# Direct3DX9NotFoundException Creating a Direct3D Device With SlimDX

Yet another note for future reference. If you are using SlimDX, and you get the exception:

when trying to create a SlimDX.Direct3D9.Direct3D object, most likely you will be able to solve this by placing D3DX9_43.dll into your output folder. Please note that the proper solution would be to install the full DirectX 9 runtime into your system, but it may be too much for some quick testing.

A similar error may occur when using SharpDX, but in SharpDX’s case, the error message will be much more helpful and actually tell you what is missing.

# The command “sn -Ra … :VCEnd” exited with code 1

For today, a quick note for future reference. If you have a C++/CLI project and you are getting the error

and check if it solves the issue. Hope this can be useful for others facing this same situation I encountered some days earlier.

## Introduction

Despite the name, the terms linear or quadratic programming have little resemblance to the set of activities most people now know as programming. Those terms usually usually refers to a specific set of function optimization methods, i.e. methods which can be used to determine the maximum or minimum points of special kinds of functions under a given number of solution constraints. For example, suppose we would like to determine the minimum value of the function:

f(x, y) = 2x + y + 4

Under the constraints that x and y must be non-negative (i.e. either positive or zero). This may seem fairly simple and trivial, but remember that practical linear programming problems may have hundreds or even thousands of variables and possibly million constraints.

When the problem to be solved involves a quadratic function instead of a linear function, but still presents linear constraints, this problem can be cast as a quadratic programming problem. Quadratic functions are polynomial functions in each each term may have at most a total degree of 2. For example, consider the function

f(x, y, z) = 2x² + 5xy + y² – z² + x – 5.

Now let’s check the sum of the degrees for each variable on the polynomial terms. We start by writing the missing terms of the polynomial

f(x, y, z) = 2 x2y0z0 + 5 x1y1z0 + 2 x0y2z0x0y0z2 + x1y0z0 – 5 x0y0z0

and then proceed to check the sum of the degrees at each term. In the first term, 2+0+0 = 2. For the second, 1+1+0 = 2, and so on. Those functions have a nice property that they can be expressed in a matrix form

f(x) = 1/2 xT Q x + cTx.

Here, x and c are vectors. The matrix Q is a symmetric matrix specifying how the variables combine in the quadratic terms of the function. If this matrix is positive definite, then the function is convex, and the optimization has a single, unique optimum (we say it has a global optimum). The coefficients c specify the linear terms of our function.

## Source code

The available source code is based on a translation of the Fortran code written by Berwin A. Turlach. However, some modifications have been made. Fortran uses column-major ordering for matrices, meaning that matrices are stored in memory in sequential order of column elements. Almost all other languages use row-major ordering, including C, C++, Java and C#. In order to improve data locality, I have modified the code to use the transpose of the original matrices D and A. I have also modified the QP formulation adopted in the Goldfarb and Idnani paper to reflect the form presented in the introduction.

## Using the code

The first step in solving a quadratic programming problem is, well, specifying the problem. To specify a quadratic programming problem, one would need two components: a matrix D describing the relationship between the quadratic terms, and a vector d describing the linear terms. Perhaps this would work better with an example.

Suppose we are trying to solve a minimization problem. Given a function, the goal in such problems is to find the correct set of function arguments which would result in the minimum possible value for the function. An example of a quadratic minimization problem is given below:

 min f(x, y) = 2x² – xy + 4y² – 5x – 6y subject to the constraints: x – y = 5 x = 10 (generated with Wolfram Alpha)

However, note that this problem involves a set of constraints. The required solution for this minimization problem is required to lie in the interval specified by the constraints. More specifically, any x and y pair candidate for being a minimal of the function must respect the relations x – y = 5 and x >= 10. Thus, instead of lying in the unconstrained minimum of the function surface shown above, the solution lies slightly off the center of the surface. This is an obvious easy problem to solve manually, but it will fit for this demonstration.

As it can be seen (and also live demonstrated by asking Wolfram Alpha) the solution lies on the point (10,5), and the constrained minimum of the function is given by 170. So, now that we know what a quadratic programming problem looks like, how can we actually solve it?

### Specifying the objective function

The first step in solving a quadratic programming problem is to specify the objective function. Using this code, there are three ways to specify it. Each of them has their own advantages and disadvantages.

1. Manually specifying the QP matrix.

This is the most common approach for numerical software, and probably the most cumbersome for the user. The problem matrix has to be specified manually. This matrix is sometimes denoted Q, D or H as it actually denotes the Hessian matrix for the problem.

