A Short Introduction to Boosting-英文文献.pdf

Journal of Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, 14(5):771-780, September, 1999. (In Japanese, translation by Naoki Abe.) A Short Introduction to Boosting Yoav Freund Robert E. Schapire ATT Labs Research Shannon Laboratory 180 Park Avenue Florham Park, NJ 07932 USA / yoav, schapire yoav, schapire @ Abstract Boosting is a general method for improving the accuracy of any given learning algorithm. This short overview paper introduces the boosting algorithm AdaBoost, and explains the un- derlying theory of boosting, including an explanation of why boosting often does not suffer from overfitting as well as boosting’s relationship to support-vector machines. Some examples of recent applications of boosting are also described. Introduction A horse-racing gambler, hoping to maximize his winnings, decides to create a computer program that will accurately predict the winner of a horse race based on the usual information (number of races recently won by each horse, betting odds for each horse, etc.). To create such a program, he asks a highly successful expert gambler to explain his betting strategy. Not surprisingly, the expert is unable to articulate a grand set of rules for selecting a horse. On the other hand, when presented with the data for a specific set of races, the expert has no trouble coming up with a “rule of thumb” for that set of races (such as, “Bet on the horse that has recently won the most races” or “Bet on the horse with the most fa