MODULE 1-2

MACHINE LEARNING
CONCEPTS
 References

Text Books:
1. Tom M. Mitchell, Machine Learning, India Edition 2013, McGraw
Hill Education.

Reference Books:
1. Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, Jerome Friedman, h The Elements
of Statistical Learning, 2nd edition, springer series in statistics.
2. Ethem Alpaydın, Introduction to machine learning, second edition, MIT press.

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SYLLABUS
MODULE -1
 Introduction
Ever since computers were invented, we have wondered whether they might be
made to learn. If we could understand how to program them to learn-to improve
automatically with experience-the impact would be dramatic.
• Imagine computers learning from medical records which treatments
are most effective for new diseases
• Houses learning from experience to optimize energy costs based on the particular
usage patterns of their occupants.
• Personal software assistants learning the evolving interests of their users in order
to highlight especially relevant stories from the online morning newspaper

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Examples of Successful Applications of
Machine Learning
• Learning to recognize spoken words
• Learning to drive an autonomous vehicle
• Learning to classify new astronomical structures
• Learning to play world-class backgammon

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Why is Machine Learning Important?
• Some tasks cannot be defined well, except by examples (e.g., recognizing
people).
• Relationships and correlations can be hidden within large amounts of
data. Machine Learning/Data Mining may be able to find these
relationships.
• Human designers often produce machines that do not work as well as desired
in the environments in which they are used.
• The amount of knowledge available about certain tasks might be too large
for explicit encoding by humans (e.g., medical diagnostic).
• Environments change over time.
• New knowledge about tasks is constantly being discovered by humans. It
may be difficult to continuously re-design systems “by hand”.
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 Machine Learning: A Definition
• Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence that provides systems the
ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly
programmed.
• Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can access
data and use it learn for themselves.
• A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to some class of
tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at tasks in T, as measured by P,
improves with experience E.

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 Why “Learn”?
Learning is used when:
• Human expertise does not exist (navigating on Mars)
• Humans are unable to explain their expertise (speech recognition)
• Solution changes in time (routing on a computer network)
• Solution needs to be adapted to particular cases (user biometrics)

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 Types of Learning

1. Supervised Learning
Regression
Classification
2. Unsupervised Learning
Clustering
Association
3. Reinforcement learning
 Types of Learning
1. Supervised Learning: Training these types of algorithms is having a
supervisor supervising whole thing. When training a supervised learning
algorithm the current training data will consist of inputs paired with
correct outputs. The objective of supervised learning is to predict the
correct labels for newly presented input data. Regression and
classification are two types of supervised learning techniques.

In case of regression output is continuous variable. Example: depending

upon employee performance salary hike will be provided. Here salary hike
is output variable which is a continuous value.
 Types of Learning
Some common regression algorithms include:
● Linear Regression
● Polynomial Regression
● Support Vector Machine Regression
● Decision Tree Regression
● Random Forest Regression

Classification: Depending upon employee performance promotion will be provided.

Output is binary variable either promotion is given to the employee or it is not given.

Some common classification algorithms include:

● Support Vector Machines
● Decision Trees
● Random Forests
● Naive Baye
Advantages of Supervised learning
● Supervised learning allows collecting data and produces data
output from previous experiences.
● Helps to optimize performance criteria with the help of experience.
● Supervised machine learning helps to solve various types of
real-world computation problems.
● It performs classification and regression tasks.
● It allows estimating or mapping the result to a new sample.
● We have complete control over choosing the number of classes we
want in the training data.
Disadvantages of Supervised learning

Classifying big data can be challenging.

● Training for supervised learning needs a lot of computation time. So, it

requires a lot of time.
● Supervised learning cannot handle all complex tasks in Machine
Learning.
● Computation time is vast for supervised learning.
● It requires a labelled data set.
● It requires a training process.
 Types of Learning
Supervised learning is when we teach or train the machine using data that is well-labelled. Which
means some data is already tagged with the correct answer. After that, the machine is provided with
a new set of examples(data) so that the supervised learning algorithm analyses the training data(set
of training examples) and produces a correct outcome from labeled data.
Key Points:
● Supervised learning involves training a machine from labeled data.
● Labeled data consists of examples with the correct answer or classification.
● The machine learns the relationship between inputs (images) and outputs (labels).
● The trained machine can then make predictions on new, unlabeled data.