The matrix Q is used to describe the quadratic terms of our problem. It is a n x n matrix, in which n corresponds to the number of variables in our problem, covering all possible combinations of variables. Recall our example given on the start of this section. We have 2 variables, x and y. Thus, our matrix Q is 2 x 2. The possible combinations for x and y are expressed in the table below.

 x y x x*x x*y y y*x y*y

To form our matrix Q, we can take all coefficients associated with each pair mentioned on the table above. The diagonal elements should also be multiplied by two (this is actually because the matrix is the Hessian matrix of the problem: it is the matrix of all second-order derivatives for the function. Since we have only at most quadratic terms, the elementary power rule of derivation “drops” the ² from the x² and y² terms – I think a mathematician would hit me with a stick for explaining it like this, but it serves well for a quick, non-technical explanation).

Remember our quadratic terms were 2x²  – 1xy + 4y². Writing the terms on their proper position and differentiating, we have:

$Q = \begin{pmatrix} 2 \cdot 2 & -1 \\ -1 & 4\cdot 2 \end{pmatrix} = \begin{pmatrix} 4 & -1 \\ -1 & 8 \end{pmatrix}$

As it can be seen, the matrix is also symmetric (and often, but not always, positive definite). The next step, more trivial, is to write a vector d containing the linear terms. The linear terms are –5x –6y, and thus our vector d can be given by:

$d = \begin{pmatrix} -5 \\ -6 \end{pmatrix}$

Therefore our C# code can be created like this:

2. Using lambda expressions

This approach is a bit more intuitive and less error prone. However, it involves lambdas functions and some people find it hard to follow them. Another disadvantage is that we will lose the edit & continue debugging ability of visual studio. The advantage is that the compiler may catch some obvious syntax errors automatically. Below we are using the QuadraticObjectiveFunction from Accord.NET to specify our target objective function.

Note that the x and y variables could have been initialized to any value. They are only used as symbols, and not used in any computations.

3. Using text strings

This approach is more intuitive but a bit more error prone. The function can be specified using strings, as in a standard mathematical formula. However, since all we have are strings, there is no way to enforce static, compile time checking.

Couldn’t be easier.

### Specifying the constraints

The next step in specifying a quadratic programming problem is to specify the constraints. The constraints can be specified in almost the same way as the objective function.

1. Manually specifying the constraints matrix

The first option is to manually specify the constraints matrix A and vector b. The constraint matrix expresses the way the variables should be combined when compared to corresponding value on vector b. It is possible to specify either equality constraints or inequality constraints. The formulation used in this code is slightly different from the one used in Turlach’s original implementation. The constraints are supposed to be in the form:

A1 x = b1
A2 x = b2

This means that each line of matrix A expresses a possible combination of variables x which should be compared to the corresponding line of b. An integer variable m can be specified to denote how many of the first rows of matrix A should be treated as equalities rather than inequalities. Recall that in our example the constraints are given by 1x –1y = 5 and 1x = 10. Lets write this down in a tabular form:

 # x y ? b q1 1 -1 = 5 q2 1 0 = 10

Thus our matrix A and vector b can be specified as:

And not forgetting that m = 1, because the first constraint is actually an equality.

2. Using classes and objects

A more natural way to specify constraints is using the classes and objects of the Accord.NET Framework. The LinearConstraint class allows one to specify a single constraint using an object-oriented approach. It doesn’t have the most intuitive usage on earth, but has much more expressiveness. It can also be read aloud, it that adds anything! 🙂

The specification is centered around the notion that variables are numbered and have an associated index. For example, x is the zero-th variable of the problem. Thus x has an index of 0 and y has an index of 1. So for example, reading aloud the last constraint, it is possible to express how the variables at indices 0 and 1, when combined as 1x and –1y, should be equal to value 5.

2. Using lambda expressions

A more intuitive way to express constraints is again using lambda expressions. And again the problems are the same: some people find it hard to follow and we lose edit & continue.

3. Using text strings

Same as above, but with strings.

### Finally, creating and solving the problem

Once we have specified what do we want, we can now ask the code for a solution. In case we have opted for manually specifying the objective function Q and d, and the constraint matrix A, vector b and integer m, we can use:

In case we have opted for creating a QuadraticObjectiveFunction object and a list of constraints instead, we can use:

After the solver object has been created, we can call Minimize() to solve the problem. In case we have opted for manually specifying Q and d, we can use:

The solution will be available in the Solution property of the solver object, and will be given by:

## Sample application

The Accord.NET Framework now includes a sample application demonstrating the use of the Goldfarb-Idnani Quadratic Programming Solver. It can be downloaded at the Accord.NET Framework site, and also comes together with recent versions of the framework (> 2.6).

Solver sample application included in the Accord.NET Framework.

## Remarks

Because the code has been translated by hand (in contrast of using automatic translators such as f2c) there could be potential bugs in the code. I have tested the code behavior against R’s quadprog package and still didn’t find errors. But this does not mean the code is bug-free. As always, as is the case of everything else in this blog, this code is published in good faith, but I can not guarantee the correctness of everything. Please read the disclaimer for more information.

# Decision Trees in C#

Decision trees are simple predictive models which map input attributes to a target value using simple conditional rules. Trees are commonly used in problems whose solutions must be readily understandable or explainable by humans, such as in computer-aided diagnostics and credit analysis.

