16,755 research outputs found
Convergence Rates for Empirical Estimation of Binary Classification Bounds
Bounding the best achievable error probability for binary classification problems is relevant to many applications including machine learning, signal processing, and information theory. Many bounds on the Bayes binary classification error rate depend on information divergences between the pair of class distributions. Recently, the Henze–Penrose (HP) divergence has been proposed for bounding classification error probability. We consider the problem of empirically estimating the HP-divergence from random samples. We derive a bound on the convergence rate for the Friedman–Rafsky (FR) estimator of the HP-divergence, which is related to a multivariate runs statistic for testing between two distributions. The FR estimator is derived from a multicolored Euclidean minimal spanning tree (MST) that spans the merged samples. We obtain a concentration inequality for the Friedman–Rafsky estimator of the Henze–Penrose divergence. We validate our results experimentally and illustrate their application to real datasets
Estimating labels from label proportions
Consider the following problem: given sets of unlabeled observations, each set with known label proportions, predict the labels of another set of observations, also with known label proportions. This problem appears in areas like e-commerce, spam filtering and improper content detection. We present consistent estimators which can reconstruct the correct labels with high probability in a uniform convergence sense. Experiments show that our method works well in practice.
An adaptive nearest neighbor rule for classification
We introduce a variant of the -nearest neighbor classifier in which is
chosen adaptively for each query, rather than supplied as a parameter. The
choice of depends on properties of each neighborhood, and therefore may
significantly vary between different points. (For example, the algorithm will
use larger for predicting the labels of points in noisy regions.)
We provide theory and experiments that demonstrate that the algorithm
performs comparably to, and sometimes better than, -NN with an optimal
choice of . In particular, we derive bounds on the convergence rates of our
classifier that depend on a local quantity we call the `advantage' which is
significantly weaker than the Lipschitz conditions used in previous convergence
rate proofs. These generalization bounds hinge on a variant of the seminal
Uniform Convergence Theorem due to Vapnik and Chervonenkis; this variant
concerns conditional probabilities and may be of independent interest
Classification with the nearest neighbor rule in general finite dimensional spaces: necessary and sufficient conditions
Given an -sample of random vectors whose
joint law is unknown, the long-standing problem of supervised classification
aims to \textit{optimally} predict the label of a given a new observation
. In this context, the nearest neighbor rule is a popular flexible and
intuitive method in non-parametric situations.
Even if this algorithm is commonly used in the machine learning and
statistics communities, less is known about its prediction ability in general
finite dimensional spaces, especially when the support of the density of the
observations is . This paper is devoted to the study of the
statistical properties of the nearest neighbor rule in various situations. In
particular, attention is paid to the marginal law of , as well as the
smoothness and margin properties of the \textit{regression function} . We identify two necessary and sufficient conditions to
obtain uniform consistency rates of classification and to derive sharp
estimates in the case of the nearest neighbor rule. Some numerical experiments
are proposed at the end of the paper to help illustrate the discussion.Comment: 53 Pages, 3 figure
Learning gradients on manifolds
A common belief in high-dimensional data analysis is that data are
concentrated on a low-dimensional manifold. This motivates simultaneous
dimension reduction and regression on manifolds. We provide an algorithm for
learning gradients on manifolds for dimension reduction for high-dimensional
data with few observations. We obtain generalization error bounds for the
gradient estimates and show that the convergence rate depends on the intrinsic
dimension of the manifold and not on the dimension of the ambient space. We
illustrate the efficacy of this approach empirically on simulated and real data
and compare the method to other dimension reduction procedures.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/09-BEJ206 the Bernoulli
(http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical
Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm
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