● Regression: A regression problem is when the output variable is a real value, such as “dollars”
or “weight”.
● Classification: A classification problem is when the output variable is a category, such as “Red”
or “blue” , “disease” or “no disease”
 Unsupervised Learning
Unsupervised learning is a type of machine learning that learns from unlabeled data. This means that the
data does not have any pre-existing labels or categories. The goal of unsupervised learning is to discover
patterns and relationships in the data without any explicit guidance.
Unsupervised learning is the training of a machine using information that is neither classified nor labeled
and allowing the algorithm to act on that information without guidance. Here the task of the machine is to
group unsorted information according to similarities, patterns, and differences without any prior training
of data.
Unlike supervised learning, no teacher is provided that means no training will be given to the machine.
Therefore the machine is restricted to find the hidden structure in unlabeled data by itself.
 Unsupervised Learning
Key Points:

● Unsupervised learning allows the model to discover patterns and relationships in unlabeled
data.
● Clustering algorithms group similar data points together based on their inherent
characteristics.
● Feature extraction captures essential information from the data, enabling the model to make
meaningful distinctions.
● Label association assigns categories to the clusters based on the extracted patterns and
characteristics
 Unsupervised Learning
Imagine you have a machine learning model trained on a large dataset of unlabeled images, containing both
dogs and cats. The model has never seen an image of a dog or cat before, and it has no pre-existing labels or
categories for these animals. Your task is to use unsupervised learning to identify the dogs and cats in a new,
unseen image.
For instance, suppose it is given an image having both dogs and cats which it has never seen.
Thus the machine has no idea about the features of dogs and cats so we can’t categorize it as ‘dogs and cats ‘.
But it can categorize them according to their similarities, patterns, and differences, i.e., we can easily
categorize the above picture into two parts. The first may contain all pics having dogs in them and the second
part may contain all pics having cats in them. Here you didn’t learn anything before, which means no
training data or examples.
It allows the model to work on its own to discover patterns and information that was previously undetected.
It mainly deals with unlabelled data.
 Types of Unsupervised Learning

Unsupervised learning is classified into two categories of algorithms:

● Clustering: A clustering problem is where you want to discover the inherent groupings in the data, such as
grouping customers by purchasing behavior. Clustering is a type of unsupervised learning that is used to group
similar data points together. Clustering algorithms work by iteratively moving data points closer to their cluster
centers and further away from data points in other clusters.

Clustering Types:-
1. Hierarchical clustering
2. K-means clustering
3. Principal Component Analysis
4. Singular Value Decomposition
 Types of Unsupervised Learning

Association: An association rule learning problem is where you want to discover rules that describe
large portions of your data, such as people that buy X also tend to buy Y.

Association rule learning is a type of unsupervised learning that is used to identify patterns in a data.
Association rule learning algorithms work by finding relationships between different items in a dataset.
Some common association rule learning algorithms include:
● Apriori Algorithm
 Advantages of Unsupervised learning

● It does not require training data to be labeled.

● Dimensionality reduction can be easily accomplished using unsupervised learning.
● Capable of finding previously unknown patterns in data.
● Unsupervised learning can help you gain insights from unlabeled data that you might not have
been able to get otherwise.
● Unsupervised learning is good at finding patterns and relationships in data without being told what
to look for. This can help you learn new things about your data.
 Application of Unsupervised learning

Non-supervised learning can be used to solve a wide variety of problems, including:

