hunch_net hunch_net-2005 hunch_net-2005-43 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining

43 hunch net-2005-03-18-Binomial Weighting


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Introduction: Suppose we have a set of classifiers c making binary predictions from an input x and we see examples in an online fashion. In particular, we repeatedly see an unlabeled example x , make a prediction y’ (possibly based on the classifiers c ), and then see the correct label y . When one of these classifiers is perfect, there is a great algorithm available: predict according to the majority vote over every classifier consistent with every previous example. This is called the Halving algorithm. It makes at most log 2 |c| mistakes since on any mistake, at least half of the classifiers are eliminated. Obviously, we can’t generally hope that the there exists a classifier which never errs. The Binomial Weighting algorithm is an elegant technique allowing a variant Halving algorithm to cope with errors by creating a set of virtual classifiers for every classifier which occasionally disagree with the original classifier. The Halving algorithm on this set of virtual clas


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1 Suppose we have a set of classifiers c making binary predictions from an input x and we see examples in an online fashion. [sent-1, score-0.567]

2 In particular, we repeatedly see an unlabeled example x , make a prediction y’ (possibly based on the classifiers c ), and then see the correct label y . [sent-2, score-0.657]

3 When one of these classifiers is perfect, there is a great algorithm available: predict according to the majority vote over every classifier consistent with every previous example. [sent-3, score-1.164]

4 It makes at most log 2 |c| mistakes since on any mistake, at least half of the classifiers are eliminated. [sent-5, score-0.681]

5 Obviously, we can’t generally hope that the there exists a classifier which never errs. [sent-6, score-0.165]

6 The Binomial Weighting algorithm is an elegant technique allowing a variant Halving algorithm to cope with errors by creating a set of virtual classifiers for every classifier which occasionally disagree with the original classifier. [sent-7, score-2.023]

7 By introducing a “prior” over the number of mistakes, it can be made parameter free. [sent-9, score-0.652]

8 Similarly, introducing a “prior” over the set of classifiers is easy and makes the algorithm sufficiently flexible for common use. [sent-10, score-1.196]

9 The minimal value of f() is 2 times the number of errors of any classifier, regardless of the number of classifiers. [sent-12, score-0.803]

10 This is frustrating because a parameter-free learning algorithm taking an arbitrary “prior” and achieving good performance on an arbitrary (not even IID) set of examples is compelling for implementation and use, if we had a good technique for removing the factor of 2 . [sent-13, score-0.927]

11 See the weighted majority algorithm for an example of a similar algorithm which can remove a factor of 2 using randomization and at the expense of introducing a parameter. [sent-15, score-1.081]

12 There are known techniques for eliminating this parameter, but they appear not as tight (and therefore practically useful) as introducing a “prior” over the number of errors. [sent-16, score-0.666]


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