Decision forests (also known as random forests) are an indispensable tool for automatic image analysis.

This practical and easy-to-follow text explores the theoretical underpinnings of decision forests, organizing the vast existing literature on the field within a new, general-purpose forest model. A number of exercises encourage the reader to practice their skills with the aid of the provided free software library. An international selection of leading researchers from both academia and industry then contribute their own perspectives on the use of decision forests in real-world applications such as pedestrian tracking, human body pose estimation, pixel-wise semantic segmentation of images and videos, automatic parsing of medical 3D scans, and detection of tumors. The book concludes with a detailed discussion on the efficient implementation of decision forests.

Topics and features: with a foreword by Prof. Yali Amit and Prof. Donald Geman, recounting their participation in the development of decision forests; introduces a flexible decision forest model, capable of addressing a large and diverse set of image and video analysis tasks; investigates both the theoretical foundations and the practical implementation of decision forests; discusses the use of decision forests for such tasks as classification, regression, density estimation, manifold learning, active learning and semi-supervised classification; includes exercises and experiments throughout the text, with solutions, slides, demo videos and other supplementary material provided at an associated website; provides a free, user-friendly software library, enabling the reader to experiment with forests in a hands-on manner.

With its clear, tutorial structure and supporting exercises, this text will be of great value to students wishing to learn the basics of decision forests, researchers wanting to become more familiar with forest-based learning, and practitioners interested in exploring modern and efficient image analysis techniques.

Indigenous students remain one of the least represented populations in higher education. They continue to account for only one percent of the total post-secondary student population, and this lack of representation is felt in multiple ways beyond enrollment. Less research money is spent studying Indigenous students, and their interests are often left out of projects that otherwise purport to address diversity in higher education.  Recently, Native scholars have started to reclaim research through the development of their own research methodologies and paradigms that are based in tribal knowledge systems and values, and that allow inherent Indigenous knowledge and lived experiences to strengthen the research. Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education highlights the current scholarship emerging from these scholars of higher education. From understanding how Native American students make their way through school, to tracking tribal college and university transfer students, this book allows Native scholars to take center stage, and shines the light squarely on those least represented among us.    

This edited volume serves as a follow up to Beyond the Asterisk: Understanding Native Students in Higher Education, focusing on new scholarship, continued conversations, and growth in the field of Indigenous higher education. The landscape of higher education has changed significantly over the past decade, likewise Indigenous higher education has grown into its own respective field with emerging scholarship that is written for and by Indigenous people. This book focuses on this growth, revisiting relevant topics in Indigenous higher education, while adding new and expanded research and insight from emerging scholars and practitioners, including chapters on Indigenous LGBTQIA+ and Two-Spirt students and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders. The voices of Indigenous scholars who are challenging the status quo in higher education have grown louder and institutions and organizations have increasingly begun to respond. This volume is essential to continued conversations in Indigenous higher education and invites current, emerging, and future scholars to carry the conversation forward in respectful, responsible, and relational ways.

This book argues that two principal factors are inhibiting Native students from transitioning from school to college and from succeeding in their post-secondary studies, and presents models and examples of pathways to success that align with Native American studentsaEURO (TM) aspirations and cultural values. Many attend schools that are poorly resourced where they are often discouraged from aspiring to college; and many are alienated from the educational system by a lack of culturally appropriate and meaningful environment or support systems that reflect Indigenous values of community, sharing, honoring extended family, giving-back to oneaEURO (TM)s community, and respect for creation. The contributors to this book highlight Indigenized college access programs, meaning programs developed by, not just for, the Indigenous community, and are adapted, or developed, for the unique Indigenous populations they serve. Individual chapters cover a K-12 program to develop a Native college-going culture through community engagement; a aEUROoecrash courseaEURO offered by a higher education institution to compensate for the lack of college counseling and academic advising at studentsaEURO (TM) schools; the role of tribal colleges and universities; the recruitment and retention of Native American students in STEM and nursing programs; financial aid; educational leadership programs to prepare Native principals, superintendents and other school leaders; and, finally, data regarding Native American college students with disabilities. The chapters are interspersed with narratives from current Indigenous graduate students. This is an invaluable resource for student affairs practitioners and higher education administrators wanting to understand and serve their Indigenous students.

