Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1121867. 	[Title] MAJORITY VOTE CLASSIFIERS: THEORY AND APPLICATIONS [Abstract]  Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1119751. 	[Title] An Efficient Boosting Algorithm for Combining Preferences [Abstract] The problem of combining preferences arises in several applications, such as combining the results of different search engines. This work describes an efficient algorithm for combining multiple preferences. We first give a formal framework for the problem. We then describe and analyze a new boosting algorithm for combining preferences called RankBoost. We also describe an efficient implementation of the algorithm for a restricted case. We discuss two experiments we carried out to assess the performance of RankBoost. In the first experiment, we used the algorithm to combine different WWW search strategies, each of which is a query expansion for a given domain. For this task, we compare the performance of RankBoost to the individual search strategies. The second experiment is a collaborative-filtering task for making movie recommendations. Here, we present results comparing RankBoost to nearest-neighbor and regression algorithms. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #8079. 	[Title] Bias Plus Variance Decomposition for Zero-One Loss Functions [Abstract] We present a bias-variance decomposition of expected misclassification rate, the most commonly used loss function in supervised classification learning. The bias-variance decomposition for quadratic loss functions is well known and serves as an important tool for analyzing learning algorithms, yet no decomposition was offered for the more commonly used zero-one (misclassification) loss functions until the recent work of Kong & Dietterich (1995) and Breiman (1996). Their decomposition suffers from some major shortcomings though (e.g., potentially negative variance), which our decomposition avoids. We show that, in practice, the naive frequency-based estimation of the decomposition terms is by itself biased and show how to correct for this bias. We illustrate the decomposition on various algorithms and datasets from the UCI repository. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1107861. 	[Title] Boosting Trees for Cost-Sensitive Classifications [Abstract] This paper explores two boosting techniques for cost-sensitive tree classification in the situation where misclassification costs change very often. Ideally, one would like to have only one induction, and use the induced model for different misclassification costs. Thus, it demands robustness of the induced model against cost changes. Combining multiple trees gives robust predictions against this change. We demonstrate that ordinary boosting combined with the minimum expected cost criterion to select the prediction class is a good solution under this situation. We also introduce a variant of the ordinary boosting procedure which utilizes the cost information during training. We show that the proposed technique performs better than the ordinary boosting in terms of misclassification cost. However, this technique requires to induce a set of new trees every time the cost changes. Our empirical investigation also reveals some interesting behavior of boosting decision trees for cost-sensitive classification. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #197783. 	[Title] Adaptive Boosting of Neural Networks for Character Recognition [Abstract] Technical Report #1072, D epartement d'Informatique et Recherche Op erationnelle, Universit e de Montr eal Abstract Boosting is a general method for improving the performance of any learning algorithm that consistently generates classifiers which need to perform only slightly better than random guessing. A recently proposed and very promising boosting algorithm is AdaBoost [5]. It has been applied with great success to several benchmark machine learning problems using rather simple learning algorithms [4], in particular decision trees [1, 2, 6]. In this paper we use AdaBoost to improve the performances of neural networks applied to character recognition tasks. We compare training methods based on sampling the training set and weighting the cost function. Our system achieves about 1.4% error on a data base of online handwritten digits from more than 200 writers. Adaptive boosting of a multi-layer network achieved 2% error on the UCI Letters offline characters data set. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #59045. 	[Title] PREDICTION GAMES AND ARCING ALGORITHMS [Abstract] Technical Report 504 December 19, 1997 Statistics Department University of California Berkeley, CA. (4720 Abstract The theory behind the success of adaptive reweighting and combining algorithms (arcing) such as Adaboost (Freund and Schapire [1995].