A Direct Sum Result for the Information Complexity of Learning

Ido Nachum, Jonathan Shafer, Amir Yehudayoff
Proceedings of the 31st Conference On Learning Theory, PMLR 75:1547-1568, 2018.

Abstract

How many bits of information are required to PAC learn a class of hypotheses of VC dimension d? The mathematical setting we follow is that of Bassily et al., where the value of interest is the mutual information I(S;A(S)) between the input sample S and the hypothesis outputted by the learning algorithm A. We introduce a class of functions of VC dimension d over the domain X with information complexity at least Ω(dloglog|X|d) bits for any consistent and proper algorithm (deterministic or random). Bassily et al. proved a similar (but quantitatively weaker) result for the case d=1. The above result is in fact a special case of a more general phenomenon we explore. We define the notion of {\em information complexity} of a given class of functions \cH. Intuitively, it is the minimum amount of information that an algorithm for X must retain about its input to ensure consistency and properness. We prove a direct sum result for information complexity in this context; roughly speaking, the information complexity sums when combining several classes.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v75-nachum18a, title = {A Direct Sum Result for the Information Complexity of Learning}, author = {Nachum, Ido and Shafer, Jonathan and Yehudayoff, Amir}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 31st Conference On Learning Theory}, pages = {1547--1568}, year = {2018}, editor = {Bubeck, Sébastien and Perchet, Vianney and Rigollet, Philippe}, volume = {75}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {06--09 Jul}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {http://proceedings.mlr.press/v75/nachum18a/nachum18a.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v75/nachum18a.html}, abstract = { How many bits of information are required to PAC learn a class of hypotheses of VC dimension $d$? The mathematical setting we follow is that of Bassily et al., where the value of interest is the mutual information $\mathrm{I}(S;A(S))$ between the input sample $S$ and the hypothesis outputted by the learning algorithm $A$. We introduce a class of functions of VC dimension $d$ over the domain $\mathcal{X}$ with information complexity at least $\Omega \left(d\log \log \frac{|\mathcal{X}|}{d}\right)$ bits for any consistent and proper algorithm (deterministic or random). Bassily et al. proved a similar (but quantitatively weaker) result for the case $d=1$. The above result is in fact a special case of a more general phenomenon we explore. We define the notion of {\em information complexity} of a given class of functions $\cH$. Intuitively, it is the minimum amount of information that an algorithm for $\mathcal{X}$ must retain about its input to ensure consistency and properness. We prove a direct sum result for information complexity in this context; roughly speaking, the information complexity sums when combining several classes. } }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T A Direct Sum Result for the Information Complexity of Learning %A Ido Nachum %A Jonathan Shafer %A Amir Yehudayoff %B Proceedings of the 31st Conference On Learning Theory %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2018 %E Sébastien Bubeck %E Vianney Perchet %E Philippe Rigollet %F pmlr-v75-nachum18a %I PMLR %P 1547--1568 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v75/nachum18a.html %V 75 %X How many bits of information are required to PAC learn a class of hypotheses of VC dimension $d$? The mathematical setting we follow is that of Bassily et al., where the value of interest is the mutual information $\mathrm{I}(S;A(S))$ between the input sample $S$ and the hypothesis outputted by the learning algorithm $A$. We introduce a class of functions of VC dimension $d$ over the domain $\mathcal{X}$ with information complexity at least $\Omega \left(d\log \log \frac{|\mathcal{X}|}{d}\right)$ bits for any consistent and proper algorithm (deterministic or random). Bassily et al. proved a similar (but quantitatively weaker) result for the case $d=1$. The above result is in fact a special case of a more general phenomenon we explore. We define the notion of {\em information complexity} of a given class of functions $\cH$. Intuitively, it is the minimum amount of information that an algorithm for $\mathcal{X}$ must retain about its input to ensure consistency and properness. We prove a direct sum result for information complexity in this context; roughly speaking, the information complexity sums when combining several classes.
APA
Nachum, I., Shafer, J. & Yehudayoff, A.. (2018). A Direct Sum Result for the Information Complexity of Learning. Proceedings of the 31st Conference On Learning Theory, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 75:1547-1568 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v75/nachum18a.html.

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