# Random Feature Machines, a.k.a. Random Kitchen Sinks

22 April 2021 (Lecture 22)


# Reminders

• Kernel machines: $s(x) = b_0 + \sum_{i=1}^{n}{\alpha_i K(x, x_i)} = b_0 + \sum_{j=1}^{\infty}{\beta_j \phi_j(x)} = b_0 + \langle \beta, \phi(x) \rangle$
• Kernel matrix $$\mathbf{K} =$$ the $$[n\times n]$$ matrix where $$K_{ij} = K(x_i, x_j)$$
• If $$\| \beta \| \leq c$$ then (HW10Q1) $\EmpRademacher_n(\ModelClass) \leq \frac{c\sqrt{\tr{\mathbf{K}}}}{n}$
• And (HW10Q2) $$\|\beta\|^2 = \alpha \cdot \mathbf{K} \alpha$$

# Reminders (2)

• Regression: use kernel ridge regression, $\min_{\beta}{\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n}{(y_i - s(x_i;\beta))^2} + \lambda \|\beta\|^2} = \min_{\alpha \in \mathbb{R}^n}{\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n}{(y_i - s(x_i;\alpha))^2} + \lambda \left(\alpha \cdot \mathbf{K} \alpha\right)}$
• Solution: $$\alpha = (\mathbf{K} + \lambda \mathbf{I})^{-1} \mathbf{y}$$
• Great for least-squares regression, awkward for other tasks
• Classification: classes $$y_i$$ are $$\pm 1$$, maximize the margin by minimizing $\sum_{i=1}^{n}{\sum_{j=1}^{n}{\alpha_i \alpha_j y_i y_j K(x_i, x_j)}}$ subject to $$\sum_{i=1}^{n}{\alpha_i y_i} = 0$$, $$\sum_{i=1}^{n}{\alpha_i}=1$$, $$\alpha_i \geq 0$$
• Slightly different objective if we allow for some slack/mis-classification
• Solution: support vector machine: $\sgn{\left(b_0 + \sum_{i=1}^{n}{\alpha_i y_i K(x, x_i)} \right)}$
• Many/most $$\alpha_i = 0$$ (sparse), if $$\alpha_i \neq 0$$ then $$x_i$$ is a support vector

# Kernel machines are great

• The space of functions of the form $$\sum_{j=1}^{\infty}{\beta_j \phi_j(x)}$$ is huge!
• Not every function, but lots of functions, and even if the best function isn’t in this space, it can often be closely approximated
• But we only have to find the $$n$$ weights $$\alpha_i$$
• Finite-dimensional approximations to an infinite-dimensional space
• Kernels measure similarity and there are lots of good ways to do that
• Radial basis functions, polynomials, splines…
• Specialized kernels for strings (think: text, DNA), wave-forms (think: speech, music), images, graphs/networks, …
• Learning-theoretic results so there are both generalization error bounds and oracle inequalities
• We can make guarantees about out-of-sample performance
• We can make guarantees about near-optimality
• Kernel machines became big around 1995 with the first support vector machines, and pretty much ruled until say 2012 or 2013
• Deep neural networks trained by gradient descent may be kernel machines in disguise (Domingos 2020)

# Kernel machines are not so great

• Need to think hard about the kernel function $$K$$
• Computationally, everything comes down to the kernel matrix $$\mathbf{K}$$
• $$\mathbf{K}$$ is $$[n\times n]$$
• Not so bad when $$n=10^2$$ or $$10^3$$ or $$10^4$$
• Awkward when $$n=10^6$$ (8 Tb of memory just to store one matrix!)
• Inverting a matrix takes $$O(n^3)$$ time, but even just calculating the objective function for an SVM takes $$O(n^2)$$ time
• Very elaborate algorithms can invert in $$O(n^{2.37\ldots})$$ time (but can actually be slower at small $$n$$
• Also, you need to keep around all $$n$$ weights $$\alpha_1, \ldots \alpha_n$$
• Even with SVMs, the number of support vectors is typically $$\propto n$$

