Machine Learning

Imagine you track your morning commute times by recording 50 real-world trips with your GPS-enabled phone. You also run a traffic simulator to generate 5,000 possible commute scenarios. You want a reliable estimate of the 95th percentile of commute time—the duration you won’t exceed 95% of the days. Using only your 50 recorded trips yields a wide confidence interval. Using only the simulator risks systematic biases: it might ignore sudden road closures or special events. ...

The text-to-SQL task involves converting natural language questions into executable SQL queries on a relational database. While modern large language models (LLMs) excel at many generative tasks, generating correct and complex SQL queries remains challenging. In the paper RetrySQL: text-to-SQL training with retry data for self-correcting query generation, the authors introduce a training paradigm that teaches the model to self-monitor and correct its reasoning steps during generation, rather than relying solely on post-processing modules. ...

Can we predict when and where people will rent electric scooters? Yes — and with impressive accuracy. A recent publication shows how advanced algorithms like XGBoost can revolutionize the management of micromobility in cities. 🌍 Context: Micromobility and Demand In many cities, dockless electric scooters have become a daily transport option. But for operators, a crucial question remains: Where and when will people want to rent a scooter? Too many vehicles in one location is wasteful. Too few — lost revenue and frustrated users. That’s why accurately predicting demand is so important. ...

When we train deep neural networks, they often get stuck — not in a bad result, but in a “flat region” of the loss landscape. The authors of this paper introduce ghost nodes: extra, fake output nodes that aren’t real classes, but help the model explore better paths during training. Imagine you’re rolling a ball into a valley. Sometimes the valley floor is flat and the ball slows down. Ghost nodes are like adding new dimensions to the terrain — giving the ball more freedom to move and find a better path. ...