-class problem of
landslide susceptibility mapping, and the multi-class problem of crop
identification from multi-temporal remote-sensing data.

\gp  \newpage

\textbf{Title: Classification of Massive, Structured Data: Research
Progress @ Data Mining Group.CS.UIUC}

Deng Cai, University of Illinois

\abs
During the past decades, numerous classification algorithms have been
proposed. Many of them take the numerical feature vectors as input and
predict the label of a sample. However, much real-world data is not
represented as numerical vectors, but as more complicated structures,
such as sequences, trees, or graphs. To solve these real-world
problems, we need to develop more flexible classification based
approaches. Our group aims at developing algorithms that can well
handle the real-world problems. Specifically, we are interested in and
developing algorithms for the following problems:

\begin{description}
\item[Frequent pattern based classification] The frequent pattern
(sub-structure) in complicated structured data can naturally be used
as features. How to efficiently mining these sub-structures?  How to
select the most powerful substructures with respective classification
performance? We conducted a systematic exploration of frequent
pattern-based classification, and provide solid reasons supporting
this methodology.

\item[Name entity distinction] Different people or objects may share identical names in the real world, which
causes confusion in many applications. It is a nontrivial task to distinguish
those objects, especially when there is only very limited information
associated with each of them. Although linkages among objects provide useful
information, such information is often intertwined and inconsistent with the
identities of objects. Moreover, different types of linkages carry different
semantic meanings and have different levels of pertinence. We developed a
general object distinction methodology called DISTINCT for analysis based on
supervised composition of heterogeneous links.

\item[Classification on Stream]In recent years, there have been some interesting studies on predictive
modeling in data streams. However, most such studies assume relatively
balanced and stable data streams but cannot handle well rather skewed (e.g.,
few positives but lots of negatives) and stochastic distributions, which are
typical in many data stream applications. We proposed a new approach to mine
data streams by estimating reliable posterior probabilities using an ensemble
of models to match the distribution over under-samples of negatives and
repeated samples of positives.

\item[Trajectory classification]With the emerging GPS and RFID technologies, modeling trajectories on road
networks becomes more and more important for transportation and traffic
planning. We studied methods for classifying trajectories on road networks. By
analyzing the behavior of trajectories on road networks, we observe that, in
addition to the locations where vehicles have visited, the order of these
visited locations is crucial for improving classification accuracy. Based on
our analysis, we contend that frequent sequential patterns are the best
feature candidates since they preserve this order information. Furthermore,
when mining sequential patterns, we propose to confine the length of
sequential patterns to ensure high efficiency. Our comparative study over a
broad range of classification approaches demonstrates that our frequent
pattern-based classification method significantly improves accuracy over a
na\"{\i}ve method in some synthetic trajectory data.

\item[Automatic Software Debug] Automated localization of software
bugs is one of the essential issues in debugging aids. What can be the
effective features for automatic software debugging? What statistical
model is suitable for this problem? We have proposed a new statistical
model-based approach, called SOBER, which localizes software bugs
without any prior knowledge of program semantics.

\item[Discriminant Analysis for Large Scale High Dimensional Data]
Many real-world data are with high dimensionality, so as the generated
features (frequent patterns) of structured data. When one performs
discriminant analysis on such data set, the computational cost is
always a bottleneck. Specifically, the most well applied algorithm,
Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), has cubic-time complexity with
respect to min(m,n), where m is the number of samples and n is the
number of features. When both m and n are large, it is infeasible to
apply LDA. We developed a novel algorithm for discriminant analysis,
called Spectral Regression Discriminant Analysis (SRDA). SRDA has
linear-time complexity with respect to both m and n.

\end{description}

\gp  \newpage


\textbf{Modularity Clustering for Thematic Document Clustering}

Brant Chee and Bruce Schatz

University Of Illinois, Institute for Genomic Biology

\abs
We present a modified physics algorithm that is single link in nature
that takes advantage of the inherent scale free and small world
characteristics of word graphs in order to create semantic concept
clusters of words.  The word clusters are then used to segment large
number of documents into overlapping thematic document clusters.  Our
method differs from existing methods such as Carrot 2 or latent
semantic indexing in that the running time is roughly linear (O(n log2
n) in the number of terms).  We have demonstrated results on large
numbers of documents (>100K) and faster running time than complete
link algorithms while the clusters are more coherent and have higher
utility than faster methods such as K-means.

