NeuroCOLT

Neural Networks and Computational Learning Theory

 

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NeuroCOLT Technical Report NC-TR-94-020

Efficient Agnostic PAC-Learning with Simple Hypotheses

Wolfgang Maass
Institute for Theoretical Computer Science
Technische Universitaet Graz
Klosterwiesgasse 32/2
A-8010 Graz
Austria

Abstract
We exhibit efficient algorithms for agnostic PAC-learning with rectangles, unions of two rectangles, and unions of $k$ intervals as hypotheses. These hypothesis classes are of some interest from the point of view of applied machine learning, because empirical studies show that hypotheses of this simple type (in just one or two of the attributes) provide good prediction rules for various real-world classification problems. In addition, optimal hypotheses of this type may provide valuable heuristic insight into the structure of a real-world classification problem.  The algorithms that are introduced in this paper make it feasible to compute optimal hypotheses of this type for a training set of several hundred examples. We also exhibit an approximation algorithm that can compute near optimal hypotheses for much larger datasets.

 

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