## Introduction

Decision Trees give a direct and intuitive way for obtaining the classification of a new instance from a set of simple rules. Because of this characteristic, decision trees find wide use in situations in which the interpretation of the obtained results and of the reasoning process is crucial, such as in computer-aided diagnostics (CAD) and in financial credit analysis. Consumer credit analysis is an interesting example because, in many countries, one can not simply reject credit without giving a justification, justification of which is trivial to extract from a decision tree.

The tree on the right has been generated using the Context Free software based on the grammar shared by davdrn.

### Learning decision trees

Decision trees can be simply drawn by hand based on any prior knowledge the author may have. However, their real power becomes apparent when trees are learned automatically, through some learning algorithm.

The most notable and classics examples to decision tree learning are the algorithms ID3 (Quinlan, 1986) and the C4.5 (Quinlan, 1993). Both are examples of greedy algorithms, performing local optimum decisions in the hope of producing a most general tree. Such algorithms are based on the principle of the Occam’s razor, favoring simpler or smaller trees in the hope that such smaller trees could retain more generalization power. This preference is formalized through the specification of an hypothesis ordering criteria such as the information gain. The information gain measures the, as the name implies, gain of information in using each of the attributes as a next factor to consider during decision. The information gain can be defined as:

However, the information gain has a bias towards attributes with a high number of possible values (Mitchell, 1997). A way to overcome this bias is to select new selection attributes based on alternative criteria, such as the gain ratio (Quinlan, 1986), defined as:

In the GainRatio, the SplitInformation term attenuates the importance given to attributes with many, uniformly distributed, possible values.

### Iterative Dichotomizer 3 (ID3)

The algorithm presented below is a slightly different version of the original ID3 algorithm as presented by Quinlan. The modifications are to support multiple output labels. In each recursion of the algorithm, the attribute which bests classifiers the set of instances (or examples, or input-output pairs, or data) is selected according to some selection criteria, such as the InfoGain or the GainRatio.

• ID3(instances, target_attribute, attributes)
• Create a new root node to the tree.
• If all instances have the target_attribute belonging to the same class c,
• Return the tree with single root node with label c.
• If attributes is empty, then
• Return the tree with single root node with the most common label of the target_attribute in instances.
• Else
• A ← the attribute in attributes which best classifies instances
• root decision attribute ← A
• Foreach possible value vi of A,
• Add a new ramification below root, corresponding to the test A = vi
• Let instancesvi be the subset of instances with the value vi for A
• If instancesvi is empty then
• Below this ramification, add a new leaf node with the most common value of target_attribute in instances.
• Else below this ramification, add the subtree given by the recursion:
ID3(instancesvi, target_attribute, attributes – { A })
• End
• Return root

### Difficulties and disadvantages of decision tree learning

Despite relying on the Occam’s Razor to guide the learning, neither ID3 or C4.5 algorithms are not guaranteed to produce the smaller or more general tree possible. This happens because their learning is based solely on heuristics and not in truly optimality criteria. The following example, from (Esmeir & Markovitch, 2007) illustrates the learning of the concept xor (exclusive or) by the ID3 algorithm. In this example, A3 and A4 are irrelevant attributes, having absolutely no influence on the target answer. However, yet being irrelevant, ID3 will select one of them to belong to the tree. In fact, ID3 will select the irrelevant attribute A4 to be the root of the learned tree.

 A1 A2 A3 A4 label 1 0 0 1 + 0 1 0 0 + 0 0 0 0 – 1 1 0 0 – 0 1 1 1 + 0 0 1 1 – 1 0 1 1 +

One complication of decision tree learning is that the problem to find the smaller consistent tree (in the sense of classifying correctly all training samples) is known to be NP-complete (Hyafil & Rivest, 1976). Moreover, the separating decision surface generated by such trees are always formed by parallel cuts alongside the attribute space axis, which could be a severely suboptimal solution (Bishop, 2007, p. 666). The example given by Bishop illustrates well this problem: for example, to separate classes whose optimum decision margin are on 45 degrees from one of the axis, it will be needed a high number of parallel cuts in comparison with a single cut on the diagonal such as could be given by any linear decision machine. Another disadvantage of traditional decision tree learning algorithms is that most methods require only a constant learning time, and, as such, do not allow for trading extra training time for a better solutions. The work of (Esmeir & Markovitch, 2007) is dedicated to overcome such problem.

The following picture shows an example on how learning by decision trees is limited to cuts parallel to the axis, as described by Bishop. The Ying-Yang classification problem is a classical example of a non-linearly separable decision problem. Decision trees, albeit not being linear classifiers, have difficulty classifying this set with simple thresholds.

Top-Left: Ying-Yang non-linear classification problem. Top-Right: Decision surface extracted by a decision tree. Bottom: Decision threshold rules extracted from the tree.