Our algorithm takes advantage of the inherent clustering that exists
in a small world graph whereas, the original physics algorithm makes
assumptions about a log distribution in the number of elements in the
in a cluster.  We make no such assumptions and explicitly remove
restrictions so that the number of elements in a cluster follows a
more normal distribution providing better thematic document mappings.

\gp % % \newpage

\textbf{Connections between K-Means Cluster Analysis and Restricted
Latent Class Models}

Chia-Yi Chiu, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois

Jeff Douglas, Department of Statistics, University of Illinois

\abs
Restricted latent class models have seen many applications in
psychometrics in recent years. One application has been in multiple
classification latent class models where presence or absence of each
of several latent attributes is under diagnosis. Maximum likelihood
estimation or Bayesian computation, such as Markov chain Monte
Carlo, are usually used to estimate parameters of these latent class
models. K-means cluster analysis, when informed by the assumed
structure of the latent class model, can be used as an alternative.
By selecting an appropriate multidimensional statistic as an input
of K-means,  K-means results in almost identical
classification as the conventional estimation methods can do, but
does not need to access the complex models. This study will
demonstrate how to select a statistic for K-means with latent class
models and compares the results of the K-means clustering method
with the conventional estimation method. An application
to skills diagnosis with education testing data is presented.

\gp  \newpage

\textbf{Evaluation of Hierarchies based on the Longest Common Prefix, or
Baire, Metric}

Pedro Contreras and Fionn Murtagh
Department of Computer Science

Royal Hollow, University of London

\abs 
The Baire space has a metric that can be defined from the
longest common prefix of two strings.  Consider two floating point
numbers with the first $p$ digits identical.  Then what we call
their Baire distance is $2^{-p}$.  This distance is an ultrametric.
It follows that a hierarchy can be used to represent the relationships
associated with this distance.  We address the issue of whether such a
hierarchy (let us call it a Baire hierarchy, because it is
clearly a different hierarchy compared to one resulting from any
of the commonly used agglomerative hierarchical clustering
algorithms) is advantageous, computationally, for clustering
large, high dimensional data sets; and also how useful it is,
in particular compared to k-means.


\gp % % \newpage


\textbf{Putting Some 'WoW' into Modeling Longitudinal Networks}

Bethany Dohleman, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign

Harold D. Green Jr., Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC),
National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Dmitri Williams, Department of Speech Communication, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Noshir Contractor, Department of Speech Communication \& Science of
Networks in Communities (SONIC), National Center for Supercomputing
Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

\abs 
This study concerns co-evolution of communication networks and
perceived expertise among members of a Massively Multiplayer Online
Role-Playing Game called World of Warcraft (WoW). We explored
multi-theoretical multilevel hypotheses about what motivates an
individual to create expertise-seeking advice ties from other players
within their virtual communities, called guilds.

We used SIENA to test how co-evolutionary dynamics vary for guilds
that have audio and text communication versus only text communication.
Nine guilds received a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) headset,
allowing them to communicate with each other using audio and text
means.  Changes in network structure and member attributes in these
treatment guilds are compared with changes in seven guilds that relied
only on text means.

Results reveal that mechanisms associated with the co-evolution of
network structure and perceived expertise levels varied between
treatment and control guilds.  For example, experts in VoIP guilds are
more likely to identify and approach other experts for advice. Other
results reveal that for VoIP guilds, rates of communication are larger
in the initial time interval than in other time intervals, a pattern
not found in control guilds.  Comparing patterns of co-evolution for
control and treatment guilds demonstrates the application of new
statistical tools for comparing parameters.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{One-sided Elasticities and Technical Efficiency in
Multi-output Production: A Theoretical Framework}

Petros Hadjicostas, Department of Mathematics and Statistics,
Texas Tech University
(Joint work with Andreas C. Soteriou)