● Anomaly detection: Unsupervised learning can identify unusual patterns or deviations from normal behavior in
data, enabling the detection of fraud, intrusion, or system failures.
● Scientific discovery: Unsupervised learning can uncover hidden relationships and patterns in scientific data,
leading to new hypotheses and insights in various scientific fields.
● Recommendation systems: Unsupervised learning can identify patterns and similarities in user behavior and
preferences to recommend products, movies, or music that align with their interests.
● Customer segmentation: Unsupervised learning can identify groups of customers with similar characteristics,
allowing businesses to target marketing campaigns and improve customer service more effectively.
● Image analysis: Unsupervised learning can group images based on their content, facilitating tasks such as
image classification, object detection, and image retrieval.
Reinforcement Learning
Reinforcement Learning (RL) is the science of decision making. It is about learning the optimal behavior in
an environment to obtain maximum reward. In RL, the data is accumulated from machine learning systems
that use a trial-and-error method. Data is not part of the input that we would find in supervised or
unsupervised machine learning.
Reinforcement learning uses algorithms that learn from outcomes and decide which action to take next.
After each action, the algorithm receives feedback that helps it determine whether the choice it made was
correct, neutral or incorrect. It is a good technique to use for automated systems that have to make a lot of
small decisions without human guidance.
Reinforcement learning is an autonomous, self-teaching system that essentially learns by trial and error. It
performs actions with the aim of maximizing rewards, or in other words, it is learning by doing in order to
achieve the best outcomes
Main points in Reinforcement learning
● Input: The input should be an initial state from which the model will start
● Output: There are many possible outputs as there are a variety of solutions to
a particular problem
● Training: The training is based upon the input, The model will return a state
and the user will decide to reward or punish the model based on its output.
● The model keeps continues to learn.
● The best solution is decided based on the maximum reward.
 Types of Reinforcement
There are two types of Reinforcement:
1. Positive: Positive Reinforcement is defined as when an event, occurs due to a particular behavior, increases the strength
and the frequency of the behavior. In other words, it has a positive effect on behavior.
Advantages of reinforcement learning are:
● Maximizes Performance
● Sustain Change for a long period of time
● Too much Reinforcement can lead to an overload of states which can diminish the results
2. Negative: Negative Reinforcement is defined as strengthening of behavior because a negative condition is stopped or
avoided.
Advantages of reinforcement learning:
● Increases Behavior
● Provide defiance to a minimum standard of performance
● It Only provides enough to meet up the minimum behavior
Advantages of Reinforcement learning

1. Reinforcement learning can be used to solve very complex problems that cannot be solved by
conventional techniques.
2. The model can correct the errors that occurred during the training process.
3. In RL, training data is obtained via the direct interaction of the agent with the environment
4. Reinforcement learning can handle environments that are non-deterministic, meaning that the
outcomes of actions are not always predictable. This is useful in real-world applications where the
environment may change over time or is uncertain.
5. Reinforcement learning can be used to solve a wide range of problems, including those that
involve decision making, control, and optimization.
6. Reinforcement learning is a flexible approach that can be combined with other machine learning
techniques, such as deep learning, to improve performance.
 Disadvantages of Reinforcement learning
1. Reinforcement learning is not preferable to use for solving simple problems.
2. Reinforcement learning needs a lot of data and a lot of computation
3. Reinforcement learning is highly dependent on the quality of the reward function.
If the reward function is poorly designed, the agent may not learn the desired
behavior.
4. Reinforcement learning can be difficult to debug and interpret. It is not always
clear why the agent is behaving in a certain way, which can make it difficult to
diagnose and fix problems
 Well-Posed Learning Problem
Definition: A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to
some class of tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at tasks in T,
as measured by P, improves with experience E.

To have a well-defined learning problem, three features needs to be identified:

1. The class of tasks
2. The measure of performance to be improved
3. The source of experience

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 Game Basics
• Checkers is played by two players. Each player begins the game with 12 colored
discs. (One set of pieces is black and the other red.) Each player places his or her
pieces on the 12 dark squares closest to him or her. Black moves first. Players
then alternate moves.
• The board consists of 64 squares, alternating between 32 dark and 32 light
squares.
• It is positioned so that each player has a light square on the right side corner
closest to him or her.
• A player wins the game when the opponent cannot make a move. In most cases,
this is because all of the opponent's pieces have been captured, but it could also
be because all of his pieces are blocked in.

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 Rules of the Game
• Moves are allowed only on the dark squares, so pieces always move diagonally.
Single pieces are always limited to forward moves (toward the opponent).
• A piece making a non-capturing move (not involving a jump) may move only
one square.
• A piece making a capturing move (a jump) leaps over one of the opponent's
pieces, landing in a straight diagonal line on the other side. Only one piece may
be captured in a single jump; however, multiple jumps are allowed during a
single turn.
• When a piece is captured, it is removed from the board.
• If a player is able to make a capture, there is no option; the jump must be made.
• If more than one capture is available, the player is free to choose whichever he or
she prefers.