However, despite all of those shortcomings, decision trees plays major roles as base of many successful algorithms. One interesting application and of notorious success is given in the field of object detection in images. The first real-time face detecting algorithm (Viola & Jones, 2001) is based on a degenerated decision tree (also known as a cascade). The body recognition and segmentation algorithm used by the Xbox 360 gaming platform used to process depth images generated by its companion sensor Kinect is equally based on the use of decision trees (Shotton, et al., 2011). As well is the case of the FAST algorithm for interest point detection in images (Rosten & Drummond, 2006).

I should also make the note that both the Viola-Jones and the FAST algorithms are available in the Accord.NET Framework for immediate use (the Viola-Jones (HaarObjectDetector) has also been recently updated to support multiple threads, so feel free to take a look and experiment with it!).

In sum, its possible to say that great part of the applicability of decision trees came from the simple fact that they are extremely fast to evaluate. One of the reasons for this feature is being easily translated to sets of conditional instructions in a conventional computer program. The decision trees now available in the Accord.NET Framework make full use of this fact and enables the user to actually compile the decision trees to native code on-the-fly, augmenting even more its performance during classification.

## Source code

The code presented in this section is actually part of the Accord.NET Framework. The Accord.NET Framework is a framework extension to the already very popular AForge.NET Framework, adding and providing new algorithms and techniques for machine learning, computer vision and even more.

The Accord.MachineLearning.DecisionTree namespace is comprised of the following classes:

• DecisionTree, the main class representing a decision tree, with methods such as Compute to compute the tree classification given an input vector;
• DecisionNode, the node class for the decision tree, which may or may not have children nodes contained under a collection of children represented by a DecisionBranchNodeCollection;
• DecisionVariable, a class to specify the nature of each variable processable by the tree, such as if the variable is continuous, discrete, which are their expected or valid ranges;
• DecisionBranchNodeCollection, a class to contain children nodes together with information about which attribute of the data should be compared with the child nodes during reasoning.

Whose relationships can be seen in the following class diagram:

The learning algorithms available are either the ID3 algorithm discussed above, or its improved version C4.5 (which can handle continuous variables, but at this time does not yet support pruning), both proposed and published by Ross Quinlan.

Despite the bit complicated look, usage is rather simple as it will be shown in the next section.

## Using the code

Consider, for example, the famous Play Tennis example by Tom Mitchell (1998):

In the aforementioned example, one would like to infer if a person would play tennis or not based solely on four input variables. Those variables are all categorical, meaning that there is no order between the possible values for the variable (i.e. there is no order relationship between Sunny and Rain, one is not bigger nor smaller than the other, but are just distinct). Moreover, the rows, or instances presented above represent days on which the behavior of the person has been registered and annotated, pretty much building our set of observation instances for learning.

In order to try to learn a decision tree, we will first convert this problem to a more simpler representation. Since all variables are categories, it does not matter if they are represented as strings, or numbers, since both are just symbols for the event they represent. Since numbers are more easily representable than text string, we will convert the problem to use a discrete alphabet through the use of a codebook.

A codebook effectively transforms any distinct possible value for a variable into an integer symbol. For example, “Sunny” could as well be represented by the integer label 0, “Overcast” by “1”, Rain by “2”, and the same goes by for the other variables. So:

Now we should specify our decision tree. We will be trying to build a tree to predict the last column, entitled “PlayTennis”. For this, we will be using the “Outlook”, “Temperature”, “Humidity” and “Wind” as predictors (variables which will we will use for our decision). Since those are categorical, we must specify, at the moment of creation of our tree, the characteristics of each of those variables. So:

Let’s now proceed and create our DecisionTree:

Now we have created our decision tree. Unfortunately, it is not really very useful, since we haven’t taught it the problem we are trying to predict. So now we must instantiate a learning algorithm to make it useful. For this task, in which we have only categorical variables, the simplest choice is to use the ID3 algorithm by Quinlan. Let’s do it:

At this point, the tree has been created. In order to ask the tree to classify new samples, we can use:

Please note that, in case any of the steps in this post doesn’t work out, it might be because the most up-to-date version in the Accord.NET Framework may have undergone some changes. In this case, please refer to the official documentation at the Accord.NET website.

Going further, a suitable representation of the learned tree could be given by the following diagram:

However, more than just a diagram, we can also go and generate a .NET Expression Tree describing our decision tree. Expression trees represent code in the form of a tree of expressions, which can then be read, modified or compiled. By compiling the DecisionTree‘s expression, we are able to generate code on-the-fly and let the JIT compile it down to native code at runtime, greatly improving the performance of our decision tree:

And here is the resulting C# code obtained by compiling the expression into a lambda function, dumping the function into an dynamic assembly, opening and inspecting this assembly using ILSpy:

## Conclusion

Decision trees are useful tools when the problem to be solved needs to be quickly interpreted and understood by humans. Another suitable use is when the decision needs to be fast. However, decision trees, at least those trained by simple training algorithms such as ID3 and C4.5 can perform quite poorly depending on the problem. As it happens with all machine learning techniques, it is futile to believe there is a one true classifier which would act perfectly on all possible imaginable scenarios. As always, it is important to know our tools and know in which situation each technique would work better.

