Description:

mlpack is a fast, flexible C++ machine learning library. Its aim is to make large-scale machine learning possible for novice users by means of a simple, consistent API, while simultaneously exploiting C++ language features to provide maximum performance and maximum flexibility for expert users. mlpack also provides bindings to other languages.

The following methods are provided:

• Approximate furthest neighbor search techniques
• Collaborative Filtering (with NMF)
• Decision Stumps
• DBSCAN
• Density Estimation Trees
• Euclidean Minimum Spanning Trees
• Fast Exact Max-Kernel Search (FastMKS)
• Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs)
• Hidden Markov Models (HMMs)
• Hoeffding trees (streaming decision trees)
• Kernel Principal Components Analysis (KPCA)
• K-Means Clustering
• Least-Angle Regression (LARS/LASSO)
• Local Coordinate Coding
• Locality-Sensitive Hashing (LSH)
• Logistic regression
• Naive Bayes Classifier
• Neighborhood Components Analysis (NCA)
• Neural Networks (FFNs, CNNs, RNNs)
• Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF)
• Perceptron
• Principal Components Analysis (PCA)
• QUIC-SVD
• RADICAL (ICA)
• Regularized SVD
• Rank-Approximate Nearest Neighbor (RANN)
• Simple Least-Squares Linear Regression (and Ridge Regression)
• Sparse Autoencoder
• Sparse Coding
• Tree-based Neighbor Search (all-k-nearest-neighbors, all-k-furthest-neighbors), using either kd-trees or cover trees
• Tree-based Range Search
• and also more not listed here

Command-line executables are provided for each of these, and the C++ classes which define the methods are highly flexible, extensible, and modular. More information (including documentation, tutorials, and bug reports) is available at http://www.mlpack.org/.

Changes to previous version:

Released June 8th, 2018.

• Documentation generation fixes for Python bindings (#1421).
• Fix build error for man pages if command-line bindings are not being built (#1424).
• Add shuffle parameter and Shuffle() method to KFoldCV (#1412). This will shuffle the data when the object is constructed, or when Shuffle() is called.
• Added neural network layers: AtrousConvolution (#1390), Embedding (#1401), and LayerNorm (layer normalization) (#1389).
• Add Pendulum environment for reinforcement learning (#1388) and update Mountain Car environment (#1394).