[1996]) and others in reducing generalization error has not been well understood. By formulating prediction, both classification and regression, as a game where one player makes a selection from instances in the training set and the other a convex linear combination of predictors from a finite set, existing arcing algorithms are shown to be algorithms for finding good game strategies. An optimal game strategy finds a combined predictor that minimizes the maximum of the error over the training set. A bound on the generalization error for the combined predictors in terms of their maximum error is proven that is sharper than bounds to date. Arcing algorithms are described that converge to the optimal strategy. Schapire et.al. [1997] offered an explanation of why Adaboost works in terms of its ability to reduce the margin. Comparing Adaboost to our optimal arcing algorithm shows that their explanation is not valid and that the answer lies elsewhere. In this situation the VC-type bounds are misleading. Some empirical results are given to explore the situation. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1110438. 	[Title] A Method of Combining Multiple Probabilistic Classifiers through Soft Competition on Different Feature Sets [Abstract] A novel method is proposed for combining multiple probabilistic classifiers on different feature sets. In order to achieve the improved classification performance, a generalized finite mixture model is proposed as a linear combination scheme and implemented based on radial basis function networks. In the linear combination scheme, soft competition on different feature sets is adopted as an automatic feature rank mechanism so that different feature sets can be always simultaneously used in an optimal way to determine linear combination weights. For training the linear combination scheme, a learning algorithm is developed based on Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. The proposed method has been applied to a typical real world problem, viz. speaker identification, in which different feature sets often need consideration simultaneously for robustness. Simulation results show that the proposed method yields good performance in speaker identification. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1116842. 	[Title] Pruning Adaptive Boosting ICML-97 Final Draft [Abstract] The boosting algorithm AdaBoost, developed by Freund and Schapire, has exhibited outstanding performance on several benchmark problems when using C4.5 as the "weak" algorithm to be "boosted." Like other ensemble learning approaches, AdaBoost constructs a composite hypothesis by voting many individual hypotheses. In practice, the large amount of memory required to store these hypotheses can make ensemble methods hard to deploy in applications. This paper shows that by selecting a subset of the hypotheses, it is possible to obtain nearly the same levels of performance as the entire set. The results also provide some insight into the behavior of AdaBoost. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1130927. 	[Title] Parametric regression 1.1 Learning problem model f bw b w in turn is an estimator [Abstract] Let us present briefly the learning problem we will address in this chapter and the following. The ultimate goal is the modelling of a mapping f : x 7! y from multidimensional input x to output y. The output can be multi-dimensional, but we will mostly address situations where it is a one dimensional real value. Furthermore, we should take into account the fact that we scarcely ever observe the actual true mapping y = f (x). This is due to perturbations such as e.g. observational noise. We will rather have a joint probability p (x; y). We expect this probability to be peaked for values of x and y corresponding to the mapping. We focus on automatic learning by example. A set D = of data sampled from the joint distribution p (x; y) = p (yjx) p (x) is collected. With the help of this set, we try to identify a model of the data, parameterised by a set of 1.2 Learning and optimisation The fit of the model to the system in a given point x is measured using a criterion representing the distance from the model prediction b y to the system, e (y; f w (x)). This is the local risk . The performance of the model is measured by the expected This quantity represents the ability to yield good performance for all the possible situations (i.e. (x; y) pairs) and is thus called generalisation error . The optimal set 1 parameters w: f w : x 7! b y. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #52784. 	[Title] An Empirical Evaluation of Bagging and Boosting [Abstract] An ensemble consists of a set of independently trained classifiers (such as neural networks or decision trees) whose predictions are combined when classifying novel instances. Previous research has shown that an ensemble as a whole is often more accurate than any of the single classifiers in the ensemble. Bagging (Breiman 1996a) and Boosting (Freund & Schapire 1996) are two relatively new but popular methods for producing ensembles. In this paper we evaluate these methods using both neural networks and decision trees as our classification algorithms. Our results clearly show two important facts. The first is that even though Bagging almost always produces a better classifier than any of its individual component classifiers and is relatively impervious to overfitting, it does not generalize any better than a baseline neural-network ensemble method. The second is that Boosting is a powerful technique that can usually produce better ensembles than Bagging; however, it is more susceptible to noise and can quickly overfit a data set. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1130931. 	