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 Rules of the Game Cont.
• When a piece reaches the furthest row from the player who controls that piece, it
is crowned and becomes a king. One of the pieces which had been captured is
placed on top of the king so that it is twice as high as a single piece.
• Kings are limited to moving diagonally but may move both forward and
backward. (Remember that single pieces, i.e. non-kings, are always limited to
forward moves.)
• Kings may combine jumps in several directions, forward and backward, on the
same turn. Single pieces may shift direction diagonally during a multiple capture
turn, but must always jump forward (toward the opponent).

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 Well-Defined Learning Problem
A checkers learning problem:
∙ Task T: playing checkers
∙ Performance measure P: percent of games won against opponents
∙ Training experience E: playing practice games against itself

A handwriting recognition learning problem:

∙ Task T: recognizing and classifying handwritten words within images
∙ Performance measure P: percent of words correctly classified
∙ Training experience E: a database of handwritten words with
given classifications

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A robot driving learning problem:
∙ Task T: driving on public four-lane highways using vision sensors
∙ Performance measure P: average distance travelled before an error (as judged
by human overseer)
∙ Training experience E: a sequence of images and steering commands
recorded while observing a human driver

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 Designing a Learning System
1. Choosing the Training Experience
2. Choosing the Target Function
3. Choosing a Representation for the Target Function
4. Choosing a Function Approximation Algorithm
1. Estimating training values
2. Adjusting the weights
5. The Final Design

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 CHECKERS GAME
The basic design issues and approaches to machine learning is illustrated
by considering designing a program to learn to play checkers, with the goal
of entering it in the world checkers tournament

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 1. Choosing the Training Experience
• The first design choice is to choose the type of training experience from which
the system will learn.
• The type of training experience available can have a significant
impact on success or failure of the learner.

There are three attributes which impact on success or failure of the learner

1. Whether the training experience provides direct or indirect feedback regarding

the choices made by the performance system.
2. The degree to which the learner controls the sequence of training examples
3. How well it represents the distribution of examples over which the final system
performance P must be measured.

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1. Whether the training experience provides direct or indirect feedback
regarding the choices made by the performance system.
For example, in checkers game:
• In learning to play checkers, the system might learn from direct training examples consisting of individual
checkers board states and the correct move for each.

• Indirect training examples consisting of the move sequences and final outcomes of various games played.

• The information about the correctness of specific moves early in the game must be inferred indirectly from
the fact that the game was eventually won or lost.

• Here the learner faces an additional problem of credit assignment, or determining the degree to which each
move in the sequence deserves credit or blame for the final outcome.

• Credit assignment can be a particularly difficult problem because the game can be lost even when early
moves are optimal, if these are followed later by poor moves.

• Hence, learning from direct training feedback is typically easier than learning from indirect feedback.

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2. A second important attribute of the training experience is the degree to
which the learner controls the sequence of training examples
For example, in checkers game:
• The learner might depends on the teacher to select informative board states and to provide the correct move
for each.

• Alternatively, the learner might itself propose board states that it finds particularly confusing and ask the
teacher for the correct move.

• The learner may have complete control over both the board states and (indirect) training classifications, as it
does when it learns by playing against itself with no teacher present.

• Notice in this last case the learner may choose between experimenting with novel board states that it has not
yet considered, or honing its skill by playing minor variations of lines of play it currently finds most
promising.

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3. A third attribute of the training experience is how well it represents
the distribution of examples over which the final system performance P
must be measured.
Learning is most reliable when the training examples follow a distribution similar to that of future test
examples.

For example, in checkers game:

• In checkers learning scenario, the performance metric P is the percent of games the system wins in the world
tournament.

• If its training experience E consists only of games played against itself, there is an danger that this training
experience might not be fully representative of the distribution of situations over which it will later be tested.
For example, the learner might never encounter certain crucial board states that are very likely to be played
by the human checkers champion.

• It is necessary to learn from a distribution of examples that is somewhat different from those on which the
final system will be evaluated. Such situations are problematic because mastery of one distribution of
examples will not necessary lead to strong performance over some other distribution.

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 2. Choosing the Target Function
The next design choice is to determine exactly what type of knowledge will be
learned and how this will be used by the performance program.
• Lets begin with a checkers-playing program that can generate the legal moves
from any board state.
• The program needs only to learn how to choose the best move from among these
legal moves. This learning task is representative of a large class of tasks for
which the legal moves that define some large search space are known a priori, but
for which the best search strategy is not known.

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Given this setting where we must learn to choose among the legal moves, the most
obvious choice for the type of information to be learned is a program, or function,
that chooses the best move for any given board state.