\abs
One of the concepts that have sparked considerable interest in the
theory of production and efficiency is that of returns to scale
(RTS). Economics researchers typically define RTS using the notion of
elasticity. Considerable research activity on RTS has also been
observed by management science researchers, who utilize the
methodology of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to gain insights on
RTS. In this talk, we present a theoretical framework (developed
jointly with Andreas Soteriou) that integrates existing economics and
management science literature on RTS, and provides a foundation for
research work in this area. Our framework defines, discusses, and
proposes an approach to measure input- and output-oriented
elasticities, and one-sided RTS.  We demonstrate how the work done in
DEA is a special case of our framework, and discuss the conditions
under which the resulting two left-hand, and the two right-hand
elasticities can be equal. The results of this work have been
published in 2006 in the European Journal of Operational Society.

Current and future research directions are also discussed. For
example, in a recent working paper, Hadjicostas and Soteriou explore
properties of different orders of one-sided elasticities in
multi-input multi-output production using the aforementioned
theoretical framework. A special case of the theory in the paper is
the Banker-Morey (1986) DEA model for data that include both
discretionary and non-discretionary inputs and outputs.

\gp  \newpage

\textbf{A Useful Combinatorial Lemma and Some Applications}

Bernard Harris

\abs 
About 50 years ago, Leo Katz introduced a formula that he used to
determine the probability that a random mapping is connected. This
formula is revisited and generalized. Several applications of the
original result and the generalization are discussed.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Identification of Multiple Functional Peaks resulting from a
Common Peak Shape Function}

Matt Hersh, Kert Viele, and Robin Cooper

Departments of Statistics and Biology, University of Kentucky

\abs
In synaptic transmission data, we observe electrical currents across
time. These electrical current traces have peaks resulting from the
release of transmitter from a vesicle across the synaptic cleft. If
multiple vesicles release transmitter, one may observe multiple peaks
within the electrical current trace. Previous work indicates that the
electrical current from a single vesicle release, while varying in
peak intensity and width of the synaptic potential, follow a similar
shape. Thus, we analyse our electrical currents under the assumption
that each function is the sum of equally shaped (though differingly
scaled) peak functions. This has similarities to a mixture model,
although instead of classifying individual observations into groups we
only have the functional data. Our goals are to simultaneously
estimate the underlying shape function and to classify each trace as
to the number of peaks it contains. We use a mixture of functions to
accomplish this task.

\gp % \newpage


\textbf{Intrusion Detection and Response using Effective Data Mining
    Techniques: Classification, Clustering and Data Analysis in
    Intrusion Information Retrieval}

Dr. Emmanuel Hooper, Information Security Group, University of London

\abs
There are major challenges in intrusion detection and data mining,
specifically, classification, clustering and data analysis of
intrusion and alert datasets. Information retrieval in Intrusion
datasets presents the problems of relevant feature attributes for
effective detection and response to intrusions/attacks and
alerts. Furthermore, the problem of false positives and detection
capability of intrusion detection systems (IDSs) are major
issues. This paper examines classification and clustering techniques
for effective detection and response strategies to network
infrastructure attacks. The approaches are two-fold: first,
Classification of known attacks and alerts, and secondly, clustering
of unknown attacks and alerts. The classification approach involves a
hybrid of Bayesian Classification and Discriminant Analysis for known
attacks and alerts. The clustering approach involves a hybrid of
Ward's agglomerative algorithm and Pearson's Association Correlation
along with Chi-square Analysis for unknown alerts and
attacks. Abstract subcategories of the feature attributes are used to
identify unknown attacks or benign alerts. Then appropriate responses
are sent to mitigate the impact of the attacks and filter benign
alerts from the IDS monitor. These strategies improve the performance
of the IDS and enhance responses to various subcategories of false
positives and complex attacks.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Text Classification with Customized Word Lists: Delta-Lz and Delta-Oz}