# Random feature machines, a.k.a. kitchen sinks

• Come up with a big collection of basis functions, say $$\psi(x;w)$$, where the $$w$$ are indices or parameters
• Example: $$\psi(x;w) = \cos{(w_1 \cdot x + w_2)}$$ (cosine basis or Fourier basis)
• Example: $$\psi(x;w) = \Indicator{\|x - w\| \leq h}$$ (bumps)
• Randomly draw values $$W_1, W_2, \ldots W_q$$ from some distribution $$\rho$$ over $$w$$
• Now fit $\sum_{j=1}^{q}{\beta_j \psi(x;W_j)}$

# What does this have to do with kernels?

Bochner’s theorem: If $$K(x,z)=K(x-z)$$ is a kernel over $$\mathbb{R}^d$$, then there’s a probability distribution $$\rho$$ over $$\mathbb{R}^d$$ and a constant $$C>0$$ where $K(x,z) = C \int_{\mathbb{R}^d}{\rho(w)\cos{(w\cdot(x-z))} dw}$ + Note: $$K(x,z)/C$$ is another kernel with the same feature space, so we can set $$C=1$$ “without loss of generality”

• $$\rho$$ is the Fourier transform of $$K(x-z)$$
• Implication: If $$W \sim \rho$$, then $K(x,z) = \Expect{\cos{(W \cdot (x-z))}}$
• Implication: if $$W_1, W_2, \ldots W_q$$ are all $$\sim \rho$$, then $\frac{1}{q}\sum_{j=1}^{q}{\cos{(W_j \cdot(x-z))}} \approx \Expect{\cos{(W \cdot (x-z))}} = K(x,z)$

# What does this have to do with kernels? (2)

• Remember $$K(x,z) = \langle \phi(x), \phi(z) \rangle$$
• After some play with trig. identities, two sets of random features will work: $\psi_i(x) = (\cos{W_i \cdot x}, \sin{W_i \cdot x})$ or $\psi_i(x) = \cos{W_i \cdot x + b_i}$ where $$b \sim\mathrm{Unif}(-\pi, \pi)$$
• More common to use the 2nd approach (random “phase” $$b_i$$)
• Define $\psi(x) = (\psi_1(x), \psi_2(x), \ldots \psi_q(x))$
• Then $\Expect{\psi(x) \cdot \psi(z)} = K(x,z)$
• Since $$\cos$$ is bounded between $$-1$$ and $$1$$, we can use Hoeffding’s inequality to show $$\psi(x) \cdot \psi(z)$$ is close to $$K(x,z)$$ with high probability like $$e^{-q\epsilon^2}$$
• In fact $$\Prob{\max_{x,z}{|\psi(x) \cdot \psi(z) - K(x,z)| \geq \epsilon}} = O(\epsilon^{-1}e^{-q\epsilon^2})$$ (omitting constants in exponent etc.) (Rahimi and Recht 2008, claim 1)

# Random feature approximation to kernel machines

• Pick your favorite kernel $$K$$ and a number $$q > 0$$
• Find $$K$$’s Fourier transform $$\rho$$
• People have been tabulating Fourier transforms since Fourier almost 200 years ago, you can usually look it up
• Conveniently, the Fourier transform of a Gaussian is also a Gaussian
• Draw $$W_1, W_2, \ldots W_q$$ from $$\rho$$ and $$b_1, b_2, \ldots b_q$$ from $$\mathrm{Unif}(-\pi, \pi)$$
• Calculate the random Fourier features of the data $\psi(x) = (\cos{W_1 \cdot x + b_1}, \cos{W_2 \cdot x +b_2}, \ldots \cos{W_q \cdot x + b_q})$
• Form the $$[n \times q]$$ matrix $$\mathbf{\psi}$$
• Now run your favorite linear method on $$\mathbf{\psi}$$
• $$\mathbf{\psi}\mathbf{\psi}^T \approx \mathbf{K}$$, a low-rank (rank-$$q$$) approximation, and there can be situations where we want to use that because even though it’s $$[n \times n]$$ there are special computational techniques for low-rank matrices; more common however to just work with $$\mathbf{\psi}$$