## References

• Bishop, C. M., 2007. Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Information Science and Statistics). 1st ed. 2006. Corr. 2nd printing ed. s.l.:Springer
• Fayyad, U. M. & Irani, K. B., 1992. On the Handling of Continuous-Valued Attributes in Decision Tree Generation. Machine Learning, January, 8(1), pp. 87-102.
• Quinlan, J. R., 1986. Induction of decision trees. Machine Learning, 1(1), pp. 81-106.
• Quinlan, J. R., 1993. C4.5: Programs for Machine Learning (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Machine Learning). 1 ed. s.l.:Morgan Kaufmann.
• Shotton, J. et al., 2011. Real-Time Human Pose Recognition in Parts from Single Depth Images. s.l., s.n.
• Viola, P. & Jones, M., 2001. Robust Real-time Object Detection. s.l., s.n.
• Mitchell, T. M., 1997. Decision Tree Learning. In:: Machine Learning (McGraw-Hill Series in Computer Science). s.l.:McGraw Hill.
• Mitchell, T. M., 1997. Machine Learning (McGraw-Hill Series in Computer Science). Boston(MA): WCB/McGraw-Hill.
• Esmeir, S. & Markovitch, S., 2007. Anytime Learning of Decision Trees. J. Mach. Learn. Res., May, Volume 8, pp. 891-933.
• Hyafil, L. & Rivest, R. L., 1976. Constructing Optimal Binary Decision Trees is NP-complete. Information Processing Letters, 5(1), pp. 15-17.

# Accord.NET Framework: Gesture Controller Components

A new version (2.2.0) of the Accord.NET Framework has just been released. This new version introduces many new features, fixes and improvements. The most interesting additions are certainly the HeadController and FaceController .NET components.

Accord.NET Framework sample application for Gesture Controller Components

The Accord.NET Controller components can be used to generate events based on webcam motion. By using a combination of HaarCascadeClassifiers, Camshift and Template-based Tracking, those components are able to detect when a face enters scene, leaves the scene, and moves across a scene.

The video above shows only the sample application which comes together with the framework. However, the interesting part is that this is just a sample of what can be accomplished using the real controller components. The controller components are .NET components, similar to Button, Label or Timer, and can be dragged and dropped from Visual Studio’s ToolBox directly into any application.

Once inside an application, it will be possible to set event actions just as in any other .NET component:

The controls have built-in support for calibration. All values except tilting angle are passed to the hosting application in the [-1;+1] range, in which -1 indicates either a total left/down/backwards position and +1 indicates a total right/up/forward position. The tilting angle is given in radians. Please note that the face controller is still a bit experimental and still requires some tuning.

This new version also introduces HSL Color Range object trackers, more default Haar Cascades, an experimental version of linear-chain Conditional Random Fields, and the ability to generate hardcoded C# definitions of any Haar cascade available in the OpenCV XML format. There is also initial support for finger detection using new implementations for Border-Following contour extraction, K-Curvatures and Convex Hull Defects extraction. On the statistics side, there has been the inclusion of the Von-Mises distribution, Moving and Running Normal distributions and improvements in the Multivariate Gaussian implementation. The full release notes are available in the release’s download page.

Also, a special thanks to Professor Dr. Modesto Castrillón Santana to let me embed some of his Haar definitions into the framework under the LGPL license. Please be sure to include a reference to his work if you plan to use this in an academic publication.

As always, I hope those additions and improvements will be useful to everyone 🙂

# K-Means clustering in C#

K-Means is one of the most popular, classic and simple approaches to clustering. Clustering is a method of unsupervised learning, and a common technique for statistical data analysis used in many fields, including machine learning, data mining, pattern recognition, image analysis and bioinformatics [3].

The code presented here is also part of the Accord.NET Framework. The Accord.NET Framework is a C# framework for developing machine learning, computer vision, computer audition, statistics and math applications in .NET. It is based on the AForge.NET Framework. Please see the starting guide for mode details. The latest version of the framework includes the latest version of this code plus many other statistics and machine learning tools.

## Introduction

In statistics and machine learning, k-means clustering is a method of cluster analysis which aims to partition n observations into k clusters in which each observation belongs to the cluster with the nearest mean [4]. In its most common form, the algorithm is an iterative greedy algorithm which converges to a local optimum after a certain number of iterations.

Illustration of the K-Means algorithm.

The algorithm works by first selecting k locations at random to be the initial centroids for the clusters. Each observation is then assigned to the cluster which has the nearest centroid, and the centroids are recalculated using the mean value of assigned values. The algorithm then repeats this process until the cluster centroids do not change anymore, or until the change less than a given threshold.

There are other refinements and extensions of the algorithm. The version depicted above is its most common form, also referred as Lloyd’s algorithm.

