Learning Extremal Representations with Deep Archetypal Analysis

Archetypes represent extreme manifestations of a population with respect to specific characteristic traits or features. In linear feature space, archetypes approximate the data convex hull allowing all data points to be expressed as convex mixtures of archetypes. As mixing of archetypes is performed directly on the input data, linear Archetypal Analysis requires additivity of the input, which is a strong assumption unlikely to hold e.g. in case of image data. To address this problem, we propose learning an appropriate latent feature space while simultaneously identifying suitable archetypes. We thus introduce a generative formulation of the linear archetype model, parameterized by neural networks. By introducing the distance-dependent archetype loss, the linear archetype model can be integrated into the latent space of a deep variational information bottleneck and an optimal representation, together with the archetypes, can be learned end-to-end. Moreover, the information bottleneck framework allows for a natural incorporation of arbitrarily complex side information during training. As a consequence, learned archetypes become easily interpretable as they derive their meaning directly from the included side information. Applicability of the proposed method is demonstrated by exploring archetypes of female facial expressions while using multi-rater based emotion scores of these expressions as side information. A second application illustrates the exploration of the chemical space of small organic molecules. By using different kinds of side information we demonstrate how identified archetypes, along with their interpretation, largely depend on the side information provided.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11263-020-01390-3.