• DocumentCode
    3494995
  • Title

    PAC learnability versus VC dimension: A footnote to a basic result of statistical learning

  • Author

    Pestov, Vladimir

  • Author_Institution
    Dept. de Mat., Univ. Fed. de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil
  • fYear
    2011
  • fDate
    July 31 2011-Aug. 5 2011
  • Firstpage
    1141
  • Lastpage
    1145
  • Abstract
    A fundamental result of statistical learning theory states that a concept class is PAC learnable if and only if it is a uniform Glivenko-Cantelli class if and only if the VC dimension of the class is finite. However, the theorem is only valid under special assumptions of measurability of the class, in which case the PAC learnability even becomes consistent. Otherwise, there is a classical example, constructed under the Continuum Hypothesis by Dudley and Durst and further adapted by Blumer, Ehrenfeucht, Haussler, and Warmuth, of a concept class of VC dimension one which is neither uniform Glivenko-Cantelli nor consistently PAC learnable. We show that, rather surprisingly, under an additional set-theoretic hypothesis which is much milder than the Continuum Hypothesis (Martin´s Axiom), PAC learnability is equivalent to finite VC dimension for every concept class.
  • Keywords
    learning (artificial intelligence); set theory; statistical analysis; PAC learnability; VC dimension; continuum hypothesis; set-theoretic hypothesis; statistical learning theory; uniform Glivenko-Cantelli class; Atmospheric measurements; Complexity theory; Educational institutions; Particle measurements; Presses; Set theory; Statistical learning;
  • fLanguage
    English
  • Publisher
    ieee
  • Conference_Titel
    Neural Networks (IJCNN), The 2011 International Joint Conference on
  • Conference_Location
    San Jose, CA
  • ISSN
    2161-4393
  • Print_ISBN
    978-1-4244-9635-8
  • Type

    conf

  • DOI
    10.1109/IJCNN.2011.6033352
  • Filename
    6033352