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Using Stochastic Encoders to Discover Structure in Data

Stephen Luttrell
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Abstract

In this paper a stochastic generalisation of the standard Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) approach to vector quantiser (VQ) design is presented, in which the encoder is implemented as the sampling of a vector of code indices from a probability distribution derived from the input vector, and the decoder is implemented as a superposition of reconstruction vectors. This stochastic VQ (SVQ) is optimised using a minimum mean Euclidean reconstruction distortion criterion, as in the LBG case. Numerical simulations are used to demonstrate how this leads to self-organisation of the SVQ, where different stochastically sampled code indices become associated with different input subspaces.

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Stephen Luttrell. 2004-08-21. Using Stochastic Encoders to Discover Structure in Data. https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0408049

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