### Lloyd’s K-Means algorithm

1. Place K points into the space represented by the objects that are being clustered. These points represent initial group centroids.
2. Assign each object to the group that has the closest centroid.
3. When all objects have been assigned, recalculate the positions of the K centroids.
4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until the centroids no longer move. This produces a separation of the objects into groups from which the metric to be minimized can be calculated.

## Source code

The source code has been implemented using Accord.NET and is now part of the framework. In the current version (2.1.2), the following classes related to K-Means are contained inside the Accord.MachineLearning namespace. The source code available in this page contains only the parts of the framework actually needed to support the algorithm.

Class diagram for the K-Means algorithm.

The KMeans class is the main class representing the K-Means algorithm. The algorithm itself is implemented in the Compute(double[][] data, double threshold) method, which accepts a set of observations and a convergence threshold to determine when the method should stop.

The implementation is quite straightforward and does not use additional techniques to avoid convergence problems. More refined techniques may be added to the implementation in the future, so please make sure to download the latest version of Accord.NET Framework for the most up-to-date revision of the code.

## Using the code

To use the code, create a new instance of the KMeans class passing the desired number of clusters to its constructor. Additionally, you may also pass a distance function to be used as a distance metric during clustering. The default is to use the square Euclidean distance.

## Sample application

The k-means clustering algorithm is commonly used in computer vision as a form of image segmentation. The results of the segmentation are often used to aid border detection and object recognition. The sample application performs image segmentation using the standard squared Euclidean distance over RGB pixel color space. There are, however, better distance metrics to be used for image segmentation, such as weighted distances and other color spaces, which will not be addressed in this example.

Original image (from Ossi Petruska Flickr page*).

To perform image segmentation, we will first translate our image into an array of pixel values. The single image will be read, pixel by pixel, into a jagged array where each element is a double array of length 3. Each element of those double array will contain one of the three RGB values scaled to the interval [–1,1].

After we perform clustering on this array of pixel values, each pixel will have an associated cluster label. Each of these values will then be swapped by its corresponding cluster centroid. The source code below is called when one clicks the Run button in the application.

After segmentation, the following resulting images can be obtained:

Same image after K-Means clustering with k = 5.

Image after K-Means clustering with k = 10.

* The sample image used above has been licensed by Ossi Petruska in a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

## Conclusion

K-Means is a very simple and popular approach to clustering. The implementation presented here is the same implementation used in Accord.NET. As it can be seem, the method can be easily extended with custom distance functions through delegates or lambda expressions, and can be used in different contexts, such as image segmentation, without further modifications. As a suggestion for improvement, the method can be further speeded up by using the triangle inequality as suggested on the paper "Using the triangle inequality to accelerate k-means", by Charles Elkan.

In the next article, we will see how we can use K-Means to initialize the Expectation-Maximization algorithm for estimating Gaussian Mixture densities in Gaussian Mixture Models. Those articles will form the basis for Continuous density Hidden Markov Models.

## Acknowledgements

To Antonino Porcino, who provided the first version of the code and for the valuable information about many other methods and algorithms.

# Handwritten Digits Recognition with C# SVMs in Accord.NET

I’ve posted a new article on CodeProject, entitled “Handwriting Recognition Revisited: Kernel Support Vector Machines”. It is a continuation of a previous article on handwritten digits recognition but this time using SVMs instead of KDA.

The code uses the SVM library in Accord.NET Framework. The framework, which runs on .NET and is written mostly in C#, supports standard or multiclass support vector machines for either classification or regression, having more than 20 kernel functions available to choose from.

In the article, the same set and the same amount of training and testing samples have been used as in the previous Kernel Discriminant Analysis article for comparison purposes. The experimental results shows that  SVMs can outperform KDA both in terms of efficiency and accuracy, requiring much less processing time and memory available while still producing robust results.

# Matrix manipulation using Accord.NET

Matrix manipulation in Accord.NET
is very straightforward: Just add a new using directive on top of your class to
have (literally) about a hundred new extension methods that operate directly on
.NET multi-dimensional arrays.

## Introduction

Accord.NET uses a bit different approach for matrix manipulation in contrast to
other libraries. By using C# 3.0 extension methods, Accord adds several of the standard
methods you would expect from a Matrix library,
such as linear system solving, matrix algebra and numerical decompositions directly
to the standard double[,] (or more generally T[,]) matrices of the framework
[^].

This approach offers some advantages since it avoids mismatches when one is using
multiple libraries, each with their own and often incompatible Matrix implementations.
Extending multi-dimensional arrays makes the use of matrices much more natural in
the .NET world, as no specialized Matrix classes have to be used and no code has
to be rewritten just to use a particular Matrix implementation.

