NeuroCOLT workshop
on
Applications of Learning to Text and Images
Windsor, 30 April - 2 May 2001
Cumberland Lodge

Automatic Internet-Based Evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithms

Simon Lucas

sml@essex.ac.uk

This talk describes the current status and future plans for Algoval (http://algoval.essex.ac.uk). Algoval is a web-based system that automates the process of evaluating algorithms on datasets. The results gained in this way are objective, authentic, can easily be on a wide range of datasets, and allow immediate comparison with a wide range of algorirthms against many different criteria (e.g. algorithm size, dynamic memory allocation, training speed, recognition speed etc). Algoval has already been used to run a small-scale OCR competition (which was won by the SVM group from National Taiwan University) and is currently supporting competitions on computer checkers (draughts) and pattern recognition for the 2001 Congress on Evolutionary Computation. This talk would discuss the experience gained so far in creating and managing this service and the future work necessary in order for the system to gain widespread acceptance.