Abstract
In this thesis, we study the stability and its trade-off with optimization error for stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithms in the pairwise learning setting. Pairwise learning refers to a learning task which involves a loss function depending on pairs of instances among which notable examples are bipartite ranking, metric learning, area under ROC curve (AUC) maximization and minimum error entropy (MEE) principle. Our contribution is twofold. Firstly, we establish the stability results for SGD for pairwise learning in the convex, strongly convex and non-convex settings, from which generalization errors can be naturally derived. Moreover, we also give the stability results of buffer-based SGD and projected SGD. Secondly, we establish the trade-off between stability and optimization error of SGD algorithms for pairwise learning. This is achieved by lower-bounding the sum of stability and optimization error by the minimax statistical error over a prescribed class of pairwise loss functions. From this fundamental trade-off, we obtain lower bounds for the optimization error of SGD algorithms and the excess expected risk over a class of pairwise losses. In addition, we illustrate our stability results by giving some specific examples and experiments of AUC maximization and MEE.
Date of Award | 19 Aug 2019 |
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Original language | English |
Supervisor | Tiejun TONG (Supervisor) |
User-Defined Keywords
- Machine learning
- Mathematical optimization
- Stability