What is Automatic Model Selection

Among extensive studies on radial basis function (RBF), one stream consists of those on normalized RBF (NRBF) and extensions. Within a probability theoretic framework, NRBF networks relates to nonparametric studies for decades in the statistics literature, and then proceeds in the machine learning studies with further advances not only to mixture-of-experts and alternatives but also to subspace based functions (SBF) and temporal extensions. These studies are linked to theoretical results adopted from studies of nonparametric statistics, and further to a general statistical learning framework called Bayesian Ying Yang harmony learning, with a unified perspective that summarizes maximum likelihood (ML) learning with the EM algorithm, RPCL learning, and BYY learning with automatic model selection, as well as their extensions for temporal modeling. This chapter outlines these advances, with a unified elaboration of their corresponding algorithms, and a discussion on possible trends.