1. Let ChooseMove be the target function and the notation is

ChooseMove :B M
which indicate that this function accepts as input any board from the set of legal
board states B and produces as output some move from the set of legal moves M
(best move).

ChooseMove is an choice for the target function in checkers example, but this
function will turn out to be very difficult to learn given the kind of indirect training
experience available to our system

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2. An alternative target function is an evaluation function that assigns a numerical
score to any given board state
Let the target function V and the notation
V :B R
which denote that V maps any legal board state from the set B to some real value.

We intend for this target function V to assign higher scores to better board states. If
the system can successfully learn such a target function V, then it can easily use it to
select the best move from any current board position.

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Let us define the target value V(b) for an arbitrary board state b in B, as follows:
1. if b is a final board state that is won, then V(b) = 100
2. if b is a final board state that is lost, then V(b) = -100
3. if b is a final board state that is drawn, then V(b) = 0
4. if b is a not a final state in the game, then V(b) = V(b' ),
where b' is the best final board state that can be achieved starting
from b and playing optimally until the end of the game.

Learning algorithms to acquire only some approximation to the target function so

target function is often called function approximation V̂.

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 3. Choosing a Representation for the
Target Function
let us choose a simple representation - for any given board state, the function c
will be calculated as a linear combination of the following board features:

xl: the number of black pieces on the board

x2: the number of red pieces on the board
x3: the number of black kings on the board
x4: the number of red kings on the board
x5: the number of black pieces threatened by red (i.e., which can be
captured on red's next turn)
x6: the number of red pieces threatened by black

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Thus, learning program will represent as a linear function of the form

Where,
• w0 through w6 are numerical coefficients, or weights, to be chosen by
the learning algorithm.
• Learned values for the weights w1 through w6 will determine the
relative importance of the various board features in determining the value of the
board
• The weight w0 will provide an additive constant to the board value

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Partial design of a checkers learning program:

• Task T: playing checkers

• Performance measure P: percent of games won in the world tournament
• Training experience E: games played against itself
• Target function: V: Board R
• Target function representation

The first three items above correspond to the specification of the learning task,
whereas the final two items constitute design choices for the implementation of
the learning program.

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 4. Choosing a Function Approximation
Algorithm
• In order to learn the target function f we require a set of training examples,
each describing a specific board state b and the training value Vtrain(b) for b.

• Each training example is an ordered pair of the form (b, Vtrain(b)).

• For instance, the following training example describes a board state b in

which black has won the game (note x2 = 0 indicates that red has no remaining
pieces) and for which the target function value Vtrain(b) is therefore +100.

((x1=3, x2=0, x3=1, x4=0, x5=0, x6=0), +100)

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 Function Approximation Procedure

1. Derive training examples from the indirect training experience available to the
learner
2. Adjusts the weights wi to best fit these training examples

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1. Estimating training values

A simple approach for estimating training values for intermediate board states is
to assign the training value of Vtrain(b) for any intermediate board state b to be
V(̂ Successor(b))

Where ,
V̂ is the learner's current approximation to V
Successor(b) denotes the next board state following b for which it is again the
program's turn to move

Rule for estimating training values

Vtrain(b) ← V̂ (Successor(b))

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2. Adjusting the weights

Specify the learning algorithm for choosing the weights wi to best fit the set of
training examples {(b, Vtrain(b))}

A first step is to define what we mean by the best fit to the training data.
• One common approach is to define the best hypothesis, or set of weights, as that
which minimizes the squared error E between the training values and the values
predicted by the hypothesis.

• Several algorithms are known for finding weights of a linear function

that minimize E.

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In our case, we require an algorithm that will incrementally refine the weights as
new training examples become available and that will be robust to errors in these
estimated training values

One such algorithm is called the least mean squares, or LMS training rule. For
each observed training example it adjusts the weights a small amount in the
direction that reduces the error on this training example

LMS weight update rule :- For each training eg.(b,Vtrain(b))

Use the current weights to calculate V̂ (b)
For each weight wi, update it as

wi ← wi + ƞ (Vtrain (b) - V̂(b)) xi

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Here ƞ is a small constant (e.g., 0.1) that moderates the size of the weight update.

Working of weight update rule

• When the error (Vtrain(b)- V̂(b)) is zero, no weights are changed.

