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Journal ArticleDOI

Learnability and the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension

TL;DR: This paper shows that the essential condition for distribution-free learnability is finiteness of the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension, a simple combinatorial parameter of the class of concepts to be learned.
Abstract: Valiant's learnability model is extended to learning classes of concepts defined by regions in Euclidean space En. The methods in this paper lead to a unified treatment of some of Valiant's results, along with previous results on distribution-free convergence of certain pattern recognition algorithms. It is shown that the essential condition for distribution-free learnability is finiteness of the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension, a simple combinatorial parameter of the class of concepts to be learned. Using this parameter, the complexity and closure properties of learnable classes are analyzed, and the necessary and sufficient conditions are provided for feasible learnability.

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Citations
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Book
18 Nov 2016
TL;DR: Deep learning as mentioned in this paper is a form of machine learning that enables computers to learn from experience and understand the world in terms of a hierarchy of concepts, and it is used in many applications such as natural language processing, speech recognition, computer vision, online recommendation systems, bioinformatics, and videogames.
Abstract: Deep learning is a form of machine learning that enables computers to learn from experience and understand the world in terms of a hierarchy of concepts. Because the computer gathers knowledge from experience, there is no need for a human computer operator to formally specify all the knowledge that the computer needs. The hierarchy of concepts allows the computer to learn complicated concepts by building them out of simpler ones; a graph of these hierarchies would be many layers deep. This book introduces a broad range of topics in deep learning. The text offers mathematical and conceptual background, covering relevant concepts in linear algebra, probability theory and information theory, numerical computation, and machine learning. It describes deep learning techniques used by practitioners in industry, including deep feedforward networks, regularization, optimization algorithms, convolutional networks, sequence modeling, and practical methodology; and it surveys such applications as natural language processing, speech recognition, computer vision, online recommendation systems, bioinformatics, and videogames. Finally, the book offers research perspectives, covering such theoretical topics as linear factor models, autoencoders, representation learning, structured probabilistic models, Monte Carlo methods, the partition function, approximate inference, and deep generative models. Deep Learning can be used by undergraduate or graduate students planning careers in either industry or research, and by software engineers who want to begin using deep learning in their products or platforms. A website offers supplementary material for both readers and instructors.

38,208 citations

Book
01 Jan 1995
TL;DR: This is the first comprehensive treatment of feed-forward neural networks from the perspective of statistical pattern recognition, and is designed as a text, with over 100 exercises, to benefit anyone involved in the fields of neural computation and pattern recognition.
Abstract: From the Publisher: This is the first comprehensive treatment of feed-forward neural networks from the perspective of statistical pattern recognition. After introducing the basic concepts, the book examines techniques for modelling probability density functions and the properties and merits of the multi-layer perceptron and radial basis function network models. Also covered are various forms of error functions, principal algorithms for error function minimalization, learning and generalization in neural networks, and Bayesian techniques and their applications. Designed as a text, with over 100 exercises, this fully up-to-date work will benefit anyone involved in the fields of neural computation and pattern recognition.

19,056 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
08 Feb 1999
TL;DR: Support vector machines for dynamic reconstruction of a chaotic system, Klaus-Robert Muller et al pairwise classification and support vector machines, Ulrich Kressel.
Abstract: Introduction to support vector learning roadmap. Part 1 Theory: three remarks on the support vector method of function estimation, Vladimir Vapnik generalization performance of support vector machines and other pattern classifiers, Peter Bartlett and John Shawe-Taylor Bayesian voting schemes and large margin classifiers, Nello Cristianini and John Shawe-Taylor support vector machines, reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces, and randomized GACV, Grace Wahba geometry and invariance in kernel based methods, Christopher J.C. Burges on the annealed VC entropy for margin classifiers - a statistical mechanics study, Manfred Opper entropy numbers, operators and support vector kernels, Robert C. Williamson et al. Part 2 Implementations: solving the quadratic programming problem arising in support vector classification, Linda Kaufman making large-scale support vector machine learning practical, Thorsten Joachims fast training of support vector machines using sequential minimal optimization, John C. Platt. Part 3 Applications: support vector machines for dynamic reconstruction of a chaotic system, Davide Mattera and Simon Haykin using support vector machines for time series prediction, Klaus-Robert Muller et al pairwise classification and support vector machines, Ulrich Kressel. Part 4 Extensions of the algorithm: reducing the run-time complexity in support vector machines, Edgar E. Osuna and Federico Girosi support vector regression with ANOVA decomposition kernels, Mark O. Stitson et al support vector density estimation, Jason Weston et al combining support vector and mathematical programming methods for classification, Bernhard Scholkopf et al.

