Poster
Local Rules for Global MAP: When Do They Work ?
Kyomin Jung · Pushmeet Kohli · Devavrat Shah

Tue Dec 8th 07:00 -- 11:59 PM @ None #None
We consider the question of computing Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) assignment in an arbitrary pair-wise Markov Random Field (MRF). We present a randomized iterative algorithm based on simple local updates. The algorithm, starting with an arbitrary initial assignment, updates it in each iteration by first, picking a random node, then selecting an (appropriately chosen) random local neighborhood and optimizing over this local neighborhood. Somewhat surprisingly, we show that this algorithm finds a near optimal assignment within $2n\ln n$ iterations on average and with high probability for {\em any} $n$ node pair-wise MRF with {\em geometry} (i.e. MRF graph with polynomial growth) with the approximation error depending on (in a reasonable manner) the geometric growth rate of the graph and the average radius of the local neighborhood -- this allows for a graceful tradeoff between the complexity of the algorithm and the approximation error. Through extensive simulations, we show that our algorithm finds extremely good approximate solutions for various kinds of MRFs with geometry.

#### Author Information

##### Devavrat Shah (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Devavrat Shah is a professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Director of Statistics and Data Science at MIT. He received PhD in Computer Science from Stanford. He received Erlang Prize from Applied Probability Society of INFORMS in 2010 and NeuIPS best paper award in 2008.