Identifying and Using Patterns in Sequential Data

Whereas basic machine learning research has mostly viewed input data as an unordered random sample from a population, researchers have also studied learning from data whose input sequence follows a regular sequence. To do so requires that we regard the input data as a stream and identify regularities in the data values as they occur. In this brief survey I review three sequential-learning problems, examine some new, and not-so-new, algorithms for learning from sequences, and give applications for these methods. The three generic problems I discuss are: Predicting sequences of discrete symbols generated by stochastic processes. Learning streams by extrapolation from a general rule. Learning to predict time series.