Multi-task Learning for Heterogeneous Multi-source Block-Wise Missing Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sui, Yang, Xu, Qi, Bai, Yang, Qu, Annie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Sui, Yang
Xu, Qi
Bai, Yang
Qu, Annie
author_facet Sui, Yang
Xu, Qi
Bai, Yang
Qu, Annie
contents Multi-task learning (MTL) has emerged as an imperative machine learning tool to solve multiple learning tasks simultaneously and has been successfully applied to healthcare, marketing, and biomedical fields. However, in order to borrow information across different tasks effectively, it is essential to utilize both homogeneous and heterogeneous information. Among the extensive literature on MTL, various forms of heterogeneity are presented in MTL problems, such as block-wise, distribution, and posterior heterogeneity. Existing methods, however, struggle to tackle these forms of heterogeneity simultaneously in a unified framework. In this paper, we propose a two-step learning strategy for MTL which addresses the aforementioned heterogeneity. First, we impute the missing blocks using shared representations extracted from homogeneous source across different tasks. Next, we disentangle the mappings between input features and responses into a shared component and a task-specific component, respectively, thereby enabling information borrowing through the shared component. Our numerical experiments and real-data analysis from the ADNI database demonstrate the superior MTL performance of the proposed method compared to other competing methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_24413
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Multi-task Learning for Heterogeneous Multi-source Block-Wise Missing Data
Sui, Yang
Xu, Qi
Bai, Yang
Qu, Annie
Machine Learning
Computation
Multi-task learning (MTL) has emerged as an imperative machine learning tool to solve multiple learning tasks simultaneously and has been successfully applied to healthcare, marketing, and biomedical fields. However, in order to borrow information across different tasks effectively, it is essential to utilize both homogeneous and heterogeneous information. Among the extensive literature on MTL, various forms of heterogeneity are presented in MTL problems, such as block-wise, distribution, and posterior heterogeneity. Existing methods, however, struggle to tackle these forms of heterogeneity simultaneously in a unified framework. In this paper, we propose a two-step learning strategy for MTL which addresses the aforementioned heterogeneity. First, we impute the missing blocks using shared representations extracted from homogeneous source across different tasks. Next, we disentangle the mappings between input features and responses into a shared component and a task-specific component, respectively, thereby enabling information borrowing through the shared component. Our numerical experiments and real-data analysis from the ADNI database demonstrate the superior MTL performance of the proposed method compared to other competing methods.
title Multi-task Learning for Heterogeneous Multi-source Block-Wise Missing Data
topic Machine Learning
Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24413