Please note, however, that most methods implemented by Accord are not equivalent
to the heavily optimized versions of more specialized numerical packages, such as

BLAS
, from a performance view. Their real power comes when prototyping or realizing algorithms into code. Once an algorithm is written, several
unit tests can be created to test the correctness of the code. After that, because
we have an early working prototype, it will be much easier to perform optimizations
as needed. The key point is to have a working version early which can (if
actually necessary) be optimized later.

## Using extension methods

The first step is to include a new using directive on the top of

This is all that is necessary after you have referenced the Accord.Math library
in your project. Now you can use all of the methods and operations described below.
The following list is nowhere complete, but shows only some basics and highlights
from the current version of Accord.

## Declaring matrices

### Using standard .NET declarations

To declare matrices, no special code is required. Just create multi-dimensional
arrays as usual.

### Using Accord.NET extensions

Additionally, one may wish to use one of the convenience methods of Accord.NET to
create specialized matrices such as the Identity matrix, multiples of the Identity
matrix or Diagonal matrices.

Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®

### Using Accord.NET extensions with implicit typing

By using implicit type variable declaration, the code acquires a certain lightweight
feeling and gets closer of its MATLAB®/Octave counterpart (MATLAB is a registered
.

Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®

A much more closer alternative will be possible by using Algorithm Environments,
a upcoming feature in Accord. When available, this feature will allow construction
of mathematical code using

directly. The code will be based on current Octave syntax. Octave is a high-level
language, primarily intended for
numerical computations
, that is mostly compatible with
MATLAB
.

## Matrix operations

All standard matrix operations such as transpose, inverse, column and row manipulations
are available in the extension methods. In the example below, A is the same standard
double[,] matrix declared in the first section of this
article. All methods return a new double[,] matrix
as a result, leaving the original matrix A untouched.

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Transpose
Inverse
Pseudo-Inverse

### Matrix Algebra

All common algebraic operations for matrices are also implemented. Those are the
common operations such as addition, subtraction and multiplication. Here, division
is actually a shortcut for multiplying by the inverse.

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Subtraction
Multiplication
Division

The above also works with vectors and scalars.

Operations Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Multiplying by a scalar
Multiplying by a column vector

### Special element-wise operations

Element-wise operations are operations performed on each element of the matrix or
vector. In Matlab, they are some times known as the dot operations, since they are
usually denoted by prefixing a dot on the common operators.

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Multiplication
Division
Power

## Vector operations

Accord.NET can also perform many vector operations. Among them are the many flavors
of products between vectors, such as the inner, the outer and the Cartesian.

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Inner product (a.k.a. the scalar product)
Outer product (a.k.a. the matrix product) w = u’*v
Cartesian product
Euclidean Norm
Sum
Product

## Matrix characteristics

Some common matrix characteristics, such as the determinant and trace, are readily
available.

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Determinant
Trace

### Other characteristics

Other available characteristics are the Summation and Product of vector and matrix
elements.

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Sum vector
Sum of elements
Sum along columns
Sum along rows

## Linear Algebra

Linear algebra
is certainly one of the most important fields of mathematics, if not the most important
one. Accord includes many methods for numerical linear algebra such as matrix inversion
and matrix decompositions. Most of them were originally based on JAMA and MAPACK, but today Accord has some additions from
routines translated from EISPACK (mainly the
Generalized Eigenvalue Decomposition
[^],
which is currently absent from Jama).

 Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB® Solve a linear system x = A.Solve(B) x = A B

### Eigenvalue Decomposition

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Standard decomposition
Generalized decomposition

### Singular Value Decomposition

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Economy decomposition

### QR Decomposition

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Standard decomposition

### Cholesky decomposition

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Standard decomposition

### LU Decomposition

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Standard decomposition

## Special operators

There are some other useful operators available in Accord.NET. There are facilities
to create index vectors (very common in Matlab for accessing sub-portions of a matrix),
select elements, find elements based on a selection criteria, and so on.

Operation Accord.NET (C#) MATLAB®
Create a vector of indices idx = 1:9
Selecting elements B = A(idx)
Finding elements matching a certain criteria (For example, finding x ∈ v / x > 2). v = [ 5 2 2 7 1 0];
idx = find(v > 2)
Reshaping a vector to a matrix. m = [1 2 3 4];
reshape(m,2,2)

## More than just matrices

Accord.NET also offers many other standard mathematical functions such as the Gamma
function, log-Gamma, Digamma, Bessel functions, Incomplete beta integrals, and so
on.

For a complete listing of the framework features, please check the project page at Origo. In particular, don’t forget to check
out the the class diagram for the Accord.Math namespace.

Cheers!

Legal notice: MATLAB is a registered trademark of The MathWorks, Inc. All
other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

# New additions to Accord.NET: Computer Vision namespace, Camshift and Viola-Jones Detector

The next version of the Accord.NET Framework will feature two important additions, alongside with a new namespace to accommodate them: The Camshift object tracker and the Viola-Jones object detector. Both will be located inside the new Accord.Vision namespace for Computer Vision algorithms.

