Boltzmann Machine Learning with the Latent Maximum Entropy Principle
We present a new statistical learning paradigm for Boltzmann machines based on a new inference principle we have proposed: the latent maximum entropy principle (LME). LME is different both from Jaynes' maximum entropy principle and from standard maximum likelihood estimation. We demonstrate the LME principle by deriving new algorithms for Boltzmann machine parameter estimation, and show how a robust and rapidly convergent new variant of the EM algorithm can be developed. Our experiments show that estimation based on LME generally yields better results than maximum likelihood estimation when inferring models from small amounts of data.