  Semi-Non-negative Matrix Factorization is a technique that learns a
low-dimensional representation of a dataset that lends itself to a clustering
interpretation. It is possible that the mapping between this new representation
and our original data matrix contains rather complex hierarchical information
with implicit lower-level hidden attributes, that classical one level
clustering methodologies can not interpret. In this work we propose a novel
model, Deep Semi-NMF, that is able to learn such hidden representations that
allow themselves to an interpretation of clustering according to different,
unknown attributes of a given dataset. We also present a semi-supervised
version of the algorithm, named Deep WSF, that allows the use of (partial)
prior information for each of the known attributes of a dataset, that allows
the model to be used on datasets with mixed attribute knowledge. Finally, we
show that our models are able to learn low-dimensional representations that are
better suited for clustering, but also classification, outperforming
Semi-Non-negative Matrix Factorization, but also other state-of-the-art
methodologies variants.