• When (Vtrain(b) - V̂(b)) is positive (i.e., when V̂(b) is too low), then each weight
is increased in proportion to the value of its corresponding feature. This will
raise the value of V̂(b), reducing the error.
• If the value of some feature xi is zero, then its weight is not altered regardless of
the error, so that the only weights updated are those whose features actually
occur on the training example board.

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 5. The Final Design
The final design of checkers learning system can be described by four distinct
program modules that represent the central components in many learning systems

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1.The Performance System is the module that must solve the given performance
task by using the learned target function(s).
It takes an instance of a new problem (new game) as input and produces a trace of
its solution (game history) as output.
In checkers game, the strategy used by the Performance System to select its next
move at each step is determined by the learned V̂ evaluation function. Therefore, we
expect its performance to improve as this evaluation function becomes increasingly
accurate.

2.The Critic takes as input the history or trace of the game and produces as output a
set of training examples of the target function. As shown in the diagram, each
training example in this case corresponds to some game state in the trace, along
with an estimate Vtrain of the target function value for this example.

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3.The Generalizer takes as input the training examples and produces an output
hypothesis that is its estimate of the target function.
It generalizes from the specific training examples, hypothesizing a general function
that covers these examples and other cases beyond the training examples.
In our example, the Generalizer corresponds to the LMS algorithm, and the output
hypothesis is the function V̂ described by the learned weights w0, . . . , W6.

4.The Experiment Generator takes as input the current hypothesis and outputs a
new problem (i.e., initial board state) for the Performance System to explore. Its
role is to pick new practice problems that will maximize the learning rate of the
overall system.
In our example, the Experiment Generator always proposes the same initial
game board to begin a new game.

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The sequence of design choices made for the checkers program is summarized in
below figure

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 Issues in Machine Learning
• What algorithms exist for learning general target functions from specific training
examples? In what settings will particular algorithms converge to the desired
function, given sufficient training data? Which algorithms perform best for
which types of problems and representations?

• How much training data is sufficient? What general bounds can be found to
relate the confidence in learned hypotheses to the amount of training experience
and the character of the learner's hypothesis space?

• When and how can prior knowledge held by the learner guide the process of
generalizing from examples? Can prior knowledge be helpful even when it is
only approximately correct?

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• What is the best strategy for choosing a useful next training experience, and how
does the choice of this strategy alter the complexity of the learning problem?

• What is the best way to reduce the learning task to one or more function
approximation problems? Put another way, what specific functions should the
system attempt to learn? Can this process itself be automated?

• How can the learner automatically alter its representation to improve its ability to
represent and learn the target function?

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MODULE-2
 Concept Learning
• Learning involves acquiring general concepts from specific training examples.
Example: People continually learn general concepts or categories such as "bird,"
"car," "situations in which I should study more in order to pass the exam," etc.
• Each such concept can be viewed as describing some subset of objects or events
defined over a larger set
• Alternatively, each concept can be thought of as a Boolean-valued function
defined over this larger set. (Example: A function defined over all animals, whose
value is true for birds and false for other animals).

Concept learning - Inferring a Boolean-valued function from training examples of

its input and output
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 A Concept Learning Task
Consider the example task of learning the target concept
"Days on which my friend Aldo enjoys his favorite water sport."

Example Sky AirTemp Humidity Wind Water Forecast EnjoySport

1 Sunny Warm Normal Strong Warm Same Yes

2 Sunny Warm High Strong Warm Same Yes

3 Rainy Cold High Strong Warm Change No

4 Sunny Warm High Strong Cool Change Yes

The attribute EnjoySport indicates whether or not a Person enjoys
his favorite water sport on this day.

The task is to learn to predict the value of EnjoySport for an arbitrary day,
based on the values of its other attributes ?

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What hypothesis representation is provided to the learner?

Let’s consider a simple representation in which each hypothesis consists

of a conjunction of constraints on the instance attributes.

Let each hypothesis be a vector of six constraints, specifying the values of the six
attributes Sky, AirTemp, Humidity, Wind, Water, and Forecast.

For each attribute, the hypothesis will either

• Indicate by a "?' that any value is acceptable for this attribute,
• Specify a single required value (e.g., Warm) for the attribute, or
• Indicate by a "Φ" that no value is acceptable

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If some instance x satisfies all the constraints of hypothesis h, then h classifies
x as a positive example (h(x) = 1).

