BasisDeVAE: interpretable simultaneous dimensionality reduction and feature-level clustering with derivative-based variational autoencoders

Conference item

The Variational Autoencoder (VAE) performs effective nonlinear dimensionality reduction in a variety of problem settings. However, the black-box neural network decoder function typically employed limits the ability of the decoder function to be constrained and interpreted, making the use of VAEs problematic in settings where prior knowledge should be embedded within the decoder. We present DeVAE, a novel VAE-based model with a derivative-based forward mapping, allowing for greater control over decoder behaviour via specification of the decoder function in derivative space. Additionally, we show how DeVAE can be paired with a sparse clustering prior to create BasisDeVAE and perform interpretable simultaneous dimensionality reduction and feature-level clustering. We demonstrate the performance and scalability of the DeVAE and BasisDeVAE models on synthetic and real-world data and present how the derivative-based approach allows for expressive yet interpretable forward models which respect prior knowledge.

Authors: Danks, D; Yau, C

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: PMLR
• Host title: Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning
• Pages: 2410-2420
• Series: Proceedings of Machine Learning Research
• Series number: 139
• Publication date: 2021-07-01
• Acceptance date: 2021-05-08
• Event title: 38th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2021)
• Event location: Virtual event
• Event website: https://icml.cc/Conferences/2021
• Event start date: 2021-07-18
• Event end date: 2021-07-24
• EISSN: 2640-3498
• ISSN: 2640-3498
• Language: English