BibTeX Entry: Download

Corresponding Paper BibTeX Entry: Download

Supported Operating Systems: Platform Independent

Data Formats: Plain Ascii, Ascii, Txt, Hdf, Bin, Csv, Xml

Tags: Gmm, Hmm, Machine Learning, Sparse, Dual Tree, Fast, Scalable, Tree

Archive: download here

Other available revisons

Version	Changelog	Date
3.0.2	Released June 8th, 2018. Documentation generation fixes for Python bindings (#1421). Fix build error for man pages if command-line bindings are not being built (#1424). Add shuffle parameter and Shuffle() method to KFoldCV (#1412). This will shuffle the data when the object is constructed, or when Shuffle() is called. Added neural network layers: AtrousConvolution (#1390), Embedding (#1401), and LayerNorm (layer normalization) (#1389). Add Pendulum environment for reinforcement learning (#1388) and update Mountain Car environment (#1394).	June 9, 2018, 18:03:57
3.0.1	Released May 10th, 2018. Fix intermittently failing tests (#1387). Add Big-Batch SGD (BBSGD) optimizer in src/mlpack/core/optimizers/bigbatch_sgd (#1131). Fix simple compiler warnings (#1380, #1373). Simplify NeighborSearch constructor and Train() overloads (#1378). Add warning for OpenMP setting differences (#1358/#1382). When mlpack is compiled with OpenMP but another application linking against mlpack is not (or vice versa), a compilation warning will now be issued. Restructured loss functions in src/mlpack/methods/ann/ (#1365). Add environments for reinforcement learning tests (#1368, #1370, #1329). Allow single outputs for multiple timestep inputs for recurrent neural networks (#1348). Neural networks: add He and LeCun normal initializations (#1342), add FReLU and SELU activation functions (#1346, #1341), add alpha-dropout (#1349).	May 11, 2018, 05:28:53
3.0.0	Released March 30th, 2018. Speed and memory improvements for DBSCAN. --single_mode can now be used for situations where previously RAM usage was too high. Bump minimum required version of Armadillo to 6.500.0. Add automatically generated Python bindings. These have the same interface as the command-line programs. Add deep learning infrastructure in src/mlpack/methods/ann/. Add reinforcement learning infrastructure in src/mlpack/methods/reinforcement_learning/. Add optimizers: AdaGrad, CMAES, CNE, FrankeWolfe, GradientDescent, GridSearch, IQN, Katyusha, LineSearch, ParallelSGD, SARAH, SCD, SGDR, SMORMS3, SPALeRA, SVRG. Add hyperparameter tuning infrastructure and cross-validation infrastructure in src/mlpack/core/cv/ and src/mlpack/core/hpt/. Fix bug in mean shift. Add random forests (see src/mlpack/methods/random_forest). Numerous other bugfixes and testing improvements. Add randomized Krylov SVD and Block Krylov SVD.	March 31, 2018, 05:31:08
2.2.5	Released August 25, 2017. Compilation fix for some systems (#1082). Fix PARAM_INT_OUT() (#1100).	August 26, 2017, 06:07:47
2.2.4	Released July 18, 2017. Speed and memory improvements for DBSCAN. --single_mode can now be used for situations where previously RAM usage was too high. Fix bug in CF causing incorrect recommendations.	July 19, 2017, 04:24:19
2.2.3	Released May 24, 2017. Bug fix for --predictions_file in mlpack_decision_tree program.	May 24, 2017, 17:31:17
2.2.2	Released May 4, 2017. Install backwards-compatibility mlpack_allknn and mlpack_allkfn programs; note they are deprecated and will be removed in mlpack 3.0.0 (#992). Fix RStarTree bug that surfaced on OS X only (#964). Small fixes for MiniBatchSGD and SGD and tests.	May 5, 2017, 03:01:20
2.2.1	Released Apr. 13th, 2016. Compilation fix for mlpack_nca and mlpack_test on older Armadillo versions (#984).	April 13, 2017, 22:25:04
2.2.0	Released Mar. 21st, 2016. Bugfix for mlpack_knn program (#816). Add decision tree implementation in methods/decision_tree/. This is very similar to a C4.5 tree learner. Add DBSCAN implementation in methods/dbscan/. Add support for multidimensional discrete distributions (#810, #830). Better output for Log::Debug/Log::Info/Log::Warn/Log::Fatal for Armadillo objects (#895, #928). Refactor categorical CSV loading with boost::spirit for faster loading (#681).	April 13, 2017, 21:32:52
2.1.1	Released Dec. 22nd, 2016. HMMs now use random initialization; this should fix some convergence issues (#828). HMMs now initialize emissions according to the distribution of observations (#833). Minor fix for formatted output (#814). Fix DecisionStump to properly work with any input type.	December 22, 2016, 20:01:29
2.1.0	Fixed CoverTree to properly handle single-point datasets. - Fixed a bug in CosineTree (and thus QUIC-SVD) that caused split failures for some datasets (#717). - Added mlpack_preprocess_describe program, which can be used to print statistics on a given dataset (#742). - Fix prioritized recursion for k-furthest-neighbor search (mlpack_kfn and the KFN class), leading to orders-of-magnitude speedups in some cases. - Bump minimum required version of Armadillo to 4.200.0. - Added simple Gradient Descent optimizer, found in src/mlpack/core/optimizers/gradient_descent/ (#792). - Added approximate furthest neighbor search algorithms QDAFN and DrusillaSelect in src/mlpack/methods/approx_kfn/, with command-line program mlpack_approx_kfn.	November 1, 2016, 16:01:16
