Ensemble Learning 学习文化组合.pdf

Ensemble Learning Zhi-Hua Zhou National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China zhouzh@nju.edu.cn Synonyms Committee-based learning; Multiple classifier systems; Classifier combination Definition Ensemble learning is a machine learning paradigm where multiple learners are trained to solve the same problem. In contrast to ordinary machine learning approaches which try to learn one hypothesis from training data, ensemble methods try to construct a set of hypotheses and combine them to use. Main Body Text Introduction An ensemble contains a number of learners which are usually called base learners. The generalization ability of an ensemble is usually much stronger than that of base learners. Actually, ensemble learning is appealing because that it is able to boost weak learners which are slightly better than random guess to strong learners which can make very accurate predictions. So, “base learners” are also referred as “weak learners”. It is noteworthy, however, that although most theoretical analyses work on weak learners, base learners used in practice are not necessarily weak since using not-so-weak base learners often results in better performance. Base learners are usually generated from training data by a base learning algorithm which can be decision tree, neural network or other kinds of machine learning algorithms. Most ensemble methods use a single base learning algorithm to produce homogeneous base learners, but there are also some methods which use multiple learning algorithms to produce heterogeneous learners. In the latter case there is no single base learning algorithm and thus, some people prefer calling the learners individual learners or component learners to “base learners”, while the names “individual learners” and “component learners” can also be used for homogeneous base learners. It is difficult to trace the starting point of the history of ensemble methods since the bas