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\author{Avrim Blum and John Langford}


\title{More microchoice discussion}

\maketitle

\section{A quick counter example}

Here's a quick counter example to the proof I gave earlier: Consider a two stage
algorithm which makes a choice in one continuous space, \( H_{I1} \), then
a choice in a second space, \( H_{I2} \), determined by the first choice. In
particular, this algorithm will choose a hypothesis, \( H_{i1} \), which encodes
all of the examples in the first space. The attached hypothesis space, \( H_{I2} \),
at this hypothesis just contains a hypothesis which has delta functions at every
positive instance.
 Here we have a hypothesis with 0 training error which generalizes
very poorly.


\section{A simple discrete case}

If a sequence of discrete hypothesis spaces, \( H_{I1} \), \( H_{I2} \), ...,
\( H_{IM} \) are fixed in advance then only the confidence, \( \delta  \),
needs to be partitioned over each hypothesis space. This is essentially structural
risk minimization and was first pointed out by Shaw-Taylor and others and again
by McAllester.


\section{Partitioning the examples}

If the sequence of hypothesis spaces, \( H_{I1} \), \( H_{I2} \), ..., \( H_{IM} \)
are not fixed in advance but instead the examples are partitioned with \( \frac{N}{M} \)
new examples used in each. Then just use the standard bound with \( N\rightarrow \frac{N}{M} \)
and \( \delta \rightarrow \frac{\delta }{M} \) will apply for the final hypothesis
chosen from the final space. Proof: the new set of examples will be an unbiased
estimator on the space so the standard bounds must apply assuming none of the
\( \delta _{i} \) confidences have been violated.

There are several interesting things about this example. First of all, it is
the setting of online algorithms. Second, this bound is actually better than
the earlier one I claimed. To see this, note that partitioning \( \epsilon \rightarrow \frac{\epsilon }{2} \)
means \( \sqrt{\frac{\ln C(\frac{\epsilon }{24},H_{I})+\ln \frac{1}{\delta }}{N}\rightarrow } \)
\( \sqrt{\frac{\ln C(\frac{\epsilon }{24},H_{I})+\ln \frac{1}{\delta }}{4N}} \)
which implies that \( N\rightarrow 4N \). With the new bound, in order to maintain
the same confidence we need to merely do \( N\rightarrow 2N \). This discrepancy
disappears in the realizable case.


\section{same size child spaces}

The sequence of discrete hypothesis spaces are not fixed in advance, but instead
we know that all possible \( H_{Im} \) are of the same size for a particular
\( m\in [1,...,M] \). Then we can use a bound based on \( |H_{I1}|*|H_{I2}|*...*|H_{IM}| \)
= the total number of possible hypothesis. proof: we have bounded the number
of possible hypothesis so the normal bound applies.


\section{different size child spaces}

There is a sequence of discrete hypothesis spaces which are not fixed in advance
and of varying sizes. In other words, the algorithm proceeds by making a choice
from \( H_{I1} \) which implies an attached (yum, fibre bundles in machine
learning!), \( H_{I2} \), from which a choice is made leading to an attached
\( H_{I3} \), and so on.... The bound still uses \( |H_{I1}|*|H_{I2}|*...*|H_{IM}| \).
Proof: we imagine an a. priori assignment of measure/probability/weight (I'm
not sure what to call this, ``measure'' seems most correct, but McAllester
used ``probability'') to every every final hypothesis, \( H_{final} \) which
is: \( M(H_{final})=\frac{1}{|H_{I1}|*|H_{I2}|*...*|H_{IM}|} \). All of these
assignments will sum to one, \( \sum _{H_{final}}M(H_{final})=1 \). When taking
the union bound in the standard discrete learning theory, we can unevenly weight
the (normally uniform) confidence assigned to each hypothesis. 

This bound is interesting. We do not need to actually calculate \( M(H_{final}) \)
for every \( H_{final} \). Instead, we can calculate \( M(H_{final}) \) by
the following process: Start with an estimate of \( e:=1 \). Every time a choice
is made from a hypothesis space, \( H_{Im} \), update the estimate by: \( e:=\frac{e}{|H_{Im}|} \).
When the algorithm finishes it will have a bound on the true error which is
dependent on the data. Furthermore, this bound is calculated using only the
sizes of spaces which the algorithm actually makes a choice in.


\section{Some interesting cases to think about}


\subsection{random then algorithm}

Consider an algorithm which works with the following, admittedly odd, method.
Before looking at the data, a true random source is used to make a choice between
several hypothesis space. Then the algorithm learns on the space it has chosen,
outputing both it's final choice and an indication of which hypothesis space
it learned on. What is the bound on the error for this algorithm? It should
be the same bound as an algorithm which simply learns on the randomly chosen
hypothesis space.


\subsection{algorithm then random}

Now switch the order of events. An algorithm learns on a particular hypothesis
space to get a hypothesis. Then an attached hypothesis space has a choice made
uniformly on it (without looking at the data). I believe this will have the
same error bound as an algorithm which doesn't make the same random choice.
There is a theorem in decision theory related to this problem.


\section{Extensions to the continuous case}

Clearly we need to induce a metric between hypothesis spaces. This is a bit
difficult because hypothesis spaces because two hypothesis spaces can have varying
size. Perhaps the following will do:

\begin{description}
\item [\( <H_{I},H_{J}>=\frac{1}{2}(\int _{H_{J}}min_{H_{I}}<H_{i},H_{j}>dP(H_{j}) \)]\( +\int _{H_{I}}min_{H_{J}}<H_{i},H_{j}>dP(H_{i})) \) 
\end{description}
This says that the distance between two hypothesis spaces is found by averaging
over the minimal distance between two two elements of the hypothesis space weighted
by a measure \( P(H_{i}) \) and \( P(H_{j}) \) over the hypothesis spaces.
This metric isn't entirely satisfactory to me because if \( H_{i}=H_{j} \)
but the measures are different the metric will still give 0. Any ideas for a
better metric?

\end{document}
