Abstract
We consider the task of learning mappings from sequential data to real-valued
responses. We present and evaluate an approach to learning a type of hidden
Markov model (HMM) for regression. The learning process involves inferring the
structure and parameters of a conventional HMM, while simultaneously learning a
regression model that maps features that characterize paths through the model
to continuous responses. Our results, in both synthetic and biological domains,
demonstrate the value of jointly learning the two components of our approach.