David L. Hoover, New York University

\abs
J. F. Burrows recently introduced Delta, a new measure of textual
difference for authorship attribution, and I have introduced five
variants that improve upon Delta's already impressive results. Further
testing confirms that two of the variants, Delta-Lz and Delta-Oz, are
especially effective. My presentation reports the results of further
inter-authorial and intra-authorial tests and investigates their
implications. Both measures compare test and authorial text samples
using individually determined and unique subsets of the word-frequency
list for all test and authorial samples combined. Delta-Lz focuses
only on words with test-sample frequencies quite different from the
mean for the authorial samples: each test sample determines its own
word-list. Delta-Oz compares each word's frequency in each test and
authorial sample to its mean frequency in all the authorial
samples. It compares only the frequencies of words with test-sample
and authorial-sample frequencies that differ in opposite directions
from the mean: each comparison between a test sample and an authorial
sample determines its own word-list. Closely examining the words
selected by Delta-Lz and Delta-Oz allows for a more accurate and
informative characterization of the texts, and comparing the various
lists should reveal why and how these methods are so effective.

\gp  \newpage

\textbf{Constructing A Music Mood Taxonomy By Clustering}

Xiao Hu and J. Stephen Downie

GSLIS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

\abs
Classifying music pieces by the moods they express has attracted
researchers' interests and efforts, but a standardized mood taxonomy
is still in need for cross algorithm comparison and evaluation. This
research strives to construct a reasonable music mood taxonomy for a
common testbed of music mood classification in this year's Music
Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX). We clustered the
40 most popular mood labels on a leading music website, AllMusicGuild
(AMG) where each mood label is associated with a list of
representative ``Top Albums'' and a list of ``Top Songs''. As these top
albums and songs are often shared by different mood labels, they can
be exploited to group the mood labels into several super-classes,
which then would be a good candidate for a standardized mood taxonomy.

A co-occurrence matrix was formed for shared albums and shared songs
respectively. Pearson's correlation was calculated for each pair of
rows (or columns) as similarity measures between any two mood
labels. Then a hierarchical clustering procedure using Ward's link was
applied to such similarity measures. Comparing the clusters resulted
from mood-album co-occurrences and mood-song co-occurrences, we found
29 mood labels were consistently grouped into 5 different clusters at
about 1.5 distance level.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Avoiding Degeneracy in Multidimensional Unfolding by Combinatorial
Optimization}

Hans-Friedrich K\"{o}hn,
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

\abs The recently introduced PREFSCAL algorithm (implemented in SPSS
Categories) for fitting distance-based nonmetric unfolding models
avoids degenerate solutions through augmenting the loss function by a
penalty term to maintain a sufficient level of variability among the
transformed proximities or pseudo-distances that prevents the distance
estimates and associated object coordinates from collapsing into a
single or a small number of locations.

We demonstrate that the same result can be obtained through a discrete
(combinatorial) optimization strategy that does not involve any
penalty functions for minimizing the loss function. In fact, PREFSCAL
and combinatorial unfolding yield almost indistinguishable solutions
for the test data sets employed.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{The Astronomical Information Network}

Michael J. Kurtz

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

\abs
Astronomical Objects (stars, galaxies, ...) are bound together by a
complex and often surprising assortment of shared ond/or similar
interactions and histories.  As a purely observational science it is
the task of astronomy to disentangle the vast network of objects with
shared or similar properties and discover the underlying causal
relationships which govern our universe.

As an example some galaxies are blue, and exibit spectral features
typical of a hot, ionized gas; other galaxies are red, and show none
of these gaseous features. These red galaxies tend, very strongly, to
cluster together in space, while the blue galaxies do not.  Edwin
Hubble first noticed this 75 years ago.  What causes this effect, were
the galaxies formed this way, or did they become this way over the
history of the universe?

Astronomy research exists now within a large and growing man-made
network of tightly interconnected data sources and services.  Based on
a culture of freely shared information and shared goals astronomers
are building a Virtual Observatory, using the internet to bring the
totality of astronomical information to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Astronomy research also exists within more abstract networks of
thought and behavior.  The structure of astronomy research can be seen
in the co-citation network of astronomy research articles, but it can
also be seen in the co-reader network of those articles, and the
co-keyword network of those same articles again.  Are these structures
the same?

