The Support Vector (SV) machine is a novel type of learning machine, based on statistical learning theory, which contains polynomial classi ers, neural networks, and radial basis function (RBF) networks as special cases. In the RBF case, the SV algorithm automatically determines centers, weights and threshold such as to minimize an upper bound on the expected test error. The present study is devoted to an experimental comparison of these machines with a classical approach, where the centers are determined by k{means clustering and the weights are found using error backpropagation. We consider three machines, namely a classical RBF machine, an SV machine with Gaussian kernel, and a hybrid system with the centers determined by the SV method and the weights trained by error backpropagation. Our results show that on the US postal service database of handwritten digits, the SV machine achieves the highest test accuracy, followed by t h e h ybrid approach. The SV approach i s thus not only theoretically well{founded, but also superior in a practical application.
Scholkopf et al., REF have compared the performance of three machines, namely, a classical RBF machine, an SVM with Gaussian kernel, and a hybrid system with the centers determined by the SVM method.
Comparing support vector machines with gaussian kernels to radial basis function classi ers
IEEE Trans. Sign. Processing
Computer Science