5,506 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Vladimir Vapnik1
TL;DR: How the abstract learning theory established conditions for generalization which are more general than those discussed in classical statistical paradigms are demonstrated and how the understanding of these conditions inspired new algorithmic approaches to function estimation problems are demonstrated.
Abstract: Statistical learning theory was introduced in the late 1960's. Until the 1990's it was a purely theoretical analysis of the problem of function estimation from a given collection of data. In the middle of the 1990's new types of learning algorithms (called support vector machines) based on the developed theory were proposed. This made statistical learning theory not only a tool for the theoretical analysis but also a tool for creating practical algorithms for estimating multidimensional functions. This article presents a very general overview of statistical learning theory including both theoretical and algorithmic aspects of the theory. The goal of this overview is to demonstrate how the abstract learning theory established conditions for generalization which are more general than those discussed in classical statistical paradigms and how the understanding of these conditions inspired new algorithmic approaches to function estimation problems.

5,370 citations

Book
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: The aim of this textbook is to introduce machine learning, and the algorithmic paradigms it offers, in a principled way in an advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate course.
Abstract: Machine learning is one of the fastest growing areas of computer science, with far-reaching applications. The aim of this textbook is to introduce machine learning, and the algorithmic paradigms it offers, in a principled way. The book provides an extensive theoretical account of the fundamental ideas underlying machine learning and the mathematical derivations that transform these principles into practical algorithms. Following a presentation of the basics of the field, the book covers a wide array of central topics that have not been addressed by previous textbooks. These include a discussion of the computational complexity of learning and the concepts of convexity and stability; important algorithmic paradigms including stochastic gradient descent, neural networks, and structured output learning; and emerging theoretical concepts such as the PAC-Bayes approach and compression-based bounds. Designed for an advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate course, the text makes the fundamentals and algorithms of machine learning accessible to students and non-expert readers in statistics, computer science, mathematics, and engineering.

3,857 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
26 Jun 1980-Nature

573 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown for various classes of concept representations that these cannot be learned feasibly in a distribution-free sense unless R = NP, and relationships between learning of heuristics and finding approximate solutions to NP-hard optimization problems are given.
Abstract: The computational complexity of learning Boolean concepts from examples is investigated. It is shown for various classes of concept representations that these cannot be learned feasibly in a distribution-free sense unless R = NP. These classes include (a) disjunctions of two monomials, (b) Boolean threshold functions, and (c) Boolean formulas in which each variable occurs at most once. Relationships between learning of heuristics and finding approximate solutions to NP-hard optimization problems are given.

539 citations


"Learnability and the Vapnik-Chervon..." refers background or methods in this paper

  • ...For the “only if” part, note first that by Theorem 2.l(ii)(b), any learning algorithm for C must use a sample size that grows linearly in the VC dimension of C,,, and hence if the VC dimension of C, is not polynomial in ~1, then C is not poly-learnable by any hypothesis space H. To show that C being poly-learnable implies that there is an r-poly hy-fi for C, we use a construction from [ 52 ]....

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  • ...The above example shows that it is not only useful to parameterize learning algorithms and learnability results by the dimension of the domain, but also by some natural measure of the syntactic complexity of the target concept, in this case the number of intervals used to define it. Both of these considerations are emphasized in [36] and [ 52 ] in the investigation into the learnability of Boolean functions....

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  • ...The functional and oracle models of polynomial learnability are shown to be equivalent in [30], along with another variant of the oracle model in which there are two probability distributions on the domain X, and two oracles, one for positive examples of the target concept and one for negative examples (e.g., [36] and [ 52 ])....

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  • ...It is also possible to allow the computation time to depend explicitly on the accuracy and confidence parameters t and 6. Since this, and other extensions of the above model, are allowed in the definition of polynomial learnability in [ 52 ] and [59], we now introduce a second model of polynomial learnability, which we call the oracle model (see also [3] and [36])....

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  • ...These notions of polynomial learnability, both closely related to the model introduced in [59] and elaborated in [36] and [ 52 ], are discussed in Sections 3.1 and 3.2, respectively....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown that the notion of inductive bias in concept learning can be quantified in a way that directly relates to learning performance in the framework recently introduced by Valiant.

496 citations


"Learnability and the Vapnik-Chervon..." refers methods in this paper

  • ...The techniques we have described in this paper are easily applied to these domains, and generally give better results than the simple counting argument of Theorem 2.2 [ 28 ]....

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