English

Parametric UMAP embeddings for representation and semi-supervised learning

Machine Learning 2021-08-31 v4 Computational Geometry Quantitative Methods Machine Learning

Abstract

UMAP is a non-parametric graph-based dimensionality reduction algorithm using applied Riemannian geometry and algebraic topology to find low-dimensional embeddings of structured data. The UMAP algorithm consists of two steps: (1) Compute a graphical representation of a dataset (fuzzy simplicial complex), and (2) Through stochastic gradient descent, optimize a low-dimensional embedding of the graph. Here, we extend the second step of UMAP to a parametric optimization over neural network weights, learning a parametric relationship between data and embedding. We first demonstrate that Parametric UMAP performs comparably to its non-parametric counterpart while conferring the benefit of a learned parametric mapping (e.g. fast online embeddings for new data). We then explore UMAP as a regularization, constraining the latent distribution of autoencoders, parametrically varying global structure preservation, and improving classifier accuracy for semi-supervised learning by capturing structure in unlabeled data. Google Colab walkthrough: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1WkXVZ5pnMrm17m0YgmtoNjM_XHdnE5Vp?usp=sharing

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.12981,
  title  = {Parametric UMAP embeddings for representation and semi-supervised learning},
  author = {Tim Sainburg and Leland McInnes and Timothy Q Gentner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.12981},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T18:49:52.390Z