This edited volume serves as a follow up to Beyond the Asterisk: Understanding Native Students in Higher Education, focusing on new scholarship, continued conversations, and growth in the field of Indigenous higher education. The landscape of higher education has changed significantly over the past decade, likewise Indigenous higher education has grown into its own respective field with emerging scholarship that is written for and by Indigenous people. This book focuses on this growth, revisiting relevant topics in Indigenous higher education, while adding new and expanded research and insight from emerging scholars and practitioners, including chapters on Indigenous LGBTQIA+ and Two-Spirt students and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders. The voices of Indigenous scholars who are challenging the status quo in higher education have grown louder and institutions and organizations have increasingly begun to respond. This volume is essential to continued conversations in Indigenous higher education and invites current, emerging, and future scholars to carry the conversation forward in respectful, responsible, and relational ways.

Indigenous students remain one of the least represented populations in higher education. They continue to account for only one percent of the total post-secondary student population, and this lack of representation is felt in multiple ways beyond enrollment. Less research money is spent studying Indigenous students, and their interests are often left out of projects that otherwise purport to address diversity in higher education. Recently, Native scholars have started to reclaim research through the development of their own research methodologies and paradigms that are based in tribal knowledge systems and values, and that allow inherent Indigenous knowledge and lived experiences to strengthen the research. Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education highlights the current scholarship emerging from these scholars of higher education. From understanding how Native American students make their way through school, to tracking tribal college and university transfer students, this book allows Native scholars to take center stage, and shines the light squarely on those least represented among us.

This book argues that two principal factors are inhibiting Native students from transitioning from school to college and from succeeding in their post-secondary studies, and presents models and examples of pathways to success that align with Native American studentsaEURO (TM) aspirations and cultural values. Many attend schools that are poorly resourced where they are often discouraged from aspiring to college; and many are alienated from the educational system by a lack of culturally appropriate and meaningful environment or support systems that reflect Indigenous values of community, sharing, honoring extended family, giving-back to oneaEURO (TM)s community, and respect for creation. The contributors to this book highlight Indigenized college access programs, meaning programs developed by, not just for, the Indigenous community, and are adapted, or developed, for the unique Indigenous populations they serve. Individual chapters cover a K-12 program to develop a Native college-going culture through community engagement; a aEUROoecrash courseaEURO offered by a higher education institution to compensate for the lack of college counseling and academic advising at studentsaEURO (TM) schools; the role of tribal colleges and universities; the recruitment and retention of Native American students in STEM and nursing programs; financial aid; educational leadership programs to prepare Native principals, superintendents and other school leaders; and, finally, data regarding Native American college students with disabilities. The chapters are interspersed with narratives from current Indigenous graduate students. This is an invaluable resource for student affairs practitioners and higher education administrators wanting to understand and serve their Indigenous students.

This practical and easy-to-follow text explores the theoretical underpinnings of decision forests, organizing the vast existing literature on the field within a new, general-purpose forest model. Topics and features: with a foreword by Prof. Y. Amit and Prof. D. Geman, recounting their participation in the development of decision forests; introduces a flexible decision forest model, capable of addressing a large and diverse set of image and video analysis tasks; investigates both the theoretical foundations and the practical implementation of decision forests; discusses the use of decision forests for such tasks as classification, regression, density estimation, manifold learning, active learning and semi-supervised classification; includes exercises and experiments throughout the text, with solutions, slides, demo videos and other supplementary material provided at an associated website; provides a free, user-friendly software library, enabling the reader to experiment with forests in a hands-on manner.