2.0.3	Standardize some parameter names for programs (old names are kept for reverse compatibility, but warnings will now be issued). RectangleTree optimizations (#721). Fix memory leak in NeighborSearch (#731). Documentation fix for k-means tutorial (#730). Fix TreeTraits for BallTree (#727). Fix incorrect parameter checks for some command-line programs. Fix error in HMM training with probabilities for each point (#636).	July 22, 2016, 00:39:12
2.0.2	Added the function LSHSearch::Projections(), which returns an arma::cube with each projection table in a slice (#663). Instead of Projection(i), you should now use Projections().slice(i). A new constructor has been added to LSHSearch that creates objects using projection tables provided in an arma::cube (#663). LSHSearch projection tables refactored for speed (#675). Handle zero-variance dimensions in DET (#515). Add MiniBatchSGD optimizer (src/mlpack/core/optimizers/minibatch_sgd/) and allow its use in mlpack_logistic_regression and mlpack_nca programs. Add better backtrace support from Grzegorz Krajewski for Log::Fatal messages when compiled with debugging and profiling symbols. This requires libbfd and libdl to be present during compilation. CosineTree test fix from Mikhail Lozhnikov (#358). Fixed HMM initial state estimation (#600). Changed versioning macros _MLPACKVERSION_MAJOR, _MLPACKVERSION_MINOR, and _MLPACKVERSION_PATCH to MLPACK_VERSION_MAJOR, MLPACK_VERSION_MINOR, and MLPACK_VERSION_PATCH. The old names will remain in place until mlpack 3.0.0. Renamed mlpack_allknn, mlpack_allkfn, and mlpack_allkrann to mlpack_knn, mlpack_kfn, and mlpack_krann. The mlpack_allknn, mlpack_allkfn, and mlpack_allkrann programs will remain as copies until mlpack 3.0.0. Add --random_initialization option to mlpack_hmm_train, for use when no labels are provided. Add --kill_empty_clusters option to mlpack_kmeans and KillEmptyClusters policy for the KMeans class (#595, #596).	June 20, 2016, 22:23:45
2.0.1	Fix CMake to properly detect when MKL is being used with Armadillo. Minor parameter handling fixes to mlpack_logistic_regression. Properly install arma_config.hpp. Memory handling fixes for Hoeffding tree code. Add functions that allow changing training-time parameters to HoeffdingTree class. Fix infinite loop in sparse coding test. Documentation spelling fixes. Properly handle covariances for Gaussians with large condition number, preventing GMMs from filling with NaNs during training (and also HMMs that use GMMs). CMake fixes for finding LAPACK and BLAS as Armadillo dependencies when ATLAS is used. CMake fix for projects using mlpack's CMake configuration from elsewhere.	March 3, 2016, 18:52:03
2.0.0	Removed overclustering support from k-means because it is not well-tested, may be buggy, and is (I think) unused. If this was support you were using, open a bug or get in touch with us; it would not be hard for us to reimplement it. Refactored KMeans to allow different types of Lloyd iterations. Added implementations of k-means: Elkan's algorithm, Hamerly's algorithm, Pelleg-Moore's algorithm, and the DTNN (dual-tree nearest neighbor) algorithm. Significant acceleration of LRSDP via the use of accu(a % b) instead of trace(a * b). Added MatrixCompletion class (matrix_completion), which performs nuclear norm minimization to fill unknown values of an input matrix. No more dependence on Boost.Random; now we use C++11 STL random support. Add softmax regression, contributed by Siddharth Agrawal and QiaoAn Chen. Changed NeighborSearch, RangeSearch, FastMKS, LSH, and RASearch API; these classes now take the query sets in the Search() method, instead of in the constructor. Use OpenMP, if available. For now OpenMP support is only available in the DET training code. Add support for predicting new test point values to LARS and the command-line 'lars' program. Add serialization support for Perceptron and LogisticRegression. Refactor SoftmaxRegression to predict into an arma::Row object, and add a softmax_regression program. Refactor LSH to allow loading and saving of models. ToString() is removed entirely (#487). Add --input_model_file and --output_model_file options to appropriate machine learning algorithms. Rename all executables to start with an "mlpack" prefix (#229). See also https://mailman.cc.gatech.edu/pipermail/mlpack/2015-December/000706.html for more information.	January 11, 2016, 17:24:35
1.0.12	Switch to 3-clause BSD license.	January 7, 2015, 19:23:51
1.0.11	Proper handling of dimension calculation in PCA. Load parameter vectors properly for LinearRegression models. Linker fixes for AugLagrangian specializations under Visual Studio. Add support for observation weights to LinearRegression. MahalanobisDistance<> now takes root of the distance by default and therefore satisfies the triangle inequality (TakeRoot now defaults to true). Better handling of optional Armadillo HDF5 dependency. Fixes for numerous intermittent test failures. math::RandomSeed() now sets the seed for recent (>= 3.930) Armadillo versions. Handle Newton method convergence better for SparseCoding::OptimizeDictionary() and make maximum iterations a parameter. Known bug: CosineTree construction may fail in some cases on i386 systems (376).	December 11, 2014, 18:20:35
