Active Learning Theory

Abstract

DefinitionThe term active learning applies to a wide range of situations in which a learner is able to exert some control over its source of data. For instance, when fitting a regression function, the learner may itself supply a set of data points at which to measure response values, in the hope of reducing the variance of its estimate. Such problems have been studied for many decades under the rubric of experimental design (Chernoff, 1972; Fedorov, 1972). More recently, there has been substantial interest within the machine learning community in the specific task of actively learning binary classifiers. This task presents several fundamental statistical and algorithmic challenges, and an understanding of its mathematical underpinnings is only gradually emerging. This brief survey will describe some of the progress that has been made so far.Learning from Labeled and Unlabeled DataIn the machine learning literature, the task of learning ...