923 research outputs found
Multiclass Learning with Simplex Coding
In this paper we discuss a novel framework for multiclass learning, defined
by a suitable coding/decoding strategy, namely the simplex coding, that allows
to generalize to multiple classes a relaxation approach commonly used in binary
classification. In this framework, a relaxation error analysis can be developed
avoiding constraints on the considered hypotheses class. Moreover, we show that
in this setting it is possible to derive the first provably consistent
regularized method with training/tuning complexity which is independent to the
number of classes. Tools from convex analysis are introduced that can be used
beyond the scope of this paper
On the Consistency of Ordinal Regression Methods
Many of the ordinal regression models that have been proposed in the
literature can be seen as methods that minimize a convex surrogate of the
zero-one, absolute, or squared loss functions. A key property that allows to
study the statistical implications of such approximations is that of Fisher
consistency. Fisher consistency is a desirable property for surrogate loss
functions and implies that in the population setting, i.e., if the probability
distribution that generates the data were available, then optimization of the
surrogate would yield the best possible model. In this paper we will
characterize the Fisher consistency of a rich family of surrogate loss
functions used in the context of ordinal regression, including support vector
ordinal regression, ORBoosting and least absolute deviation. We will see that,
for a family of surrogate loss functions that subsumes support vector ordinal
regression and ORBoosting, consistency can be fully characterized by the
derivative of a real-valued function at zero, as happens for convex
margin-based surrogates in binary classification. We also derive excess risk
bounds for a surrogate of the absolute error that generalize existing risk
bounds for binary classification. Finally, our analysis suggests a novel
surrogate of the squared error loss. We compare this novel surrogate with
competing approaches on 9 different datasets. Our method shows to be highly
competitive in practice, outperforming the least squares loss on 7 out of 9
datasets.Comment: Journal of Machine Learning Research 18 (2017
Robust Loss Functions under Label Noise for Deep Neural Networks
In many applications of classifier learning, training data suffers from label
noise. Deep networks are learned using huge training data where the problem of
noisy labels is particularly relevant. The current techniques proposed for
learning deep networks under label noise focus on modifying the network
architecture and on algorithms for estimating true labels from noisy labels. An
alternate approach would be to look for loss functions that are inherently
noise-tolerant. For binary classification there exist theoretical results on
loss functions that are robust to label noise. In this paper, we provide some
sufficient conditions on a loss function so that risk minimization under that
loss function would be inherently tolerant to label noise for multiclass
classification problems. These results generalize the existing results on
noise-tolerant loss functions for binary classification. We study some of the
widely used loss functions in deep networks and show that the loss function
based on mean absolute value of error is inherently robust to label noise. Thus
standard back propagation is enough to learn the true classifier even under
label noise. Through experiments, we illustrate the robustness of risk
minimization with such loss functions for learning neural networks.Comment: Appeared in AAAI 201
Convex Calibration Dimension for Multiclass Loss Matrices
We study consistency properties of surrogate loss functions for general
multiclass learning problems, defined by a general multiclass loss matrix. We
extend the notion of classification calibration, which has been studied for
binary and multiclass 0-1 classification problems (and for certain other
specific learning problems), to the general multiclass setting, and derive
necessary and sufficient conditions for a surrogate loss to be calibrated with
respect to a loss matrix in this setting. We then introduce the notion of
convex calibration dimension of a multiclass loss matrix, which measures the
smallest `size' of a prediction space in which it is possible to design a
convex surrogate that is calibrated with respect to the loss matrix. We derive
both upper and lower bounds on this quantity, and use these results to analyze
various loss matrices. In particular, we apply our framework to study various
subset ranking losses, and use the convex calibration dimension as a tool to
show both the existence and non-existence of various types of convex calibrated
surrogates for these losses. Our results strengthen recent results of Duchi et
al. (2010) and Calauzenes et al. (2012) on the non-existence of certain types
of convex calibrated surrogates in subset ranking. We anticipate the convex
calibration dimension may prove to be a useful tool in the study and design of
surrogate losses for general multiclass learning problems.Comment: Accepted to JMLR, pending editin
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