1.0.10	Bugfix for NeighborSearch regression which caused very slow allknn/allkfn. Speeds are nwo restored to approximately 1.0.8 speeds, with significant improvement for the cover tree (#365). Detect dependencies correctly when ARMA_USE_WRAPPER is not defined (i.e. libarmadillo.so does not exist). Bugfix for compilation under Visual Studio (#366).	August 29, 2014, 21:26:18
1.0.9	GMM initialization is now safer and provides a working GMM when constructed with only the dimensionality and number of Gaussians (#314). Check for division by 0 in Forward-Backward Algorithm in HMMs (#314). Fix MaxVarianceNewCluster (used when re-initializing clusters for k-means) (#314). Fixed implementation of Viterbi algorithm in HMM::Predict() (#316). Significant speedups for dual-tree algorithms using the cover tree (#243, #329) including a faster implementation of FastMKS. Fix for LRSDP optimizer so that it compiles and can be used (#325). CF (collaborative filtering) now expects users and items to be zero-indexed, not one-indexed (#324). CF::GetRecommendations() API change: now requires the number of recommendations as the first parameter. The number of users in the local neighborhood should be specified with CF::NumUsersForSimilarity(). Removed incorrect PeriodicHRectBound (#30). Refactor LRSDP into LRSDP class and standalone function to be optimized (#318). Fix for centering in kernel PCA (#355). Added simulated annealing (SA) optimizer, contributed by Zhihao Lou. HMMs now support initial state probabilities; these can be set in the constructor, trained, or set manually with HMM::Initial() (#315). Added Nyström method for kernel matrix approximation by Marcus Edel. Kernel PCA now supports using Nyström method for approximation. Ball trees now work with dual-tree algorithms, via the BallBound<> bound structure (#320); fixed by Yash Vadalia. The NMF class is now AMF<>, and supports far more types of factorizations, by Sumedh Ghaisas. A QUIC-SVD implementation has returned, written by Siddharth Agrawal and based on older code from Mudit Gupta. Added perceptron and decision stump by Udit Saxena (these are weak learners for an eventual AdaBoost class). Sparse autoencoder added by Siddharth Agrawal.	July 28, 2014, 20:52:10
1.0.8	Memory leak in NeighborSearch index-mapping code fixed. GMMs can be trained using the existing model as a starting point by specifying an additional boolean parameter to GMM::Estimate(). Logistic regression implementation added in methods/logistic_regression. Version information is now obtainable via mlpack::util::GetVersion() or the _MLPACKVERSION_MAJOR, _MLPACKVERSION_MINOR, and _MLPACKVERSION_PATCH macros. Fix typos in allkfn and allkrann output.	January 7, 2014, 05:47:22
1.0.7	Cover tree support for range_search, rank-approximate nearest neighbors, minimum spanning tree calculation, and FastMKS. Dual-tree FastMKS implementation added and tests. Added collaborative filtering package that can provide recommendations when given users and items. Fix for correctness of Kernel PCA. Speedups for PCA and Kernel PCA. Fix for correctness of Neighborhood Components Analysis (NCA). Minor speedups for dual-tree algorithms. Fix for Naive Bayes Classifier (nbc). Added a ridge regression option to LinearRegression (linear_regression). Gaussian Mixture Models (gmm::GMM<>) now support arbitrary covariance matrix constraints. MVU removed because it is known to not work. Minor updates and fixes for kernels (in mlpack::kernel).	October 4, 2013, 22:24:48
1.0.6	Minor bugfix so that FastMKS gets built.	June 13, 2013, 21:26:10
1.0.5	Speedups of cover tree traversers; addition of rank-approximate nearest neighbor (RANN); addition of fast exact max-kernel search (FastMKS); fix for EM covariance estimation; more parameters for GMM estimation; force GMM and GaussianDistribution covariance matrices to be positive definite during training; add a tolerance parameter to the Baum-Welch algorithm for HMM training; fix for compilation with clang; fix for k-furthest neighbor search.	May 2, 2013, 07:24:32
1.0.4	Force minimum Armadillo version of 2.4.2; add locality-sensitive hashing (LSH); handle size_t support correctly with Armadillo 3.6.2; better tests for SGD and NCA; better output of types to streams; some style fixes.	February 8, 2013, 22:32:43
1.0.3	Armadillo 3.4.0 includes sparse matrix support internally; MLPACK's internal sparse matrix support has thus been removed.	September 17, 2012, 01:27:19
1.0.2	Added density estimation trees, nonnegative matrix factorization, an experimental cover tree implementation, and several bugfixes. See http://trac.research.cc.gatech.edu/fastlab/milestone/mlpack%201.0.2 for a full listing of tickets closed.	August 15, 2012, 20:47:13
1.0.1	Added local coordinate coding, sparse coding, kernel PCA, and several bugfixes.	March 20, 2012, 20:59:53
1.0.0	Yet another announcement on mloss.org.	December 17, 2011, 10:37:05
0.2	Initial Announcement on mloss.org.	November 20, 2009, 04:01:36
0.1	Initial Announcement on mloss.org.	October 7, 2008, 07:12:37

