[mlpack] GSOC 2014: Introduction

[Udit Saxena]

Hi Marcus,

It's Udit here. I've been interested in working on the Adaboost
Implementation for GSoC 2014 for a while and have been in touch with Ryan
after an initial introduction over the mailing list.

He told me that you would be looking over the idea. I wanted you to have a
look over my idea. I've talked about it with Ryan over a few mails on the
group.

I imagine the list of tasks would be something similar to :

   - implementing a batch of weak learners:
      - Alternating decision trees
      - C4.5/C5: note C5 also includes boosting options
      - something simple like weighted linear least squares
      - some controlled version of random forests ( unlikely, this one)
      - simple neural networks,
      - perceptrons.
      - mlpack already implements the Naive Bayes classifier so
      that could be used also.
      - the basic adaboost algorithm is quite susceptible to noise and
   outliers, and a good goal would be to focus on "gentle adaboost" as a C++
   interface.
   - also, the adaboost.m1, .m2, are also a good goal for implementing
   multiclass classification - The mlpack implementation will be flexible
   enough to extend through template/parameters and flexible abstractions to
   any of those algorithms.
   - A simple CLI would be necessary - might involve passing weak learners
   as supported parameters or something.

Your suggestions ? What should be my next step ? Start writing a test
interface based on a few examples ?

I should apologise for lying low on the mailing list for the last week as I
had my midterms till Sunday.

But now that they're over, I'm setting up an svn repository to look at how
to get involved in the process of submitting a patch (I'm more familiar
with the git process so I'm getting used to it).

I've also talked with Ryan on how clubbing this with the idea of developing
an Ubuntu/Debian or even an up-to-date package for Arch linux (although I
see that govg has taken care of the Arch side of things for now and Ryan is
still working on the Debian end).

Could you share your thoughts ?

Thanks.
-- 
---------------------------------------
Udit Saxena
Student, BITS Pilani,
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