We consider regularized support vector machines (SVMs) and show that they are
precisely equivalent to a new robust optimization formulation. We show that
this equivalence of robust optimization and regularization has implications for
both algorithms, and analysis. In terms of algorithms, the equivalence suggests
more general SVM-like algorithms for classification that explicitly build in
protection to noise, and at the same time control overfitting. On the analysis
front, the equivalence of robustness and regularization, provides a robust
optimization interpretation for the success of regularized SVMs. We use the
this new robustness interpretation of SVMs to give a new proof of consistency
of (kernelized) SVMs, thus establishing robustness as the reason regularized
SVMs generalize well