From 6bc13c852a251cc794b2bd60cd77463ad7a8c59d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: AdeB <adbrebs@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 11:00:17 -0400
Subject: Alex's instructions to reproduce the results.

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 Winning entry to the Kaggle ECML/PKDD destination competition.
 
 https://www.kaggle.com/c/pkdd-15-predict-taxi-service-trajectory-i
+
+
+
+**Dependencies**
+
+We used the following packages developped at the MILA lab:
+•  Theano. A general GPU-accelerated python math library, with an interface similar to numpy (see [3, 4]). http://deeplearning.net/software/theano/
+•  Blocks. A deep-learning and neural network framework for Python based on Theano. https://github.com/mila-udem/blocks
+•  Fuel. A data pipelining framework for Blocks. https://github.com/mila-udem/fuel 
+We also used the scikit-learn Python library for their mean-shift clustering algorithm. numpy, cPickle and h5py are also used at various places.
+
+
+
+**Structure**
+
+  Here is a brief description of the Python files in the archive:
+
+  <\itemize>
+    <item><verbatim|config/*.py> : configuration files for the different
+    models we have experimented with
+
+    The model which gets the best solution is
+    <verbatim|mlp_tgtcls_1_cswdtx_alexandre.py>
+
+    <item><verbatim|data/*.py> : files related to the data pipeline:
+
+    <\itemize>
+      <item><verbatim|__init__.py> contains some general statistics about the
+      data
+
+      <item><verbatim|csv_to_hdf5.py> : convert the CSV data file into an
+      HDF5 file usable directly by Fuel
+
+      <item><verbatim|hdf5.py> : utility functions for exploiting the HDF5
+      file
+
+      <item><verbatim|init_valid.py> : initializes the HDF5 file for the
+      validation set
+
+      <item><verbatim|make_valid_cut.py> : generate a validation set using a
+      list of time cuts. Cut lists are stored in Python files in
+      <verbatim|data/cuts/> (we used a single cut file)
+
+      <item><verbatim|transformers.py> : Fuel pipeline for transforming the
+      training dataset into structures usable by our model
+    </itemize>
+
+    <item><strong|<verbatim|data_analysis/*.py>> : scripts for various
+    statistical analyses on the dataset
+
+    <\itemize>
+      <item><verbatim|cluster_arrival.py> : the script used to generate the
+      mean-shift clustering of the destination points, producing the 3392
+      target points
+    </itemize>
+
+    <item><verbatim|model/*.py> : source code for the various models we tried
+
+    <\itemize>
+      <item><verbatim|__init__.py> contains code common to all the models,
+      including the code for embedding the metadata
+
+      <item><verbatim|mlp.py> contains code common to all MLP models
+
+      <item><verbatim|dest_mlp_tgtcls.py> containts code for our MLP
+      destination prediction model using target points for the output layer
+    </itemize>
+
+    <item><verbatim|error.py> contains the functions for calculating the
+    error based on the Haversine Distance
+
+    <item><verbatim|ext_saveload.py> contains a Blocks extension for saving
+    and reloading the model parameters so that training can be interrupted
+
+    <item><verbatim|ext_test.py> contains a Blocks extension that runs the
+    model on the test set and produces an output CSV submission file
+
+    <item><verbatim|train.py> contains the main code for the training and
+    testing
+  </itemize>
+  
+  
+  **How to reproduce the winning results?**
+  
+  
+    <\enumerate>
+    <item>Set the <verbatim|TAXI_PATH> environment variable to the path of
+    the folder containing the CSV files.
+
+    <item>Run <verbatim|data/csv_to_hdf5.py> to generate the HDF5 file (which
+    is generated in <verbatim|TAXI_PATH>, along the CSV files). This takes
+    around 20 minutes on our machines.
+
+    <item>Run <verbatim|data/init_valid.py> to initialize the validation set
+    HDF5 file.
+
+    <item>Run <verbatim|data/make_valid_cut.py test_times_0> to generate the
+    validation set. This can take a few minutes.
+
+    <item>Run <verbatim|data_analysis/cluster_arrival.py> to generate the
+    arrival point clustering. This can take a few minutes.
+
+    <item>Create a folder <verbatim|model_data> and a folder
+    <verbatim|output> (next to the training script), which will receive
+    respectively a regular save of the model parameters and many submission
+    files generated from the model at a regular interval.
+
+    <item>Run <verbatim|./train.py dest_mlp_tgtcls_1_cswdtx_alexandre> to
+    train the model. Output solutions are generated in <verbatim|output/>
+    every 1000 iterations. Interrupt the model with three consecutive Ctrl+C
+    at any times. The training script is set to stop training after 10 000
+    000 iterations, but a result file produced after less than 2 000 000
+    iterations is already the winning solution. We trained our model on a
+    GeForce GTX 680 card and it took about an afternoon to generate the
+    winning solution.
+
+    When running the training script, set the following Theano flags
+    environment variable to exploit GPU parallelism:
+
+    <verbatim|THEANO_FLAGS=floatX=float32,device=gpu,optimizer=FAST_RUN>
+
+    Theano is only compatible with CUDA, which requires an Nvidia GPU.
+    Training on the CPU is also possible but much slower.
+  </enumerate>
+
+  
+  
+  
+  
+  More information in this pdf: https://github.com/adbrebs/taxi/blob/master/doc/short_report.pdf
+  
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