On learning more concepts

The coverage of a learning algorithm is the number of concepts that can be learned by that algorithm from samples of a given size. This paper asks whether good learning algorithms can be designed by maximizing their coverage. The paper extends a previous upper bound on the coverage of any Boolean concept learning algorithm and describes two algorithms-Multi-Balls and Large-Ball-whose coverage approaches this upper bound. Experimental measurement of the coverage of the ID3 and FRINGE algorithms shows that their coverage is far below this bound. Further analysis of Large-Ball shows that although it learns many concepts, these do not seem to be very interesting concepts. Hence, coverage maximization a.lone does not appear to yield practically ­useful learning algorithms. The paper concludes with a definition of coverage within a bias, which suggests a way that coverage maximization could be applied to strengthen weak preference biases.Keywords: inductive learning, concept coverage, theoretical analysis

On Learning More Concepts

The coverage of a learning algorithm is the number of concepts that can be learned by that algorithm from samples of a given size. This paper asks whether good learning algorithms can be designed by maximizing their coverage. The paper extends a previous upper bound on the coverage of any Boolean concept learning algorithm and describes two algorithms---Multi-Balls and Large-Ball---whose coverage approaches this upper bound. Experimental measurement of the coverage of the ID3 and FRINGE algorithms shows that their coverage is far below this bound. Further analysis of LargeBall shows that although it learns many concepts, these do not seem to be very interesting concepts. Hence, coverage maximization alone does not appear to yield practicallyuseful learning algorithms. The paper concludes with a definition of coverage within a bias, which suggests a way that coverage maximization could be applied to strengthen weak preference biases. 1 INTRODUCTION Research in computational learning th..