% User documentation for the EYE project. % % Begun 26 Feb 96 % Copyright Mary Soon Lee 1996 %------------------------------------------------------------------ \documentstyle[psfig]{article} \title{EYE Documentation: Version 0.0} \author{} \begin{document} \maketitle \section{Introduction} EYE is a tool to help people apply machine learning and statistical techniques. It enables people to use advanced techniques without needing to master the underlying algorithms. Instead EYE has a simple interface where the user presents the raw data, and then applies EYE to perform the desired analysis. Options include: \begin{itemize} \item {\bf blackbox}: searches for a model that accurately explains the data. \item{\bf optimize}: finds a set of inputs that will optimize a given criterion, for instance to maximize the sum of the outputs. \item {\bf predict}: predicts future behavior from past data. \end{itemize} See Section~\ref{compendium} for a compendium of EYE options. This document explains how to use EYE. If you are in a hurry to begin, you need only read section~\ref{example} and section~\ref{starting}. Later sections describe the online help facility, additional user interface tools, and the advanced interface to EYE. To illustrate the use of EYE, we consider the example of a gardener trying to grow prize-winning flowers. \subsection{An Example: The Gardener} \label{example} Suppose a gardener with an interest in machine learning wants to grow prize-winning flowers. She's kept records of her past attempts: what fertilizers she used, how much she watered the seedlings, the temperature of the greenhouse, what height the flowers grew to, how brightly-colored they were. The gardener decides to use EYE to help her. She has several new plant regimens in mind, and wants EYE to predict how well each one will perform. She's also curious to see what regimen EYE itself will recommend if she asks it to maximize the brightness of the flowers, subject to the constraint that the flowers must be at least thirty centimeters in height. \section{Getting Started: How to Get EYE Running} \label{starting} This section provides all the information you need to start using EYE. EYE can run under either Windows 95 or Windows NT on a PC. To start it, bring up an MS-DOS Command Prompt window, move to the directory where you saved the EYE executable (by using the cd command), and type EYE. This will bring up the EYE window with the initial welcome screen. The simplest way to use EYE is via the GMBL menu\footnote{For the curious, GMBL stands for General Memory Based Learning, the machine learning approach that underpins the EYE code.} on the main menu bar. Select the GMBL menu with the left mouse button, and then select the first menu item, ``Run GMBL.'' This brings up the following dialog box: \centerline{\psfig{file=simpledialog.ps,height=3in}} Suppose the gardener introduced in section~\ref{example} wants to see how the flower-height depends on the various factors in the plant regimen (the quantity of green-grow fertilizer, the number of mineral-drops, the amount of water, and the temperature of the greenhouse). To find out, first type garden.mbl into the datafile slot of the dialog box to tell EYE to use the gardening data. Now select the {\bf graph} option from the main listbox by clicking it with the left mouse button. The dialog box should now look like this: \centerline{\psfig{file=simpledialog2.ps,height=3in}} Press the RUN button. The cursor changes to a black eye while EYE analyzes the data, and then EYE displays four graphs, showing how the flower-height varies with each of the four factors in turn, while the other factors are held constant. Notice that the bottom-right graph, corresponding to the effect of temperature, is very close to a flat line. This shows that the flower-height is hardly affected by the temperature---at least for the regimens the gardener has tried in the past. To run EYE again, select the ``Run GMBL'' option from the GMBL menu as before. The same dialog box will appear, with the datafile already filled in as garden.mbl. Perhaps this time the gardener, being an intrepid soul, wants to see if EYE can find a model that explains the data. To follow in her footsteps, select the {\bf blackbox} option from the listbox and then press the RUN button. The black eye appears, showing that EYE is at work, and results start scrolling down the screen. EYE is busy searching for a good model for the data. The {\bf blackbox} option performs this search without any prompting from the user. It tries out function approximators such as nearest neighbor, kernel regression, and attribute subsets---autonomously tuning their parameters and deciding which model to test next. After a few seconds, the black eye disappears, and the text stops scrolling. You can now examine EYE's report on the {\bf blackbox} search. The overall evaluation should be visible at the bottom of the scrollable window. It should look something like this\footnote{Because EYE uses random numbers to make decisions such as which data should be used in the testset, the precise results will vary from one run to the next.}: \begin{verbatim} 4. Evaluation. Now, if we simply predicted the global average, the mean-abs testset error would be 5.67. The best thing we've found so far in the searches reduces that by 94%. \end{verbatim} This tells us that EYE has found a model for the data whose average prediction error is only six percent of that for the global average model. You have now learned almost all that you need to know to start applying EYE to your own data. To run EYE, select ``Run GMBL,'' type in the datafile, select the option you want, and press the RUN button. There is only one more thing you need to know: how to get EYE to use your own data. \subsection{Datafiles} EYE expects datafiles to be arranged with one datapoint per line in the file. Each datapoint consists of a sequence of floating point numbers, specifying the values of each of the variables for that datapoint. If you wish to include comments in your datafiles, you can do so by starting each line of comment with the ``\%'' character. For instance, here is part of the garden.mbl datafile: \begin{verbatim} % GreenG MinDrop Water Temp Height Brightness 2 2 2 15 11.9 2 2 2 2 20 12.1 2 2 2 2 25 11.5 2 2 2 4 15 27.9 2 \end{verbatim} By default, EYE assumes that the rightmost column of numbers represents the output value, and that all the other variables are inputs. To find out how to specify other formats, see section ~\ref{advanced} (in brief: you need to select the advanced option from the ``Run GMBL'' dialog box, and then edit the format slot in the advanced dialog box). You are now ready to try out EYE on your own data. In doing so, you may spot unfamiliar terms appearing on the screen, such as {\bf gmstring} or {\bf AutoRSM}. The following section describes how to get online help that will explain cryptic terms like these. Later sections describe such things as how to switch to the previous screen, how to halt EYE mid way through a computation, and how to use the advanced interface to gain additional control. \section{Getting Help} \label{help} The simplest way to use EYE's online help is via the Help menu on the main menu bar. To see the range of topics for which help is provided, select ``Introductory Help'' from the Help menu. This brings up a list of the available help topics. To get help on any of these, just click on the corresponding word with the left mouse button. Whenever you see underlined words, such as those on the introductory help screen, you can click them with the left mouse button to get more information. Sometimes clicking a word that isn't underlined will still produce help. (EYE's output would look rather messy if it always underlined every word for which help was available.) Help is also available from the Help buttons on several of the dialog boxes. The next section describes additional user interface features---from how to use the File menu, to how to change the colors used to display EYE's output. Section~\ref{advanced} describes more advanced features of the interface, and section~\ref{compendium} is a compendium of all the EYE options. \section{A Medley of Other GUI Features} Section~\ref{starting} explained a simple way to run EYE, and section~\ref{help} described how to use the online help. This section discusses other useful features of the interface. %The eye cursor. %The blackbox image. \subsection{The File Menu} \subsection{Halting EYE} \subsection{Where Did the Last Screen Go?} \subsection{Colors and Fonts} \section{An Advanced Interface to EYE} \label{advanced} \subsection{Edit} % Say how to edit the data format, and how to name variables \subsection{Inspect} \subsection{A Note on Data Formats} \label{dataformat} \section{A Compendium of EYE Functions} \label{compendium} \section{Schenley Park Research, Inc.} \end{document}