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Logistic Regression using Fractional Imputation for Missing Data}

Michael D. Larsen,
Department of Statistics and Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology,
Iowa State University

\abs
Imputation is used to fill in missing values so that analyses based on
complete data methods can be completed.  Random imputation methods can
add imputation variance to the results.  Not accounting for the fact
that some records are imputed can lead to understatement of
uncertainty in conclusions.  A fractional imputation method for a
missing outcome variable in logistic regression are proposed and
implemented.  The purpose of the methods is to reduce imputation
variance while allowing accurate estimation of uncertainty.  The
method is applied to data from a longitudinal study of families in
Iowa.  

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Non-Parametric Modeling of Partially Ranked Data}

Guy Lebanon, Purdue University

\abs Statistical models on full and partial ranking of n items are
often of limited practical use for large n due to computational
consideration. We explore the use of non-parametric models for
partially ranked data and derive efficient procedures for their use
for large n. The derivations are largely possible through
combinatorial and algebraic manipulations based on the lattice of
partial rankings. In particular, we demonstrate for the first time a
non-parametric coherent and consistent model capable of efficiently
aggregating partially ranked data of different types.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Analysis of Information Features in Natural Language Queries
Seeking Music}

Jin Ha Lee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

\abs The deficiency of a formal taxonomy for representing
real-life queries is a major barrier in appropriate design and
evaluation of Music Information Retrieval (MIR)/Music Digital
Libraries (MDL) systems. To address this issue, prior studies have
analyzed real-life examples of natural language queries describing
users' sought music and identified the general types of information
features provided by users in their queries. However, the information
regarding the empirical association among query features that would
allow us to establish a meaningful classification scheme for these
features is still lacking. This study aims to discover associative
patterns in the kinds of information features provided in music
queries by an empirical investigation.  Real-life queries were
collected from an online reference website and the categories of
different information features were established by an iterative coding
process. Different clustering approaches will be explored to infer
associations from patterns of co-occurrences among these features and
establish a classification scheme.

\gp %  \newpage


\textbf{Large Scale Functional Data Clustering}

Ping Ma, Department of Statistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

\abs 
Large scale functional data rise from many scientific
investigations. Identifying cluster information is a crucial first
step to navigate further scientific investigation.

Motivated by analyzing temporal gene expression data, we propose a
novel functional data clustering method based on a mixture
smoothing-spline model. For each cluster, we model its mean profile
using a smoothing spline and describe its individual gene's variation
by a parametric random effect. We present an EM algorithm to find the
maximum a posteriori. Our method automatically takes care of the
missing data and infers the number of clusters in the data. Emprical
studies suggest that the proposed method outperforms the existing
methods.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{How Many Clusters?}

Peter McCullagh, University of Chicago

Jie Yang, University of Illinois at Chicago

\abs The title poses a deceptively simple question that must be
addressed by any statistical model or computational algorithm for the
clustering of points.  Two distinct interpretations are possible, one
connected with the number of clusters in the sample and one with the
number in the population.  Under suitable conditions, these questions
may have essentially the same answer, but it is logically possible for
one answer to be finite and the other infinite.  This paper
reformulates the standard Dirichlet allocation model as a cluster
process in such a way that these and related questions can be
addressed directly.  Our conclusion is that the data are sometimes
informative for clustering points in the sample, but they seldom
contain much information about parameters such as the number of
clusters in the population.

\gp % \newpage


\textbf{Visualizing Clusters With a Density-Based Similarity Measure}

Rebecca Nugent, Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University

Werner Stuetzle, Department of Statistics, University of Washington

Xiaoyi Fei, Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University


\abs
The goal of clustering is to identify distinct groups in a dataset and
assign a group label to each observation. To cast clustering as a
statistical problem, we regard the data as a sample from an unknown density
p(x). To generate clusters, we estimate the properties of p(x) either with
parametric (model-based) or nonparametric methods.  In contrast, the
algorithmic approach to clustering (linkage methods, spectral clustering)
applies an algorithm, often based on a distance measure, to data in m-
dimensional space.