The hypothesis that PERSON enjoys his favorite sport only on cold days with high
humidity (independent of the values of the other attributes) is represented by the
expression
(?, Cold, High, ?, ?, ?)

The most general hypothesis-that every day is a positive example-is represented by

(?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)

The most specific possible day is a positive example-is

hypothesis-that no represented by
(Φ , Φ, Φ, Φ, Φ,
Φ)
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 Notation
The set of items over which the concept is defined is called the set of instances,
which we denote by X.
Example: X is the set of all possible days, each represented by the attributes:
Sky, AirTemp, Humidity, Wind, Water, and Forecast

The concept or function to be learned is called the target concept, which we denote
by c.
In general, c can be any boolean-valued function defined over the instances
X; that is, c :X {O, 1}

Example: The target concept corresponds to the value of the attribute EnjoySport
(i.e., c(x) = 1 if EnjoySport = Yes, and c(x) = 0 if EnjoySport = No).
66
• Instances for which c(x) = 1 are called positive examples, or members of the
target concept.
• Instances for which c(x) = 0 are called negative examples, or non-members of
the target concept.
• The ordered pair (x, c(x)) to describe the training example
consisting of the instance x and its target concept value c(x).
• D to denote the set of available training examples
• The symbol H to denote the set of all possible hypotheses that the learner
may consider regarding the identity of the target concept. Each hypothesis h
in H represents a Boolean-valued function defined over X
h:X {O, 1}

• The goal of the learner is to find a hypothesis h such that h(x) = c(x) for all x in
X.

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Example Sky AirTemp Humidity Wind Water Forecast EnjoySport

1 Sunny Warm Normal Strong Warm Same Yes

2 Sunny Warm High Strong Warm Same Yes

3 Rainy Cold High Strong Warm Change No

4 Sunny Warm High Strong Cool Change Yes

68
69
 The Inductive Learning Hypothesis
Any hypothesis found to approximate the target function well over a sufficiently
large set of training examples will also approximate the target function well
over other unobserved examples.

70
 Concept learning as Search
• Concept learning can be viewed as the task of searching through a large space of hypotheses implicitly
defined by the hypothesis representation.
• The goal of this search is to find the hypothesis that best fits the training
examples.

Example, the instances X and hypotheses H in the EnjoySport learning task.

The attribute Sky has three possible values, and AirTemp, Humidity, Wind, Water Forecast each have two
possible values, the instance space X contains exactly
• 3.2.2.2.2.2 = 96 Distinct instances
• 5.4.4.4.4.4 = 5120 Syntactically distinct hypotheses within H.

Every hypothesis containing one or more " Φ" symbols represents the empty set of
instances; that is, it classifies every instance as negative.
• 1 + (4.3.3.3.3.3) = 973. semantically distinct hypothesis.

56
 General-to-Specific Ordering of Hypotheses
• Consider the two hypotheses
h1 = (Sunny, ?, ?, Strong, ?, ?)
h2 = (Sunny, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)

• Consider the sets of instances that are classified positive by hl and by h2.
• h2 imposes fewer constraints on the instance, it classifies more instances as
positive. So, any instance classified positive by hl will also be classified positive
by h2. Therefore, h2 is more general than hl.

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 General-to-Specific Ordering of Hypotheses
• Given hypotheses hj and hk, hj is more-general-than or- equal do hk if and only if
any instance that satisfies hk also satisfies hj

Definition: Let hj and hk be Boolean-valued functions defined over X. Then hj is

more general-than-or-equal-to hk (written hj ≥ hk) if and only if

73
• In the figure, the box on the left
represents the set X of all
instances, the box on the right the
set H of all hypotheses.

• Each hypothesis corresponds to

some subset of X-the subset of
instances that it classifies positive.

• The arrows connecting hypotheses

represent the more - general -than
relation, with the arrow pointing
toward the less general hypothesis.

