[mlpack] [GSoC] Asking About the Feasibility of an Idea in RL

[Ahmed Maher]

Great! I am going to delve more into mlpack's code to get a good grasp of
how extending its code base would be like. Then, I am going to shape the
idea into a more concrete one to best fit mlpack and the time of GSoC. I
will let you know of the more detailed idea as soon as I can.

Best Regards,


On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 2:12 PM Marcus Edel <marcus.edel at fu-berlin.de>
wrote:

> Hello Ahmed,
>
> sorry for the slow response, it's definitely a challenge to get everything
> together in time, but if you are up for that I think this is a neat
> project to
> work on. Let me know what you think.
>
> Thanks,
> Marcus
>
> On 8. Mar 2019, at 21:05, Ahmed Maher <iahmedmaher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sure! pointer-generator networks just have a layer on top of the normal
> pointer networks which makes the code Namrata96 is planning to finish
> before May (if I understood correctly) extendable to what I mentioned
> earlier; what would be left is an RL algorithm (ex: ACKTR which is already
> proposed or just simple REINFORCE which is implemented) and the MCTS. Is
> the scope of tackling both suitable for GSoC? Is that a lot or too little
> since you are more aware of how much time development for the mlpack
> library would need? Or do you think that it is not a good idea in the first
> place?
>
> On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 11:07 PM Marcus Marcus <marcus at virtual-artz.de>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello Ahmed,
>>
>> there is a WIP PR about pointer-generator networks:
>> https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/issues/1725, which goes in a similair
>> direction
>> and here is the mail discussion:
>> http://knife.lugatgt.org/pipermail/mlpack/2019-February/003888.html. Do
>> you
>> think we should combine both approaches?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Marcus
>>
>> On 7. Mar 2019, at 13:11, Ahmed Maher <iahmedmaher at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>>          I hope you all are having a good day. I am a computer
>> engineering student at Cairo University, Egypt currently in my last year.
>>
>>          I want to ask the maintainers of mlpack about how interested are
>> they in the idea of adding pointer networks to the code base. I find it a
>> good idea because pointer networks trained using deep RL algorithms have
>> proven to be really good at solving combinatorial optimization problems
>> like TSP and even on par with tools like Google OR-Tools in VRP while being
>> end-to-end! Since mlpack monopolizes on speed, I think it would be good to
>> have a foundation for expanding in this direction adding maybe MCTS later
>> on which will make mlpack a necessity for people wanting to solve
>> combinatorial problems as speed could be a deal breaker for other tools.
>>
>>          What are your thoughts on that? I attached the papers I have
>> read about this topic for reference. Kindly find them below. Thanks.
>>
>> Pointer Networks <https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03134>
>> Neural Combinatorial Optimization with Reinforcement Learning
>> <https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09940>
>> Reinforcement Learning for Solving the Vehicle Routing Problem
>> <https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.04240>
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> --
>> Ahmed Maher AlAmir
>> Senior Student, Computer Engineering Department
>> Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University
>> Giza, Egypt
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> mlpack mailing list
>> mlpack at lists.mlpack.org
>> http://knife.lugatgt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mlpack
>>
>>
>> --
> Ahmed Maher AlAmir
> Senior Student, Computer Engineering Department
> Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University
> Giza, Egypt
>
>
> --
Ahmed Maher AlAmir
Senior Student, Computer Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University
Giza, Egypt
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