 Camshift object tracker Viola-Jones object detector

Additionally, other cool additions include the availability of Multi-class Kernel Support Vector Machines (with support for parallelized learning algorithms), Generic Cross-validation classes for model evaluation and Generic Gridsearch classes for model parameter tuning.

The Linear and Non-linear Kernel Discriminant Analysis implementations have been updated to use the Generalized Eigenvalue Decomposition instead of the Eigenvalue Decomposition following a prior matrix inversion. This has cut execution time in nearly half. Other optimizations have also been made to some radial basis Kernel functions, although they are not very noticeable.

The next version of the Accord.NET Framework will be labeled version 2.1.0. There are some interface changes that may break compatibility with older versions. Also the minimum required version of AForge.NET Framework has been leveled up to 2.1.3. You may have to update your assemblies if you wish to upgrade an already existing project.

# RANdom Sample Consensus (RANSAC) in C#

RANSAC is an iterative method to build robust estimates for parameters of a mathematical model from a set of observed data which is known to contain outliers. The RANSAC algorithm is often used in computer vision, e.g., to simultaneously solve the correspondence problem and estimate the fundamental matrix related to a pair of stereo cameras.

The code presented here is part of the Accord.NET Framework. The Accord.NET Framework is a framework for developing machine learning, computer vision, computer audition, statistics and math applications in .NET. To use the framework in your projects, install it by typing Install-Package Accord.MachineLearning in your IDE’s NuGet package manager.

## Introduction

RANSAC is an abbreviation for “RANdom SAmple Consensus“. It is an iterative method to estimate parameters of a mathematical model from a set of observed data which may contains outliers. It is a non-deterministic algorithm in the sense that it produces a reasonable result only with a certain probability, with this probability increasing as more iterations are allowed. The algorithm was first published by Fischler and Bolles in 1981.

The basic assumption is that the data consists of “inliers”, i.e., data whose distribution can be explained by some mathematical model, and “outliers” which are data that do not fit the model. Outliers could be considered points which come from noise, erroneous measurements or simply incorrect data. RANSAC also assumes that, given a set of inliers, there exists a procedure which can estimate the parameters of a model that optimally explains or fits this data.

### Example: Fitting a simple linear regression

We can use RANSAC to robustly fit a linear regression model using noisy data. Consider the example below, in which we have a cloud of points that seems to belong to a line. These are the inliers of the data. The other points, which can be seem as measurement errors or extreme noise values, are points expected to be considered outliers.

Linear structure contained in noisy data.

RANSAC is able to automatically distinguish the inliers from the outliers through the evaluation of the linear regression model. To do so, it randomly selects subsets from the data and attempts to fit linear regression models using them. The model which best explains most of the data will then be returned as the most probably correct model fit.

The image below shows the result of fitting a linear regression directly (as shown by the red line) and using RANSAC (as shown by the blue line). We can see that the red line represents poorly the data structure because it considers all points in order to fit the regression model. The blue line seems to be a much better representation of the linear relationship hidden inside the overall noisy data.

Hidden linear structure inside noisy data. The red line shows the fitting of a linear regression model directly considering all data points. The blue line shows the same result using RANSAC.

## Source code

The code below implements RANSAC using a generic approach. Models are considered to be of the reference type TModel and the type of data manipulated by this model is considered to be of the type TData. This approach allows for the creation of a general purpose RANSAC algorithm which can be used in very different contexts, be it the fitting of linear regression models or the estimation of homography matrices from pair of points in different images.

This code is available in the class RANSAC of the Accord.NET Framework (source).

Besides the generic parameters, the class utilizes three delegated functions during execution.

• The Fitting function, which should accept a subset of the data and use it to fit a model of the chosen type, which should be returned by the function;
• The Degenerate function, which should check if a subset of the training data is already known to result in a poor model, to avoid unnecessary computations; and
• The Distance function, which should accept a model and a subset of the training data to compute the distance between the model prediction and the expected value for a given point. It should return the indices of the points only whose predicted and expected values are within a given threshold of tolerance apart.

## Using the code

In the following example, we will fit a simple linear regression of the form x→y using RANSAC. The first step is to create a RANSAC algorithm passing the generic type parameters of the model to be build, i.e. SimpleLinearRegression and of the data to be fitted, i.e. a double array.

In this case we will be using a double array because the first position will hold the values for the input variable x. The second position will be holding the values for the output variables y. If you are already using .NET 4 it is possible to use the Tuple type instead.

After the creation of the RANSAC algorithm, we should set the delegate functions which will tell RANSAC how to fit a model, how to tell if a set of samples is degenerate and how to check for inliers in data.

Finally, all we have to do is call the Compute method passing the data. The best model found will be returned by the function, while the given set of inliers indices for this model will be returned as an out parameter.

## Sample application

The accompanying source application demonstrates the fitting of the simple linear regression model with and without using RANSAC. The application accepts Excel worksheets containing the independent values in the first column and the dependent variables in the second column.