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Regret Bounds for Hierarchical Classification with Linear-Threshold Functions

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3120))

Abstract

We study the problem of classifying data in a given taxonomy when classifications associated with multiple and/or partial paths are allowed. We introduce an incremental algorithm using a linear-threshold classifier at each node of the taxonomy. These classifiers are trained and evaluated in a hierarchical top-down fashion. We then define a hierachical and parametric data model and prove a bound on the probability that our algorithm guesses the wrong multilabel for a random instance compared to the same probability when the true model parameters are known. Our bound decreases exponentially with the number of training examples and depends in a detailed way on the interaction between the process parameters and the taxonomy structure. Preliminary experiments on real-world data provide support to our theoretical results.

The first and third author gratefully acknowledge partial support by the PASCAL Network of Excellence under EC grant no. 506778.

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Cesa-Bianchi, N., Conconi, A., Gentile, C. (2004). Regret Bounds for Hierarchical Classification with Linear-Threshold Functions. In: Shawe-Taylor, J., Singer, Y. (eds) Learning Theory. COLT 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3120. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-27819-1_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-27819-1_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22282-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-27819-1

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