Many commonly used clustering methods employ functions of Euclidean
distance between observations to determine groupings.  Spherical groups are
easily identified, curvilinear groups less so.  We first motivate the use
of a density-based similarity measure and briefly introduce generalized
single linkage, a graph-based clustering approach.  We describe a
refinement algorithm used to bound the measure and then explore the
performance of this measure in clustering and visualization methods.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Discrimination and Classification of Non-Stationary 
Brain Signals Using Higher Order Spectral Analysis}

Hernando Ombao, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ringo Ho, Nanyang Technical University

\abs
We consider a data set that consists of MEG (magnetoencephalogram)
signals recorded from healthy controls and schizophrenic patients. Our
neuroscience collaborators are interested in identifying features that
can separate the two groups with the hope that these physiological
measures may be used in conjunction with behavioral measures for
patient diagnosis. In this talk, we will develop an automatic
procedure for time-frequency spectral feature selection via localized
transforms. Moreover, given the high degree of complexity of brain
signals, we will consider the time- evolutionary spectrum of
non-linear transforms as potential features for classification and
discrimination.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{An evaluation of social cognitive mapping procedures for
identifying middle childhood social networks}

Philip C. Rodkin and  Hai-Jeong Ahn

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

\abs This study compares middle childhood social networks
     constructed from children's reports of: (a) their own
     affiliations and the affiliations of their peers (multi-informant
     affiliations); (b) their own affiliations (self-reported
     affiliations), and; (c) their own friendships. The sample
     consisted of 390 fourth and fifth graders surveyed in fall and
     spring. Multi-informant affiliation networks yielded larger peer
     groups and fewer isolates than networks constructed from
     friendship self-reports. Multi-informant affiliation networks
     were more stable from fall to spring and more robust to
     variations in statistical algorithms than friendship networks.
     Multi-informant affiliation and friendship networks had poor
     agreement with one another, particularly in their placement of
     unpopular children. Multi-informant affiliation groups had
     greater homophily on aggression than friendship groups and
     accorded higher social centrality to aggressive
     behavior. Self-reported affiliation networks were intermediate
     between multi-informant affiliations and self-reported
     friendships. Discussion focuses on incorporating multi-informancy
     into emerging sociometric technologies.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Racially integrated social networks among African- and
     European-American elementary children across differing classroom
     contexts}

Philip C. Rodkin and Travis Wilson

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

\abs
The racial composition of school classrooms, and the possible benefits
of diverse classrooms, receives much attention in debates about school
choice. We examine social integration between African- and
European-American children across three elementary classroom contexts:
11 classrooms that are majority White (65\% W, 35\% B), 11 that are
majority Black (65\% B, 35\% W), and 11 that are multicultural, with
equal proportions of Whites and Blacks and 30\% Hispanics and
Asians. Participants were 680 3rd and 4th graders.  Social integration
was assessed by using a compositionally invariant ratio of same-race
to cross-race nominations of who children: (a) affiliated with, (b)
were friends with, (c) liked most, and (d) liked least. We expected
interactions where the salience of classroom context to social
integration would vary for European- and African-American
children. Using multilevel modeling, we consistently found
interactions between individual race and classroom racial majority. In
majority white classrooms, African-American children had more
segregated social relations and European- and African-American
children mutually nominated one another as disliked. Along with
substantive implications, discussion will focus on analytic concerns
of how to classify children into groups, and how integrate metrics
from research in child psychology and network science.


\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Objective Measurement of Fatigue in HIV/AIDS Using Actigraphy and
Functional Data Analysis}

William Shannon

Washington University School of Medicine

\abs
Behavioral changes associated with chronic HIV infection include
lethargy or fatigue defined as the inability to continue functioning
at a prescribed work rate in the presence of an increased perception
of effort.  While the mechanism of this fatigue is uncertain, it may
relate to the intrinsic brain infection by HIV that also is the cause
of AIDS dementia complex.  Fatigue is described by HIV patients as
``painful'' and is one of the most debilitating symptoms that limit
their quality of life.  In addition to fatigue, sleep disturbances
also affect patients with HIV/AIDS, and likely contribute to the
severity of their daytime fatigue.  Sleep dysfunction, and in
particular insomnia, are associated with CNS infection by HIV many
years before the onset of AIDS.

