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Gradient-free optimization methods or zeroth-order methods are widely used in training neural networks, reinforcement learning, as well as in industrial tasks where only the values of a function at a point are available (working with non-analytical functions). In particular, the method of error back propagation in PyTorch works exactly on this principle. There is a well-known fact that computer calculations use heuristics of floating-point numbers, and because of this, the problem of finiteness of the mantissa arises.

In this paper, firstly, we reviewed the most popular methods of gradient approximation: Finite forward/central difference (FFD/FCD), Forward/Central wise component (FWC/CWC), Forward/Central randomization on $l_2$ sphere (FSSG2/CFFG2); secondly, we described current theoretical representations of the noise introduced by the inaccuracy of calculating the function at a point: adversarial noise, random noise; thirdly, we conducted a series of experiments on frequently encountered classes of problems, such as quadratic problem, logistic regression, SVM, to try to determine whether the real nature of machine noise corresponds to the existing theory. It turned out that in reality (at least for those classes of problems that were considered in this paper), machine noise turned out to be something between adversarial noise and random, and therefore the current theory about the influence of the mantissa limb on the search for the optimum in gradient-free optimization problems requires some adjustment.

The advent of laser scanning technologies has revolutionized forestry. Their use made it possible to switch from studying woodlands using manual measurements to computer analysis of stereo point images called point clouds.

Automatic calculation of some tree parameters (such as trunk diameter) using a point cloud requires the removal of foliage points. To perform this operation, a preliminary segmentation of the stereo image into the “foliage” and “trunk” classes is required. The solution to this problem often involves the use of machine learning methods.

One of the most popular classifiers used for segmentation of stereo images of trees is a random forest. This classifier is quite demanding on the amount of memory. At the same time, the size of the machine learning model can be critical if it needs to be sent by wire, which is required, for example, when performing distributed learning. In this paper, the goal is to find a classifier that would be less demanding in terms of memory, but at the same time would have comparable segmentation accuracy. The search is performed among classifiers such as logistic regression, naive Bayes classifier, and decision tree. In addition, a method for segmentation refinement performed by a decision tree using logistic regression is being investigated.

The experiments were conducted on data from the collection of the University of Heidelberg. The collection contains hand-marked stereo images of trees of various species, both coniferous and deciduous, typical of the forests of Central Europe.

It has been shown that classification using a decision tree, adjusted using logistic regression, is able to produce a result that is only slightly inferior to the result of a random forest in accuracy, while spending less time and RAM. The difference in balanced accuracy is no more than one percent on all the clouds considered, while the total size and inference time of the decision tree and logistic regression classifiers is an order of magnitude smaller than of the random forest classifier.

Gesture recognition is an urgent challenge in developing systems of human-machine interfaces. We analyzed machine learning methods for gesture classification based on electromyographic muscle signals to identify the most effective one. Methods such as the naive Bayesian classifier (NBC), logistic regression, decision tree, random forest, gradient boosting, support vector machine (SVM), $k$-nearest neighbor algorithm, and ensembles (NBC and decision tree, NBC and gradient boosting, gradient boosting and decision tree) were considered. Electromyography (EMG) was chosen as a method of obtaining information about gestures. This solution does not require the location of the hand in the field of view of the camera and can be used to recognize finger movements. To test the effectiveness of the selected methods of gesture recognition, a device was developed for recording the EMG signal, which includes three electrodes and an EMG sensor connected to the microcontroller and the power supply. The following gestures were chosen: clenched fist, “thumb up”, “Victory”, squeezing an index finger and waving a hand from right to left. Accuracy, precision, recall and execution time were used to evaluate the effectiveness of classifiers. These parameters were calculated for three options for the location of EMG electrodes on the forearm. According to the test results, the most effective methods are $k$-nearest neighbors’ algorithm, random forest and the ensemble of NBC and gradient boosting, the average accuracy of ensemble for three electrode positions was 81.55%. The position of the electrodes was also determined at which machine learning methods achieve the maximum accuracy. In this position, one of the differential electrodes is located at the intersection of the flexor digitorum profundus and flexor pollicis longus, the second — above the flexor digitorum superficialis.

The aim of study was to develop an ensemble machine learning method for constructing interpretable predictive models and to validate it using the example of predicting in-hospital mortality (IHM) in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI).

A retrospective cohort study was conducted using data from 5446 electronic medical records of STEMI patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Patients were divided into two groups: 335 (6.2%) patients who died during hospitalization and 5111 (93.8%) patients with a favourable in-hospital outcome. A pool of potential predictors was formed using statistical methods. Through multimetric categorization (minimizing p-values, maximizing the area under the ROC curve (AUC), and SHAP value analysis), decision trees, and multivariable logistic regression (MLR), predictors were transformed into risk factors for IHM. Predictive models for IHM were developed using MLR, Random Forest Risk Factors (RandFRF), Stochastic Gradient Boosting (XGboost), Random Forest (RF), Adaptive boosting, Gradient Boosting, Light Gradient-Boosting Machine, Categorical Boosting (CatBoost), Explainable Boosting Machine and Stacking methods.

Authors developed the RandFRF method, which integrates the predictive outcomes of modified decision trees, identifies risk factors and ranks them based on their contribution to the risk of adverse outcomes. RandFRF enables the development of predictive models with high discriminative performance (AUC 0.908), comparable to models based on CatBoost and Stacking (AUC 0.904 and 0.908, respectively). In turn, risk factors provide clinicians with information on the patient’s risk group classification and the extent of their impact on the probability of IHM. The risk factors identified by RandFRF can serve not only as rationale for the prediction results but also as a basis for developing more accurate models.

Posts on social networks can both predict the movement of the financial market, and in some cases even determine its direction. The analysis of posts on Twitter contributes to the prediction of cryptocurrency prices. The specificity of the community is represented in a special vocabulary. Thus, slang expressions and abbreviations are used in posts, the presence of which makes it difficult to vectorize text data, as a result of which preprocessing methods such as Stanza lemmatization and the use of regular expressions are considered. This paper describes created simplest machine learning models, which may work despite such problems as lack of data and short prediction timeframe. A word is considered as an element of a binary vector of a data unit in the course of the problem of binary classification solving. Basic words are determined according to the frequency analysis of mentions of a word. The markup is based on Binance candlesticks with variable parameters for a more accurate description of the trend of price changes. The paper introduces metrics that reflect the distribution of words depending on their belonging to a positive or negative classes. To solve the classification problem, we used a dense model with parameters selected by Keras Tuner, logistic regression, a random forest classifier, a naive Bayesian classifier capable of working with a small sample, which is very important for our task, and the k-nearest neighbors method. The constructed models were compared based on the accuracy metric of the predicted labels. During the investigation we recognized that the best approach is to use models which predict price movements of a single coin. Our model deals with posts that mention LUNA project, which no longer exist. This approach to solving binary classification of text data is widely used to predict the price of an asset, the trend of its movement, which is often used in automated trading.