[Title] TH presentee par STATISTICAL LEARNING AND REGULARISATION FOR REGRESSION Application to system identification and time [Abstract]  Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1130934. 	[Title] 82 Lag-space estimation in time-series modelling keep track of cases where the estimation of P [Abstract] When m = 0 (no delays), we set A 0 (ffi) = f(j; k) ; j 6= kg, such that P m (*jffi) depends only on *. The estimated probabilities above become quite noisy when the number of elements in set A m and B m are small. For this reason, we estimate the standard deviation of P m (*jffi). Notice that this estimate is the empirical average of a binomial variable (either a given couple satisfied the conditions on ffi and *, or it does not). The standard deviation is then estimated easily by: Generally speaking, P m (*jffi) increases with * (laxer output test), and when ffi approaches 0 (stricter input condition). Let us now define by P m (*) the maximum over ffi of P m (*jffi): P m (*) = max ffi&gt;0 P m (*jffi). The dependability index is defined as: P 0 (*) represents how much data passes the continuity test when no input information is available. This dependability index measures how much of the remaining continuity information is associated with involving input i m . This index is then averaged over * with respect to the probability (1 P 0 (*)): m (*) (1 P 0 (*)) d* (4.8) It is clear that m (*), and therefore its average, should be positive quantities. Furthermore, if the system is deterministic, the dependability is zero after a certain number of inputs, so the sum of averages saturates. If the system is also noise-free, they sum up to 1. For any m greater than the embedding dimension: refers to results obtained using this method. 4.6 Statistical variable selection Statistical variable selection (or feature selection) encompasses a number of techniques aimed at choosing a relevant subset of input variables in a regression or a classification problem. As in the rest of this document, we will limit ourselves to considerations related to the regression problem, even though most methods discussed below apply to classification as well. Variable selection can be seen as a part of the data analysis problem: the selection (or discard) of a variable tells us about the relevance of the associated measurement to the modelled system. In a general setting, this is a purely combinatorial problem: given V possible variables, there is 2 V possible subsets (including the empty set and the full set) of these variables. Given a performance measure, such as prediction error, the only optimal scheme is to test all these subset and choose the one that gives the best performance. It is easy to see that such an extensive scheme is only viable when the number of variables is rather low. Identifying 2 V models when we have more than a few variables requires too much computation. A number of techniques have been devised to overcome this combinatorial limit. Some of them use an iterative, locally optimal technique to construct an estimate of the relevant subset in a number of steps. We will refer to them as stepwise selection methods, not to be con fused with stepwise regression, a subset of these methods that we will address below. In forward selection, we start with an empty set of variables. At each step, we select a candidate variable using a selection criteria, check whether this variable should be added to the set, and iterate until a given stop condition is reached. On the contrary, backward elimination methods start with the full set of all input variables. At each step, the least significant variable is selected according to a selection criteria. If this variable is irrelevant, it is removed and the process is iterated until a stop condition is reached. It is easy to devise examples where the inclusion of a variable causes a previously included variable to become irrelevant. It thus seems appropriate to consider running a backward elimination each time a new variable is added by forward selection. This combination of both ap proaches is known as stepwise regression in the linear regression con Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #5055. 	[Title] Boosting the Margin: A New Explanation for the Effectiveness of Voting Methods [Abstract] One of the surprising recurring phenomena observed in experiments with boosting is that the test error of the generated classifier usually does not increase as its size becomes very large, and often is observed to decrease even after the training error reaches zero. In this paper, we show that this phenomenon is related to the distribution of margins of the training examples with respect to the generated voting classification rule, where the margin of an example is simply the difference between the number of correct votes and the maximum number of votes received by any incorrect label. We show that techniques used in the analysis of Vapnik's support vector classifiers and of neural networks with small weights can be applied to voting methods to relate the margin distribution to the test error. We also show theoretically and experimentally that boosting is especially effective at increasing the margins of the training examples. Finally, we compare our explanation to those based on the bias-variance decomposition. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #211906. 	[Title] Generalizations of the Bias/Variance Decomposition for Prediction Error [Abstract] The bias and variance of a real valued random variable, using squared error loss, are well understood. However because of recent developments in classification techniques it has become desirable to extend these concepts to general random variables and loss functions. The 0-1 (misclassification) loss function with categorical random variables has been of particular interest. We explore the concepts of variance and bias and develop a decomposition of the prediction error into functions of the systematic and variable parts of our predictor. After providing some examples we conclude with a discussion of the various definitions that have been proposed. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1106630. 	[Title] Submitted to the Future Generation Computer Systems special issue on Data Mining. Using Neural Networks [Abstract] Neural networks have been successfully applied in a wide range of supervised and unsupervised learning applications. Neural-network methods are not commonly used for data-mining tasks, however, because they often produce incomprehensible models and require long training times. In this article, we describe neural-network learning algorithms that are able to produce comprehensible models, and that do not require excessive training times. Specifically, we discuss two classes of approaches for data mining with neural networks. The first type of approach, often called rule extraction, involves extracting symbolic models from trained neural networks. The second approach is to directly learn simple, easy-to-understand networks. We argue that, given the current state of the art, neural-network methods deserve a place in the tool boxes of data-mining specialists. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1152075. 	[Title]  [Abstract] ARCING THE EDGE Leo Breiman Technical Report 486 , Statistics Department University of California, Berkeley CA. 94720 Abstract Recent work has shown that adaptively reweighting the training set, growing a classifier using the new weights, and combining the classifiers constructed to date can significantly decrease generalization error. Procedures of this type were called arcing by Breiman[1996]. The first successful arcing procedure was introduced by Freund and Schapire[1995,1996] and called Adaboost. In an effort to explain why Adaboost works, Schapire et.al. [1997] derived a bound on the generalization error of a convex combination of classifiers in terms of the margin. We introduce a function called the edge, which differs from the margin only if there are more than two classes. A framework for understanding arcing algorithms is defined. In this framework, we see that the arcing algorithms currently in the literature are optimization algorithms which minimize some function of the edge. A relation is derived between the optimal reduction in the maximum value of the edge and the PAC concept of weak learner. Two algorithms are described which achieve the optimal reduction. Tests on both synthetic and real data cast doubt on the Schapire et.al. There is recent empirical evidence that significant reductions in generalization error can be gotten by growing a number of different classifiers on the same training set and letting these vote for the best class. Freund and Schapire ([1995], [1996] ) proposed an algorithm called AdaBoost which adaptively reweights the training set in a way based on the past history of misclassifications, constructs a new classifier using the current weights, and uses the misclassification rate of this classifier to determine the size of its vote. In a number of empirical studies on many data sets using trees (CART or C4.5) as the base classifier (Drucker and Cortes[1995], Quinlan[1996], Freud and Schapire[1996], Breiman[1996]) AdaBoost produced dramatic decreases in generalization error compared to using a single tree. Error rates were reduced to the point where tests on some well-known data sets gave the result that CART plus AdaBoost did significantly better than any other of the commonly used classification methods (Breiman[1996] ). Meanwhile, empirical results showed that other methods of adaptive resampling (or reweighting) and combining (called "arcing" by Breiman [1996]) also led to low test set error rates. An algorithm called arc-x4 (Breiman[1996]) gave error rates almost identical to Adaboost. Ji and Ma[1997] worked with classifiers consisting of randomly selected hyperplanes and using a different method of adaptive resampling and unweighted voting, also got low error rates. Thus, there are a least three arcing algorithms extant, all of which give excellent classification accuracy. explanation. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1997. 	