The diagnosis of ADC is based on neurological history, testing, and
examination and is only diagnosed when the patient's day-to-day
activities have already become severely degraded.  The need for an
objective and early method for detecting neurologic impairment due to
HIV is vital for the proper treatment and management of HIV/AIDS.  We
propose the use of actigraphy analyzed by functional data analysis
methods as an objective and early method for detecting neurologic
impairment due to HIV


\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Order-Constrained Solutions in $K$-Means Clustering: Even
Better Than Being Globally Optimal}
 
Douglas Steinley, University of Missouri

Lawrence Hubert, University of Illinois
 
\abs
An order-constrained K-means cluster analysis strategy
is proposed and implemented through an auxiliary quadratic
assignment optimization heuristic that identifies an initial
object order. A subsequent dynamic programming recursion is
applied to optimally subdivide the object set subject to the order
constraint. It is shown that although the usual K-means
sum-of-squared-error criterion is not guaranteed to be minimal, a
true underlying cluster structure may be more accurately
recovered.  Also, substantive interpretability seems generally
improved when constrained solutions are considered.  We illustrate
the procedure with several data sets from the literature.
 
\gp % \newpage

\textbf{A Scalable Approach to Clustering Massive Audio Catalogs}

David K. Tcheng, NCSA/ALG,  One Llama Media Inc.

\abs
Our goal is to create a general purpose audio clustering algorithm that scales
well to the largest of audio data sets.  Currently we are processing a 600
hour audio catalog of continuous (24/7) recordings from wireless microphones
mounted on birds (territorial cardinals).  In addition audio recordings, we
have corresponding recordings of the birds X/Y position over time as estimated
by radio location.  Our first task is to discover the syllables and grammar
that fully describe the cardinal utterances.  Next we seek to understand bird
behavior -- how the utterances of a specific bird is influenced by the position
of the bird, time of day, season, weather, and the sounds of other birds and
animals in proximity.  Our approach begins by creating a continuous
spectrogram of the audio waves using a bank of band pass filters.  Next we
segment the spectrogram using a sliding window of fixed length (e.g., one
second).  A hash table based clustering algorithm is used to find frequently
occurring patterns.  A simulated annealing based clustering algorithm is used
to arrange the audio spectra segments into a 2-d map which maximizes the
relationship between map distance and audio spectra similarity.

\gp % \newpage


\textbf{Author name disambiguation in MEDLINE: results from first-pass
clustering}

Vetle I. Torvik and Neil R. Smalheiser

University of Illinois at Chicago

\abs
We have previously described (Torvik et al., JASIST, 2005) a method for
automatically generating training sets and estimating the probability that
a pair of papers in MEDLINE sharing a last and first name initial are
authored by the same individual. The probability estimates were based on
shared title words, journal name, co-author names, medical subject
headings, language, and affiliation, as well as distinctive features of the
name itself (i.e., presence of middle initial, suffix, and prevalence in
MEDLINE). This project, which we call ``Author-ity'', was subsequently funded
by an NIH grant to create a database of all papers in MEDLINE clustered by
predicted author-individuals. We have recently completed a first-pass
clustering of the 2006 baseline version of MEDLINE (> 15 million papers)
resulting in > 5 million predicted author-individuals. In this talk, we
will summarize our work to date: a) the basic pairwise model with recently
added and modified predictive features (first name variants, email address,
last name specific affiliation word stoplists); b) new automatic methods of
generating large training sets; c) methods for estimating the prior
probability for given a population of papers to be compared; d) a weighted
least squares algorithm for correcting triplet violations of the form 
$p_{ij} + p_{ik} \ge 1 + p_{jk}$, 
e) a database with predicted author-individuals resulting
from simple agglomerative clustering; and f) some preliminary data for
future research directions.

