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Neural Networks and Computational Learning Theory

 

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NeuroCOLT Technical Report NC-TR-01-096


2001-096
A new approximate maximal margin classification algorithm

Claudio Gentile

ABSTRACT
A new incremental learning algorithm is described which
approximates the maximal margin hyperplane w.r.t. norm $p \geq 2$ for a set of linearly separable data. Our algorithm, called Alma$_p$ (Approximate Large Margin algorithm w.r.t. norm $p$), takes $O\left(\frac{(p1)\,X^2}{\alpha^2\,\gamma^2}\right)$
corrections to separate the data with $p$-norm margin larger than $(1-\alpha)\,\gamma$, where $\gamma$ is the $p$-norm margin of the data and $X$ is a bound on the $p$-norm of the instances. Alma$_p$ avoids quadratic (or higher-order) programming methods. It is very easy to implement and is as fast as on-line algorithms, such as
Rosenblatt's Perceptron algorithm. We performed extensive experiments on both real-world and artificial
datasets. We compared Alma$_2$ (i.e., Alma$_p$ with $p = 2$) to standard Support vector Machines (SVM) and to
two incremental algorithms: the Perceptron algorithm and Li and Long's ROMMA.

The accuracy levels achieved by Alma$_2$ are superior to those achieved by the Perceptron algorithm and ROMMA, but slightly inferior to SVM's. On the other hand, Alma$_2$ is quite faster and easier to implement than standard SVM training algorithms. When learning sparse target vectors, Alma$_p$ with $p > 2$ largely outperforms Perceptron-like algorithms, such as Alma$_2$.


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