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I am new in the field of RBMs, DBMs and I cannot understand some things. I came across the idea of feature selection using RBMs (or Deep Belief Networks). Although the Hidden nodes which make new features as a result from the processing of Visible Nodes give 0/1 as output. How do I translate the 0/1 from the Hidden Units? Which part to RBM should I take to find the best features?

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  • $\begingroup$ Can you please provide a reference on a publication that performs this feature selection procedure for RBMs? Usually feature selection relates to input data and not at hidden nodes. $\endgroup$
    – usεr11852
    Jun 19, 2019 at 9:43
  • $\begingroup$ Can you explain what do you mean feature selection relates to input data and not at hidden notes? $\endgroup$
    – nikolaosmparoutis
    Jun 19, 2019 at 9:52
  • $\begingroup$ Feature selection is relative to what is used as input in a model but it is unclear what you mean here in terms of a RBM. Is there a relevant reference to what you refer at? $\endgroup$
    – usεr11852
    Jun 19, 2019 at 11:44

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In your trained RBM model, the hidden units can indeed be seen as extracted features automatically learned from the data at the visible units. However, I think most of the time you would have a hard time trying to interpret what the learned features are, but you can try by visualizing the weights for example.

In general, RBM are used to perform feature selection in order to use a classifier on the selected features without much effort for interpreting the features (scikit-learn example). And this is a great, since you do not need to handcraft the relevant features! Looking at the weights has often the role of a sanity check to track any buggy behavior.

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  • $\begingroup$ This verifies my assumption for feature selection. The hidden nodes marked with 0/1 i suppose 1 are the activated hidden nodes given the a batch input and zero are the off. Although, can a RBM suggest an input given a previous input? $\endgroup$
    – nikolaosmparoutis
    Jun 20, 2019 at 9:40
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    $\begingroup$ Yes, RBM are generative models. You can use them for image reconstruction or more generally to get what the model "believes" facing a given visible vector (hence the name deep belief networks). See for example this paper or this video by Hinton $\endgroup$
    – TheCG
    Jun 20, 2019 at 11:01

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