DAI-List Digest Wednesday, 27 February 1991 Issue Number 27 Topics: TR on system for distributed learning Please send submissions to DAI-List@mcc.com. Send other requests, such as changes in your e-mail address, to DAI-List-Request@mcc.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 91 08:44:08 -0600 From: Riyaz Sikora Subject: A Report on the Distributed Learning System The following technical report is now available: BEBR Working Paper No. 91-0109 Title: A Distributed Problem-Solving Approach to Inductive Learning Abstract: In this paper we propose a distributed approach to the inductive learning problem and present an implementation of the Distributed Learning System (DLS). Our method involves breaking up the data set into different sub-samples, using an inductive learning program for each sample, and finally synthesizing the results given by each program into a final concept by using a genetic algorithm. We show that such an approach gives significantly better results than using the whole data set on an inductive learning program. The generality of this approach is suggested by the variety of domains in which DLS was applied with good results, including chemical process control, bankruptcy prediction, default loan evaluation, and loan risk classification. We then show how DLS can be generalized to incorporate any learning algorithm and present some of the implications of this approach to distributed AI systems in general and learning methodologies in particular. Complexity analysis further shows that the time complexity of DLS can be made linear with respect to the size of the problem (data set) irrespective of the time complexity of the learning algorithm it uses. To get a hard copy of the above report send a request (please include your US mail address) to: sikora@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu or write to Bureau of Economic and Business Research, College of Commerce and Business Administration, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 428 Commerce Building (West), 1206 South Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820.