Comments

Eileen (on February 13, 2009, 12:13:23)

having this problem when running fl-build-all /bin/sh: g++4: not found make: *** [$FASTLIBPATH/bin/i686_Linux_fast_gcc4_-DDISABLE_DISK_MATRIX/obj/mlpack_allnn_main.o] Error 127 and a whole lot of similar error Am i missing something?

fastlab (on February 14, 2009, 03:55:05)

You need to install gcc 4. Which platform are you running on?

Paul Rodriguez (on December 21, 2010, 21:38:24)

Hi, I've set up the ccmake configuration options as appropriate but now I'm having trouble with the make command described below, thanks, Paul Rodriguez Using a santos linux, on an intel 64 bit processor, when I execute "make install" I get the following error regarding pthread_atfork: -- A library with BLAS API found. -- A library with BLAS API found. -- A library with LAPACK API found. -- Configuring done -- Generating done -- Build files have been written to: /users/sdsc/prodriguez/mlpack-0.2/fastlib/build [ 2%] Built target template_types [ 5%] Built target template_types_detect [ 17%] Built target base [ 20%] Built target col [ 23%] Built target file [ 30%] Built target fx [ 33%] Built target la [ 35%] Built target data [ 35%] Built target tree [ 43%] Built target math [ 46%] Built target par [ 87%] Built target fastlib [ 89%] Built target otrav_test [ 92%] Built target col_test [ 94%] Building CXX object fastlib/data/CMakeFiles/dataset_test.dir/dataset_test.cc.o Linking CXX executable dataset_test /rmount/usr_apps/compilers/intel/Compiler/11.1/038/lib/intel64/libguide.so: undefined reference to `pthread_atfork' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[2]: *** [fastlib/data/dataset_test] Error 1 make[1]: *** [fastlib/data/CMakeFiles/dataset_test.dir/all] Error 2 make: *** [all] Error 2

Andreas Mueller (on March 20, 2012, 13:29:07)

Two comments: 1) I have not found a way to contact the project on the project website. Having to come to mloss and logging in to contact the developers seems a bit weird. 2) mlpack does not seems to build with armadilla in a non-standard location. After trying to feed cmake the correct pathes for a while I gave up and installed globally. In particular, setting the paths in the CMake configuration doesn't help much. Would be cool if you could fix that. Cheers, Andy

Ryan Curtin (on March 20, 2012, 20:22:49)

Hello Andy, I've clarified www.mlpack.org a bit to note that the Trac site is where bugs can be filed. As for finding Armadillo, I have not had a problem doing the following (in this instance, I've got Armadillo 2.99.1 built in /home/ryan/src/armadillo-2.99.1/) `build$ cmake -D ARMADILLO_INCLUDE_DIR=/home/ryan/src/armadillo-2.99.1/build/ -D ARMADILLO_LIBRARY=/home/ryan/src/armadillo-2.99.1/libarmadillo.so ../` Did those two variables (ARMADILLO_INCLUDE_DIR and ARMADILLO_LIBRARY) not work for you? If you're still having problems (or have other problems) feel free to file a ticket at http://trac.research.cc.gatech.edu/fastlab/

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