[Title] Cross-Validation and the Bootstrap: Estimating the Error Rate of a Prediction Rule [Abstract] A training set of data has been used to construct a rule for predicting future responses. What is the error rate of this rule? The traditional answer to this question is given by cross-validation. The cross-validation estimate of prediction error is nearly unbiased, but can be highly variable. This article discusses bootstrap estimates of prediction error, which can be thought of as smoothed versions of cross-validation. A particular bootstrap method, the 632+ rule, is shown to substantially outperform cross-validation in a catalog of 24 simulation experiments. Besides providing point estimates, we also consider estimating the variability of an error rate estimate. All of the results here are nonparametric, and apply to any possible prediction rule: however we only study classification problems with 0-1 loss in detail. Our simulations include "smooth" prediction rules like Fisher's Linear Discriminant Function, and unsmooth ones like Nearest Neighbors. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #463825. 	[Title] On the Induction of Intelligible Ensembles [Abstract] Ensembles of classifiers, e.g. decision trees, often exhibit greater predictive accuracy than single classifiers alone. Bagging and boosting are two standard ways of generating and combining multiple classifiers. Unfortunately, the increase in predictive performance is usually linked to a dramatic decrease in intelligibility: ensembles are more or less black boxes comparable to neural networks. So far attempts at pruning of ensembles have not been very successful, approximately reducing ensembles into half. This paper describes a different approach which both tries to keep ensemble-sizes small during induction already and also limits the complexity of single classifiers rigorously. Single classifiers are decision-stumps of a prespecified maximal depth. They are combined by majority voting. Ensembles are induced and pruned by a simple hill-climbing procedure. These ensembles can reasonably be transformed into equivalent decision trees. We conduct some empirical evaluation to investigate both predictive accuracies and classifier complexities. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #192850. 	[Title] Characterizing the generalization performance of model selection strategies [Abstract] We investigate the structure of model selection problems via the bias/variance decomposition. In particular, we characterize the essential aspects of a model selection task by the bias and variance profiles it generates over the sequence of hypothesis classes. With this view, we develop a new understanding of complexity-penalization methods: First, the penalty terms can be interpreted as postulating a particular profile for the variances as a function of model complexityif the postulated and true profiles do not match, then systematic under-fitting or over-fitting results, depending on whether the penalty terms are too large or too small. Second, we observe that it is generally best to penalize according to the true variances of the task, and therefore no fixed penalization strategy is optimal across all problems. We then use this characterization to introduce the notion of easy versus hard model selection problems. Here we show that if the variance profile grows too rapidly in relation to the biases, then standard model selection techniques become prone to significant errors. This can happen, for example, in regression problems where the independent variables are drawn from wide-tailed distributions. To counter this, we discuss a new model selection strategy that dramatically outperforms standard complexity-penalization and hold-out meth ods on these hard tasks. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1104851. 	[Title] Improving Bagging Performance by Increasing Decision Tree Diversity [Abstract] Ensembles of decision trees often exhibit greater predictive accuracy than single trees alone. Bagging and boosting are two standard ways of generating and combining multiple trees. Boosting has been empirically determined to be the more effective of the two, and it has recently been proposed that this may be because it produces more diverse trees than bagging. This paper reports empirical findings that strongly support this hypothesis. We enforce greater decision tree diversity in bagging by a simple modification of the underlying decision tree learner that utilizes randomly-generated decision stumps of predefined depth as the starting point for tree induction. The modified procedure yields very competitive results while still retaining one of the attractive properties of bagging: all iterations are independent. Additionally, we also investigate a possible integration of bagging and boosting. All these ensemble-generating procedures are compared empirically on various domains. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #39124. 	[Title] The Utility of Feature Weighting in Nearest-Neighbor Algorithms [Abstract] Nearest-neighbor algorithms are known to depend heavily on their distance metric. In this paper, we investigate the use of a weighted Euclidean metric in which the weight for each feature comes from a small set of options. We describe Diet, an algorithm that directs search through a space of discrete weights using cross-validation error as its evaluation function. Although a large set of possible weights can reduce the learner's bias, it can also lead to increased variance and overfitting. Our empirical study shows that, for many data sets, there is an advantage to weighting features, but that increasing the number of possible weights beyond two (zero and one) has very little benefit and sometimes degrades performance. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1123926. 	[Title] Achieving High-Accuracy Text-to-Speech with Machine Learning [Abstract] In 1987, Sejnowski and Rosenberg developed their famous NETtalk system for English text-to-speech. This chapter describes a machine learning approach to text-to-speech that builds upon and extends the initial NETtalk work. Among the many extensions to the NETtalk system were the following: a different learning algorithm, a wider input "window", error-correcting output coding, a right-to-left scan of the word to be pronounced (with the results of each decision influencing subsequent decisions), and the addition of several useful input features. These changes yielded a system that performs much better than the original NETtalk system. After training on 19,002 words, the system achieves 93.7% correct pronunciation of individual phonemes and 64.8% correct pronunciation of whole words (where the pronunciation must exactly match the dictionary pronunciation to be correct). Based on the judgements of three human participants in a blind assessment study, our system was estimated to have a serious error rate of 16.7% (on whole words) compared to an error rate of 26.1% for the DECTalk3.0 rulebase. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #2653. 	[Title] A decision-theoretic generalization of on-line learning and an application to boosting how the weight-update rule [Abstract] We consider the problem of dynamically apportioning resources among a set of options in a worst-case on-line framework. The model we study can be interpreted as a broad, abstract extension of the well-studied on-line prediction model to a general decision-theoretic setting. We show that the multiplicative weight-update rule of Littlestone and Warmuth [10] can be adapted to this model yielding bounds that are slightly weaker in some cases, but applicable to a considerably more general class of learning problems. We show how the resulting learning algorithm can be applied to a variety of problems, including gambling, multiple-outcome prediction, repeated games and prediction of points in R n Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #2654. 	[Title] Experiments with a New Boosting Algorithm [Abstract] In an earlier paper, we introduced a new boosting algorithm called AdaBoost which, theoretically, can be used to significantly reduce the error of any learning algorithm that consistently generates classifiers whose performance is a little better than random guessing. We also introduced the related notion of a pseudo-loss which is a method for forcing a learning algorithm of multi-label concepts to concentrate on the labels that are hardest to discriminate. In this paper, we describe experiments we carried out to assess how well AdaBoost with and without pseudo-loss, performs on real learning problems. We performed two sets of experiments. The first set compared boosting to Breiman's bagging method when used to aggregate various classifiers (including decision trees and single attribute-value tests). We compared the performance of the two methods on a collection of machine-learning benchmarks. In the second set of experiments, we studied in more detail the performance of boosting using a nearest-neighbor classifier on an OCR problem. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #105057. 	[Title] Error-Correcting Output Codes for Local Learners [Abstract] Error-correcting output codes (ECOCs) represent classes with a set of output bits, where each bit encodes a binary classification task corresponding to a unique partition of the classes. Algorithms that use ECOCs learn the function corresponding to each bit, and combine them to generate class predictions. ECOCs can reduce both variance and bias errors for multiclass classification tasks when the errors made at the output bits are not correlated. They work well with algorithms that eagerly induce global classifiers (e.g., C4.5) but do not assist simple local classifiers (e.g., nearest neighbor), which yield correlated predictions across the output bits. We show that the output bit predictions of local learners can be decorrelated by selecting different features for each bit. We present promising empirical results for this combination of ECOCs, near est neighbor, and feature selection. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1133028. 	[Title] An Efficient Method To Estimate Bagging's Generalization Error [Abstract] In bagging [Bre94a] one uses bootstrap replicates of the training set [Efr79, ET93] to try to improve a learning algorithm's performance. The computational requirements for estimating the resultant generalization error on a test set by means of cross-validation are often prohibitive; for leave-one-out cross-validation one needs to train the underlying algorithm on the order of m- times, where m is the size of the training set and is the number of replicates. This paper presents several techniques for exploiting the bias-variance decomposition [GBD92, Wol96] to estimate the generalization error of a bagged learning algorithm without invoking yet more training of the underlying learning algorithm. The best of our estimators exploits stacking [Wol92]. In a set of experiments reported here, it was found to be more accurate than both the alternative cross-validation-based estimator of the bagged algorithm's error and the cross-validation-based estimator of the underlying algorithm's error. This improvement was particularly pronounced for small test sets. This suggests a novel justification for using bagging| im proved estimation of generalization error. