Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

December 17, 2012

The Rewards of Ignoring Data

Filed under: Boosting,Machine Learning,Random Forests — Patrick Durusau @ 2:55 pm

The Rewards of Ignoring Data by Charles Parker.

From the post:

Can you make smarter decisions by ignoring data? It certainly runs counter to our mission, and sounds a little like an Orwellean dystopia. But as we’re going to see, ignoring some of your data some of the time can be a very useful thing to do.

Charlie does an excellent job of introducing the use of multiple models of data and includes deeper material:

There are fairly deep mathematical reasons for this, and ML scientist par excellence Robert Shapire lays out one of the most important arguments in the landmark paper “The Strength of Weak Learnability” in which he proves that a machine learning algorithm that performs only slightly better than randomly can be “boosted” into a classifier that is able to learn to an arbitrary degree of accuracy. For this incredible contribution (and for the later paper that gave us the Adaboost algorithm), he and his colleague Yoav Freund earned the Gödel Prize for computer science theory, the only time the award has been given for a machine learning paper.

Not being satisfied, Charles demonstrates how you can create a random decision forest from your data.

Which is possible without reading the deeper material.

June 6, 2012

Boosting: Foundations and Algorithms

Filed under: Boosting,Searching — Patrick Durusau @ 7:50 pm

Boosting: Foundations and Algorithms by Robert E. Schapire and Yoav Freund. (Amazon link)

From the description:

Boosting is an approach to machine learning based on the idea of creating a highly accurate predictor by combining many weak and inaccurate “rules of thumb.” A remarkably rich theory has evolved around boosting, with connections to a range of topics, including statistics, game theory, convex optimization, and information geometry. Boosting algorithms have also enjoyed practical success in such fields as biology, vision, and speech processing. At various times in its history, boosting has been perceived as mysterious, controversial, even paradoxical.

This book, written by the inventors of the method, brings together, organizes, simplifies, and substantially extends two decades of research on boosting, presenting both theory and applications in a way that is accessible to readers from diverse backgrounds while also providing an authoritative reference for advanced researchers. With its introductory treatment of all material and its inclusion of exercises in every chapter, the book is appropriate for course use as well. The book begins with a general introduction to machine learning algorithms and their analysis; then explores the core theory of boosting, especially its ability to generalize; examines some of the myriad other theoretical viewpoints that help to explain and understand boosting; provides practical extensions of boosting for more complex learning problems; and finally presents a number of advanced theoretical topics. Numerous applications and practical illustrations are offered throughout.

If you can’t recognize a subject, how can you reliably boost it? (Inquiring minds want to know.)

(I first saw this title mentioned at KDnuggets, http://www.kdnuggets.com/2012/06/book-boosting-foundations-algorithms.html)

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