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Neural Networks and Computational Learning Theory

 

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NeuroCOLT Technical Report NC-TR-95-046

Learning Model Bias

Jonathan Baxter
Royal Holloway
University of London

Abstract
In this paper the problem of learning appropriate domain-specific bias is addressed. It is shown that this can be achieved by learning many related tasks from the same domain, and a sufficient bound is given on the number tasks that must be learnt. A corollary of the theorem is that in appropriate domains the number of examples required per task for good generalisation when learning $n$ tasks scales like $\frac1n$. An experiment providing strong qualitative support for the theoretical results is reported.

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