\gp  \newpage
\textbf{Robust Partial Logistic Regression (RoPLR)}

Asuman S. Turkmen and Nedret Billor

Department of Mathematics and Statistics,
Auburn University

\abs 
Partial least squares (PLS) is a statistical technique to summarize
high dimensional and correlated predictor variables into low
dimensional, uncorrelated variables which have the best predictive
power.  High dimensionality and collinearity make the application of
the available classification methods difficult and even impossible for
some cases. An analyst can reduce the dimension by constructing new
components employing PLS technique and then apply a classification
method on the constructed PLS components.  Even though PLS was
originally designed for continuous response variables, only for last
six years, it has become a widely used statistical dimension reduction
technique for classification.  The classical PLS method is known to be
very sensitive to outlying observations that usually exist in
experimental data. Therefore several robust PLS methods have been
proposed when the response variable is continuous. However, to our
knowledge, there has been no study on robustness of PLS methods for
dimension reduction in classification. In this study, the effect of
outliers on existing PLS classification methods is investigated.  We
also propose a new PLS algorithm based on robust logistic regression
(RoPLR) for classification problems.  Real and simulated data sets are
used to demonstrate the performance of RoPLR method.

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Classification of Self-Modeling Regressions}

Rhonda VanDyke, Kert Viele, and Robin Cooper

Departments of Statistics and Biology, University of Kentucky

\abs
A set of self-modeling functions is defined by the entire set of
functions being related through affine transformations of the $x$ and
$y$ axes to a common function $g(t)$. We expand this definition to
include the possibility that a set of functions contains two
underlying sets of self-modeling functions, the first related through
a common shape $g_1(t)$ and the second related through a separate shape
function $g_2(t)$. Our goal is to take data consisting of a set of
functions, estimate the two underlying shape functions, and to
classify each function as belonging to either the first or second
group of self-modeling functions. We estimate the underlying shape
functions through Bayesian Adaptive Regression Splines (BARS). We
illustrate the methodology through Synaptic Transmission data, where
the functions measure electrical current across time and the two
self-modeling groups of functions are hypothesized to result from
different vesicles within synapses releasing transmitter in
qualitatively different manners.

\gp % \newpage


\textbf{Beta-Distributed Generalized Linear Mixed Models}

Jay Verkuilen, Department of
Psychology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Michael Smithson, School of Psychology, The Australian
National University.

\abs
Smithson and Verkuilen (2006) proposed the use of beta regression for
interval data with known lower and upper bounds. Variables of this
form abound in the behavioral sciences and are frequently not
well-modeled by Gaussian error distributions. For instance, confidence
ratings, judged probabilities, or leverage ratios of firms are all in
the unit interval and other bounded interval variables can be rescaled
to the unit interval without loss of generality. These variables
frequently exhibit marked skew or floor/ceiling effects. Unlike the
Gaussian, the beta distribution better accommodates empirical
distributions which may be L- or J-shaped, long tailed, or
symmetric. Building on our prior work, we present a regression model
that assumes, conditional on fixed predictors and random effects, the
dependent variable is beta distributed. Estimation by marginal maximum
likelihood or Bayesian MCMC works quite well in practice. The model is
illustrated with repeated measures data exhibiting between-subject
heteroscedasticity taken from an experiment considering the
"LakeWobegon effect".

\gp % \newpage

\textbf{Multilevel Latent Markov Models for Discrete Longitudinal Data}

Hsiu-Ting Yu, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign

\abs
Multilevel longitudinal data are clustered both temporally and
spatially. The longitudinal or repeated measures within subjects
aspect of the data extends horizontally along a time dimension. The
multilevel or hierarchically nested structure extends vertically on a
spatial dimension. Since both types of clustered structures can induce
dependency into the data, both aspects need to take into account when
modeling the data. Many developments for multilevel and longitudinal
data have focused on continuous response or outcome variables;
however, less attention has been paid to the data with discrete
manifest and latent variables. In this talk, I will review the
classical latent class models for discrete data and discuss the
current methods of the extension on each of the clustering data
structures. Multilevel Latent Markov Models are proposed to unify the
two types of dependency due to clustering in a single model. The
proposed models are hybrids of random-effects and conditional models,
where conditional model is adopted to model the change between two
occasions; and random-effects modeling approach is utilized to account
for the effects of nested structure. A data set from Educational
Longitudinal Study of 2002 is used to illustrate various models for
discrete longitudinal data with multilevel data structure.

\end{document}