Classifying the Arithmetical Complexity of Teaching Models

This paper classifies the complexity of various teaching models by their position in the arithmetical hierarchy. In particular, we determine the arithmetical complexity of the index sets of the following classes: (1) the class of uniformly r.e. families with finite teaching dimension, and (2) the class of uniformly r.e. families with finite positive recursive teaching dimension witnessed by a uniformly r.e. teaching sequence. We also derive the arithmetical complexity of several other decision problems in teaching, such as the problem of deciding, given an effective coding $\{\mathcal L_0,\mathcal L_1,\mathcal L_2,\ldots\}$ of all uniformly r.e. families, any $e$ such that $\mathcal L_e = \{L^e_0,L^e_1,\ldots,\}$, any $i$ and $d$, whether or not the teaching dimension of $L^e_i$ with respect to $\mathcal L_e$ is upper bounded by $d$.Comment: 15 pages in International Conference on Algorithmic Learning Theory, 201

A Theory of Formal Synthesis via Inductive Learning

Formal synthesis is the process of generating a program satisfying a high-level formal specification. In recent times, effective formal synthesis methods have been proposed based on the use of inductive learning. We refer to this class of methods that learn programs from examples as formal inductive synthesis. In this paper, we present a theoretical framework for formal inductive synthesis. We discuss how formal inductive synthesis differs from traditional machine learning. We then describe oracle-guided inductive synthesis (OGIS), a framework that captures a family of synthesizers that operate by iteratively querying an oracle. An instance of OGIS that has had much practical impact is counterexample-guided inductive synthesis (CEGIS). We present a theoretical characterization of CEGIS for learning any program that computes a recursive language. In particular, we analyze the relative power of CEGIS variants where the types of counterexamples generated by the oracle varies. We also consider the impact of bounded versus unbounded memory available to the learning algorithm. In the special case where the universe of candidate programs is finite, we relate the speed of convergence to the notion of teaching dimension studied in machine learning theory. Altogether, the results of the paper take a first step towards a theoretical foundation for the emerging field of formal inductive synthesis

Bounding Embeddings of VC Classes into Maximum Classes

One of the earliest conjectures in computational learning theory-the Sample Compression conjecture-asserts that concept classes (equivalently set systems) admit compression schemes of size linear in their VC dimension. To-date this statement is known to be true for maximum classes---those that possess maximum cardinality for their VC dimension. The most promising approach to positively resolving the conjecture is by embedding general VC classes into maximum classes without super-linear increase to their VC dimensions, as such embeddings would extend the known compression schemes to all VC classes. We show that maximum classes can be characterised by a local-connectivity property of the graph obtained by viewing the class as a cubical complex. This geometric characterisation of maximum VC classes is applied to prove a negative embedding result which demonstrates VC-d classes that cannot be embedded in any maximum class of VC dimension lower than 2d. On the other hand, we show that every VC-d class C embeds in a VC-(d+D) maximum class where D is the deficiency of C, i.e., the difference between the cardinalities of a maximum VC-d class and of C. For VC-2 classes in binary n-cubes for 4 <= n <= 6, we give best possible results on embedding into maximum classes. For some special classes of Boolean functions, relationships with maximum classes are investigated. Finally we give a general recursive procedure for embedding VC-d classes into VC-(d+k) maximum classes for smallest k.Comment: 22 pages, 2 figure

Optimal Collusion-Free Teaching

Formal models of learning from teachers need to respect certain criteria toavoid collusion. The most commonly accepted notion of collusion-freeness wasproposed by Goldman and Mathias (1996), and various teaching models obeyingtheir criterion have been studied. For each model $M$ and each concept class$\mathcal{C}$, a parameter $M$-$\mathrm{TD}(\mathcal{C})$ refers to theteaching dimension of concept class $\mathcal{C}$ in model $M$---defined to bethe number of examples required for teaching a concept, in the worst case overall concepts in $\mathcal{C}$. This paper introduces a new model of teaching, called no-clash teaching,together with the corresponding parameter $\mathrm{NCTD}(\mathcal{C})$.No-clash teaching is provably optimal in the strong sense that, given anyconcept class $\mathcal{C}$ and any model $M$ obeying Goldman and Mathias'scollusion-freeness criterion, one obtains \mathrm{NCTD}(\mathcal{C})\leM-$\mathrm{TD}(\mathcal{C})$. We also study a corresponding notion$\mathrm{NCTD}^+$ for the case of learning from positive data only, establishuseful bounds on $\mathrm{NCTD}$ and $\mathrm{NCTD}^+$, and discuss relationsof these parameters to the VC-dimension and to sample compression. In addition to formulating an optimal model of collusion-free teaching, ourmain results are on the computational complexity of deciding whether$\mathrm{NCTD}^+(\mathcal{C})=k$ (or $\mathrm{NCTD}(\mathcal{C})=k$) for given$\mathcal{C}$ and $k$. We show some such decision problems to be equivalent tothe existence question for certain constrained matchings in bipartite graphs.Our NP-hardness results for the latter are of independent interest in the studyof constrained graph matchings.<br