Abstract
The learning model of Valiant is extended to allow the number of examples to depend on the particular concept to be learned, instead of requiring a uniform bound for all concepts of a concept class.
This extension, called nonuniform learning, enables learning many concept classes not learnable by the previous definitions. Nonuniformly learnable concept classes are characterized. Some examples (Boolean formulae, recursive and r.e. sets) are shown to be nonuniformly learnable by a polynomial number of examples, but not necessarily in polynomial time. Restricting the learning protocol such that the learner has to commit himself after a finite number of examples does not effect the concept classes which can be learned.
An extension of nonuniform learnability to nonuniform learnability w.r.t. specific distributions is presented.
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© 1988 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Benedek, G.M., Itai, A. (1988). Nonuniform learnability. In: Lepistö, T., Salomaa, A. (eds) Automata, Languages and Programming. ICALP 1988. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 317. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-19488-6_108
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-19488-6_108
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