Learning from Minimum Entropy Queries in a Large Committee Machine

Abstract

In supervised learning, the redundancy contained in random examples can be avoided by learning from queries. Using statistical mechanics, we study learning from minimum entropy queries in a large tree-committee machine. The generalization error decreases exponentially with the number of training examples, providing a significant improvement over the algebraic decay for random examples. The connection between entropy and generalization error in multi-layer networks is discussed, and a computationally cheap algorithm for constructing queries is suggested and analysed.

4 pages, REVTeX, multicol, epsf, two postscript figures. To appear in Physical Review E (Rapid Communications)