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #154982. 	[Title] Bias, variance and prediction error for classification rules [Abstract] We study the notions of bias and variance for classification rules. Following Efron (1978) we develop a decomposition of prediction error into its natural components. Then we derive bootstrap estimates of these components and illustrate how they can be used to describe the error behaviour of a classifier in practice. In the process we also obtain a bootstrap estimate of the error of a "bagged" classifier. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #167656. 	[Title] BOOSTING AND NAIVE BAYESIAN LEARNING [Abstract] Although so-called naive Bayesian classification makes the unrealistic assumption that the values of the attributes of an example are independent given the class of the example, this learning method is remarkably successful in practice, and no uniformly better learning method is known. Boosting is a general method of combining multiple classifiers due to Yoav Freund and Rob Schapire. This paper shows that boosting applied to naive Bayesian classifiers yields combination classifiers that are representationally equivalent to standard feedforward multilayer perceptrons. (An ancillary result is that naive Bayesian classification is a nonparametric, nonlinear generalization of logistic regression.) As a training algorithm, boosted naive Bayesian learning is quite different from backpropagation, and has definite advantages. Boosting requires only linear time and constant space, and hidden nodes are learned incrementally, starting with the most important. On the real-world datasets on which the method has been tried so far, generalization performance is as good as or better than the best published result using any other learning method. Unlike all other standard learning algorithms, naive Bayesian learning, with and without boosting, can be done in logarithmic time with a linear number of parallel computing units. Accordingly, these learning methods are highly plausible computationally as models of animal learning. Other arguments suggest that they are plausible behaviorally also. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #129897. 	[Title] The out-of-bootstrap method for model averaging and selection [Abstract] We propose a bootstrap-based method for model averaging and selection that focuses on training points that are left out of individual bootstrap samples. This information can be used to estimate optimal weighting factors for combining estimates from different bootstrap samples, and also for finding the best subsets the linear model setting. These proposals provide alternatives to Bayesian approaches to model averaging and selection, requiring less computation and fewer subjective choices. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #27243. 	[Title] An Empirical Comparison of Voting Classification Algorithms: Bagging, Boosting, and Variants [Abstract] Methods for voting classification algorithms, such as Bagging and AdaBoost, have been shown to be very successful in improving the accuracy of certain classifiers for artificial and real-world datasets. We review these algorithms and describe a large empirical study comparing several variants in conjunction with a decision tree inducer (three variants) and a Naive-Bayes inducer. The purpose of the study is to improve our understanding of why and when these algorithms, which use perturbation, reweighting, and combination techniques, affect classification error. We provide a bias and variance decomposition of the error to show how different methods and variants influence these two terms. This allowed us to determine that Bagging reduced variance of unstable methods, while boosting methods (AdaBoost and Arc-x4) reduced both the bias and variance of unstable methods but increased the variance for Naive-Bayes, which was very stable. We observed that Arc-x4 behaves differently than AdaBoost if reweighting is used instead of resampling, indicating a fundamental difference. Voting variants, some of which are introduced in this paper, include: pruning versus no pruning, use of probabilistic estimates, weight perturbations (Wagging), and backfitting of data. We found that Bagging improves when probabilistic estimates in conjunction with no-pruning are used, as well as when the data was backfit. We measure tree sizes and show an interesting positive correlation between the increase in the average tree size in AdaBoost trials and its success in reducing the error. We compare the mean-squared error of voting methods to non-voting methods and show that the voting methods lead to large and significant reductions in the mean-squared errors. Practical problems that arise in implementing boosting algorithms are explored, including numerical instabilities and underflows. We use scatterplots that graphically show how AdaBoost reweights instances, emphasizing not only "hard" areas but also outliers and noise. