NeuroCOLT

Neural Networks and Computational Learning Theory

 

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NeuroCOLT Technical Report NC-TR-95-029

The Curse of Dimensionality and the Perceptron Algorithm

Jyrki Kivinen
University of Helsinki

Manfred K. Warmuth
University of California
Santa Cruz

Abstract
We give an adversary strategy that forces the Perceptron algorithm to make $(N-k+1)/2$ mistakes when learning $k$-literal disjunctions over $N$ variables. Experimentally we see that even for simple random data, the number of mistakes made by the Perceptron algorithm grows almost linearly with $N$, even if the number $k$ of relevant variable remains a small constant. Thus, the Perceptron algorithm suffers from the curse of dimensionality even when the target is extremely simple and almost all of the dimensions are irrelevant. In contrast, Littlestone's algorithm Winnow makes at most %$O(k(1+\log(N/k))$ mistakes for the same problem.  $O(k\log N)$ mistakes for the same problem. Both algorithms use linear threshold functions as their hypotheses. However, Winnow does multiplicative updates to its weight vector instead of the additive updates of the Perceptron algorithm.

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