The MONK's Problems: A Performance Comparison of Different Learning Algorithms

S. Thrun, J. Bala, E. Bloedorn, I. Bratko, B. Cestnik, J. Cheng, K. De Jong, S. Dzeroski, S.E. Fahlman, D. Fisher, R. Hamann, K. Kaufman, S. Keller, I. Kononenko, J. Kreuziger, R.S. Michalski, T. Mitchell, P. Pachowicz, Y. Reich H. Vafaie, W. Van de Welde, W. Wenzel, J. Wnek, and J. Zhang

Once upon a time, in July 1991, the monks of Corsendonk Priory were faced with a school held in their priory, namely the 2nd European Summer School on Machine Learning. After listening more than one week to a wide variety of learning algorithms, they felt rather confused: Which algorithm would be optimal? And which one to avoid? As a consequence of this dilemma, they created a simple task on which all learning algorithms ought to be be compared: the three MONK's problems.

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