--- a/writeup/nips2010_submission.tex	Sun May 30 19:43:13 2010 -0400
+++ b/writeup/nips2010_submission.tex	Mon May 31 13:59:11 2010 -0400
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
 \usepackage{graphicx,subfigure}
 \usepackage[numbers]{natbib}
 
-\title{Generating and Exploiting Perturbed and Multi-Task Handwritten Training Data for Deep Architectures}
+\title{Deep Self-Taught Learning for Handwritten Character Recognition}
 \author{The IFT6266 Gang}
 
 \begin{document}
@@ -16,30 +16,25 @@
 \maketitle
 
 \begin{abstract}
-Recent theoretical and empirical work in statistical machine learning has
-demonstrated the importance of learning algorithms for deep
-architectures, i.e., function classes obtained by composing multiple
-non-linear transformations. In the area of handwriting recognition,
-deep learning algorithms
-had been evaluated on rather small datasets with a few tens of thousands
-of examples. Here we propose a powerful generator of variations
-of examples for character images based on a pipeline of stochastic
-transformations that include not only the usual affine transformations
-but also the addition of slant, local elastic deformations, changes
-in thickness, background images, color, contrast, occlusion, and
-various types of pixel and spatially correlated noise.
-We evaluate a deep learning algorithm (Stacked Denoising Autoencoders)
-on the task of learning to classify digits and letters transformed
-with this pipeline, using the hundreds of millions of generated examples
-and testing on the full 62-class NIST test set.
-We find that the SDA outperforms its
-shallow counterpart, an ordinary Multi-Layer Perceptron,
-and that it is better able to take advantage of the additional
-generated data, as well as better able to take advantage of
-the multi-task setting, i.e., 
-training from more classes than those of interest in the end.
-In fact, we find that the SDA reaches human performance as
-estimated by the Amazon Mechanical Turk on the 62-class NIST test characters.
+  Recent theoretical and empirical work in statistical machine learning has
+  demonstrated the importance of learning algorithms for deep
+  architectures, i.e., function classes obtained by composing multiple
+  non-linear transformations. The self-taught learning (exploitng unlabeled
+  examples or examples from other distributions) has already been applied
+  to deep learners, but mostly to show the advantage of unlabeled
+  examples. Here we explore the advantage brought by {\em out-of-distribution
+  examples} and show that {\em deep learners benefit more from them than a
+  corresponding shallow learner}, in the area
+  of handwritten character recognition. In fact, we show that they reach
+  human-level performance on both handwritten digit classification and
+  62-class handwritten character recognition.  For this purpose we
+  developed a powerful generator of stochastic variations and noise
+  processes character images, including not only affine transformations but
+  also slant, local elastic deformations, changes in thickness, background
+  images, color, contrast, occlusion, and various types of pixel and
+  spatially correlated noise. The out-of-distribution examples are 
+  obtained by training with these highly distorted images or
+  by including object classes different from those in the target test set.
 \end{abstract}
 
 \section{Introduction}
@@ -279,11 +274,11 @@
 
 \begin{figure}[h]
 \resizebox{.99\textwidth}{!}{\includegraphics{images/transfo.png}}\\
-\caption{Illustration of each transformation applied to the same image
-of the upper-case h (upper-left image). first row (from left to rigth) : original image, slant,
+\caption{Illustration of each transformation applied alone to the same image
+of an upper-case h (top left). First row (from left to rigth) : original image, slant,
 thickness, affine transformation, local elastic deformation; second row (from left to rigth) :
-pinch, motion blur, occlusion, pixel permutation, gaussian noise; third row (from left to rigth) :
-background image, salt and pepper noise, spatially gaussian noise, scratches,
+pinch, motion blur, occlusion, pixel permutation, Gaussian noise; third row (from left to rigth) :
+background image, salt and pepper noise, spatially Gaussian noise, scratches,
 color and contrast changes.}
 \label{fig:transfo}
 \end{figure}