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #27249. 	[Title] Machine Learning Bias, Statistical Bias, and Statistical Variance of Decision Tree Algorithms [Abstract] The term "bias" is widely used|and with different meanings|in the fields of machine learning and statistics. This paper clarifies the uses of this term and shows how to measure and visualize the statistical bias and variance of learning algorithms. Statistical bias and variance can be applied to diagnose problems with machine learning bias, and the paper shows four examples of this. Finally, the paper discusses methods of reducing bias and variance. Methods based on voting can reduce variance, and the paper compares Breiman's bagging method and our own tree randomization method for voting decision trees. Both methods uniformly improve performance on data sets from the Irvine repository. Tree randomization yields perfect performance on the Letter Recognition task. A weighted nearest neighbor algorithm based on the infinite bootstrap is also introduced. In general, decision tree algorithms have moderate-to-high variance, so an important implication of this work is that variance|rather than appropriate or inappropriate machine learning bias|is an important cause of poor performance for decision tree algorithms. Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #27250. 	[Title] Why Does Bagging Work? A Bayesian Account and its Implications bagging's success, both in a [Abstract] The error rate of decision-tree and other classification learners can often be much reduced by bagging: learning multiple models from bootstrap samples of the database, and combining them by uniform voting. In this paper we empirically test two alternative explanations for this, both based on Bayesian learning theory: (1) bagging works because it is an approximation to the optimal procedure of Bayesian model averaging, with an appropriate implicit prior; (2) bagging works because it effectively shifts the prior to a more appropriate region of model space. All the experimental evidence contradicts the first hypothesis, and confirms the second. Bagging (Breiman 1996a) is a simple and effective way to reduce the error rate of many classification learning algorithms. For example, in the empirical study described below, it reduces the error of a decision-tree learner in 19 of 26 databases, by 4% on average. In the bagging procedure, given a training set of size s, a "bootstrap" replicate of it is constructed by taking s samples with replacement from the training set. Thus a new training set of the same size is produced, where each of the original examples may appear once, more than once, or not. On average, 63% of the original examples will appear in the bootstrap sample. The learning algorithm is then applied to this training set. This procedure is repeated m times, and the resulting m models are aggregated by uniform voting. Bagging is one of several "multiple model" approaches that have recently received much attention (see, for example, (Chan, Stolfo, & Wolpert 1996)). Other procedures of this type include boosting (Freund & Schapire 1996) and stacking (Wolpert 1992). Please summarise all the given information.

Above are papers related to the following paper: [Paper_ID] Paper #1103737. 	[Title] On learning hierarchical classifications [Abstract] Many significant real-world classification tasks involve a large number of categories which are arranged in a hierarchical structure; for example, classifying documents into subject categories under the library of congress scheme, or classifying world-wide-web documents into topic hierarchies. We investigate the potential benefits of using a given hierarchy over base classes to learn accurate multi-category classifiers for these domains. First, we consider the possibility of exploiting a class hierarchy as prior knowledge that can help one learn a more accurate classifier. We explore the benefits of learning category-discriminants in a hard top-down fashion and compare this to a soft approach which shares training data among sibling categories. In doing so, we verify that hierarchies have the potential to improve prediction accuracy. But we argue that the reasons for this can be subtle. Sometimes, the improvement is only because using a hierarchy happens to constrain the expressiveness of a hypothesis class in an appropriate manner. However, various controlled experiments show that in other cases the performance advantage associated with using a hierarchy really does seem to be due to the prior knowledge it encodes. Please summarise all the given information.

Paper #1121867 has the title `MAJORITY VOTE CLASSIFIERS: THEORY AND APPLICATIONS  
` and the abstract `nan`.
Question: Which category should Paper #1121867 be classified as ?
You can select one from ['Neural_Networks', 'Case_Based', 'Theory', 'Reinforcement_Learning', 'Probabilistic_Methods', 'Rule_Learning', 'Genetic_Algorithms'].


Paper #1121867 has the title `MAJORITY VOTE CLASSIFIERS: THEORY AND APPLICATIONS  
` and the abstract `nan`.
Question: Which category should Paper #1121867 be classified as ?
You can select one from ['Neural_Networks', 'Case_Based', 'Theory', 'Reinforcement_Learning', 'Probabilistic_Methods', 'Rule_Learning', 'Genetic_Algorithms'].

This paper should be classified into: Theory