# We don’t really need a kernel

• The random kitchen sink idea of Rahimi and Recht (2009)
• Pick your favorite parameterized collection of functions $$\psi(x;w)$$, a distribution $$\rho(w)$$, an integer $$q$$, and a $$C> 0$$
• Draw $$W_1, \ldots W_q$$ from $$\rho$$
• Calculate $$\psi(x_i) = (\psi(x_i;W_1), \ldots \psi(x_i, W_q))$$
• Do constrained ERM over linear models in these features: $\hat{\beta} = \argmin_{\beta: \max_{i \in 1:q}{|\beta_i| \leq C/q}}{\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n}{\Loss(y_i, \beta \cdot \psi(x_i))}}$
• If the loss function $$\Loss$$ is reasonable, then we have an oracle inequality: $\Prob{\Risk(\hat{s}) - \Risk(\OptimalModel) \geq O\left(\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{q}}\right) C \sqrt{\log{(2/\delta)}}\right)} \leq \delta$
• You’ll work this through in HW13, with all the constants
• Basic idea: The random features give a good approximation to the optimal machine (that’s where the $$O(1/\sqrt{q})$$ comes from), and linear models on the random features have low Rademacher complexity (that’s where the $$O(1/\sqrt{n})$$ comes from)

# Kitchen sinks in practice

• Want the function space to be rich
• Random Fourier features are good, so are random bumps
• Typically make $$C$$ large enough that the constraint stays inactive
• Or just ignore it altogether…
• Can also do ridge or lasso, or make the linear part the input to a generalized linear model, etc.

# A demo in R

library(expandFunctions)
my.rFfs <- raptMake(p = 2, q = 30, WdistOpt = list(sd = 1), bDistOpt = list(min = -pi,
max = pi))
dim(rapt(as.matrix(df[, c("x1", "x2")]), my.rFfs))
## [1] 200  30
df.augmented <- data.frame(y = df$y, cos(rapt(as.matrix(df[, c("x1", "x2")]), my.rFfs))) Here are the first few $$W_j$$ ## [,1] [,2] ## [1,] 1.0917135 -1.83151364 ## [2,] 0.4475455 1.16703196 ## [3,] 0.7942617 -1.64220647 ## [4,] -0.6990022 -0.43673732 ## [5,] -1.3940621 -0.48644337 ## [6,] 0.9985419 -0.09824253 and the corresponding $$b_j$$ ## [,1] ## [1,] 0.4192803 ## [2,] -1.4453380 ## [3,] 0.4489669 ## [4,] -2.5730839 ## [5,] -2.2053458 ## [6,] 0.4401365 • The features have random orientations, wavelengths, and phase off-sets • Any model we build is going to be a linear combination of these random cosine waves glm.rks <- glm(y ~ ., data = df.augmented, family = "binomial") table(predict(glm.rks, type = "response") >= 0.5, df.augmented$y)
##
##           0   1
##   FALSE 100   0
##   TRUE    0 100

# Summing up

• Kernel machines are great in many ways
• but there are computational bottlenecks for large $$n$$
• Every prediction needs $$O(n)$$ calculations and requires remembering $$O(n)$$ weights $$\alpha_i$$
• The $$[n \times n]$$ kernel matrix $$\mathbf{K}$$ is needs lots of memory and time
• Random feature machines emerged as an approximation to kernel machines
• Each prediction needs $$O(q)$$ calculations and requires remembering $$q$$ weights $$\beta_j$$
• Working with linear-in-the-features methods needs only $$[q\times q]$$ matrices
• Random feature machines turned out to be useful in their own right, not just as approximations to kernel machines
• Very simple computationally (especially if you use random Fourier features)
• Highly expressive with not-too-many random features
• Good generalization properties
• Good in-practice performance

# References

Domingos, Pedro. 2020. “Every Model Learned by Gradient Descent Is Approximately a Kernel Machine.” E-print, arxiv:2012.00152. https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.00152.

Rahimi, Ali, and Benjamin Recht. 2008. “Random Features for Large-Scale Kernel Machines.” In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 20 (Nips 2007), edited by John C. Platt, Daphne Koller, Yoram Singer, and Samuel T. Roweis, 1177–84. Red Hook, New York: Curran Associates. http://papers.nips.cc/paper/3182-random-features-for-large-scale-kernel-machines.

———. 2009. “Weighted Sums of Random Kitchen Sinks: Replacing Minimization with Randomization in Learning.” In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 21 [Nips 2008], edited by Daphne Koller, D. Schuurmans, Y. Bengio, and L. Bottou, 1313–20. Red Hook, New York: Curran Associates, Inc. https://papers.nips.cc/paper/2008/hash/0efe32849d230d7f53049ddc4a4b0c60-Abstract.html.