Pyramid

Pyramid is research project from Columbia University that is our first step towards Selective Data Systems.

Requirements

• The src/ directory contains the Pyramid source code.

• The example/ directory contains and example for running a count featurization example.

• Building the Scala code in src/ requires java and sbt be installed.

• Run sbt 'set test in assembly := {}' clean assembly in the src/ directory to build.

Running the Command Line Tool

• Run the command line tool using java -jar <java flags> src/target/scala-2.10/counttable-assembly-0.1.jar <config file>. The config file is a JSON file that controls the action run by the command line tools.

Data Format

We expect for the data set to be in VW's basic form like <label> | feature1 feature2 feature3.

Building a count table

Below is an example configuration file for building a count table

    "name": "pyramid_example",

    "command": "build",

    // Total number of features.
    "featureCount": 39,

    // Features that should be counted together.
    "featureCombinations": [],

    // Valid labels found in the data.
    "labels": [-1, 1],

    // Scale value of the laplacian distribution that will be sampled.
    "noiseLaplaceB": 195,

    // Configure to use a standard CMS by setting type of "cms"
    "countTableConfig": {"type": "unbiased_cms",
                         "delta": 0.007,
                         "epsilon": 0.0000272},

    // Path to the file containing percentiles to bucket the numeric values.
    "percentilesFile": "example_percentiles.txt",
    // File to which the count table should be written.
    "countTableFile": "count_table.txt",
    // Data file containing data to be used to build the count table.
    "countDataFile": "example_data.txt.vw.gz"
}

Fields

• command: Must be set to build
• name: The name to be assigned to the count table
• featureCount: integer containing the number of fields in each observation
• featureCombinations: Array of arrays noting which combinations of features to be counted together. An empty array, [], will count individual features and [[1,2], [4,5]] will count the individuals plus 1 & 2 and features 4 & 5.
• labels: Array of labels expected in the dataset. If any other label is observed it is undefined.
• noiseLaplaceB: floating point number denoting the scale value b to be used to parameterize the laplacian distribution.
• countTableConfig: JSON object with three fields type, delta, and epsilon. type can be cms indicate that a count min sketch should be used as the count table, unbiased_cms indicates a count median sketch should be used, and exact indicating that a hash table will be used. delta and epsilon parameterize the number of rows or columns to be used in one of the sketches.
• percentilesFile: File used to discretize the numeric features. It will have a number of lines in the form 2 | 0.2 0.5 0.6 where 2 is the feature index and 0.2 0.5 0.7 are the bounds for bucketing.
• countTableFile: The file to which the count table will be written.
• countDataFile: Path to the data file to be used to build the count table.

Transforming data

Below is an example configuration file for transforming a dataset.

{
    "command": "transform",

    // Number of features per observation.
    "featureCount": 39,

    "keepOriginalFeatures": false,

    // true and empty list keeps everything
    "originalFeaturesToKeep": [],

    // True if the feature vector should include the count value.
    "featurizeWithProbabilities": true,
    "removeFirstLabel": true,

    // Path to the file containing percentiles to bucket the numeric values.
    "percentilesFile": "example_percentiles.txt",
    // File from which the count table should be read.
    "countTableFile": "count_table.txt",
    // File from which the raw data should be read.
    "transformDataFilePath": "example_data.txt.vw.gz",
    // File to which the featurized data should be written.
    "outDataFile": "count_data.txt.gz"
}

Fields

• command: Must be set to transform.
• featureCount: integer containing the number of fields in each observation
• keepOriginalFeatures: Set to true to keep original features in addition to the count features
• originalFeaturesToKeep: Array where if keepOriginalFeatures is set to true then the features in the array will be kept. Leave empty to keep all features.
• featurizeWithProbabilities: Set to true to include probabilities in the count featurized data.
• featurizeWithCounts: Set to true to include marginal counts in the count featurized data.
• featurizeWithTotalCounts: Set to true to include the total number of times a feature value is observed as a feature.
• percentilesFile: File used to discretize the numeric features. It will have a number of lines in the form 2 | 0.2 0.5 0.6 where 2 is the feature index and 0.2 0.5 0.7 are the bounds for bucketing.
• countTableFile: The file to which the count table will be read.
• outDataFile: Data into which the count featurized data will be written.