• Note the subset of instances

characterized by h2 subsumes the
subset characterized by h l , hence
h2 is more - general– than h1

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 FIND-S: Finding a Maximally Specific
Hypothesis
FIND-S Algorithm
1. Initialize h to the most specific hypothesis in H
2. For each positive training instance x
For each attribute constraint ai in h
If the constraint ai is satisfied by x
Then do nothing
Else replace ai in h by the next more general constraint that is satisfied by x
3. Output hypothesis h

75
To illustrate this algorithm, assume the learner is given the sequence of
training examples from the EnjoySport task
Example Sky AirTemp Humidity Wind Water Forecast EnjoySport
1 Sunny Warm Normal Strong Warm Same Yes

2 Sunny Warm High Strong Warm Same Yes

3 Rainy Cold High Strong Warm Change No

4 Sunny Warm High Strong Cool Change Yes

The first step of FIND-S is to initialize h to the most specific hypothesis in

H
h - (Ø, Ø, Ø, Ø, Ø, Ø)

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 x1 = <Sunny Warm Normal Strong Warm Same>, +
Observing the first training example, it is clear that our hypothesis is too specific. In
particular, none of the "Ø" constraints in h are satisfied by this example, so each is
replaced by the next more general constraint that fits the example
h1 = <Sunny Warm Normal Strong Warm Same>
This h is still very specific; it asserts that all instances are negative except for the
single positive training example

x2 = <Sunny, Warm, High, Strong, Warm, Same>, +

The second training example forces the algorithm to further generalize h, this time
substituting a "?' in place of any attribute value in h that is not satisfied by the new
example
h2 = <Sunny Warm ? Strong Warm Same>
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 x3 = <Rainy, Cold, High, Strong, Warm, Change>, -
Upon encountering the third training the algorithm makes no change to h.
The FIND-S algorithm simply ignores every negative example.
h3 = < Sunny Warm ? Strong Warm Same>

x4 = <Sunny Warm High Strong Cool Change>, +

The fourth example leads to a further generalization of h
h4 = < Sunny Warm ? Strong ? ? >

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79
The key property of the FIND-S algorithm is
• FIND-S is guaranteed to output the most specific hypothesis within H that is
consistent with the positive training examples
• FIND-S algorithm final hypothesis will also be consistent with the negative
examples provided the correct target concept is contained in H, and provided the
training examples are correct.

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Example 1
Find S-Algo

Q1.How many concepts are possible for this instance space?

Q2. How many hypothesis can be expressed by hypothesis language.
Q3. Apply the Find S algorithm on training data given. Consider the
examples in specified order and write hypothesis each time after
observing an example.
Example 2
Find S-Algo

Q1.How many concepts are possible for this instance space?

Q2. How many hypothesis can be expressed by hypothesis language.
Q3. Apply the Find S algorithm on training data given. Consider the
examples in specified order and write hypothesis each time after observing
an example.
 Unanswered by FIND-S

1. Has the learner converged to the correct target concept?

Although FIND-S will find a hypothesis consistent with the
training data, it has no way to determine whether it has found the
only hypothesis in H consistent with the data (i.e., the correct target
concept), or whether there are many other consistent hypotheses as
well. We would prefer a learning algorithm that could determine
whether it had converged
2. Why prefer the most specific hypothesis?
In case there are multiple hypotheses consistent with the training
examples, FIND-S will find the most specific. It is unclear whether
we should prefer this hypothesis over, say, the most general, or
some other hypothesis of intermediate generality.
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 Unanswered by FIND-S
3. Are the training examples consistent?
In most practical learning problems there is some chance that the training
examples will contain at least some errors or noise. Such inconsistent
sets of training examples can severely mislead FIND-S, given the fact
that it ignores negative examples.
4. What if there are several maximally specific consistent
hypotheses?
However, for other hypothesis spaces there can be several maximally
specific hypothesis consistent with the data. In this case, FIND-S must be
extended to allow it to backtrack on its choices of how to generalize the
hypothesis.
 Version Space and CANDIDATE
ELIMINATION Algorithm
The key idea in the CANDIDATE-ELIMINATION algorithm is to output a description of
the set of all hypotheses consistent with the training examples

Representation
• Definition: A hypothesis h is consistent with a set of training examples D if and only if
h(x) = c(x) for each example (x, c(x)) in D.
Consistent(h, D) ≡ (∀ 〈x, c(x)〉 ∈ D) h(x) = c(x))

Note difference between definitions of consistent and satisfies

• an example x is said to satisfy hypothesis h when h(x) = 1, regardless of whether x is a positive
or negative example of the target concept.
• an example x is said to consistent with hypothesis h iff h(x) = c(x)
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Consistent hypothesis and version space

Assume having 2 hypothesis h1 and h2.

for x1;
h1=<?,?,no,?,many> Consistent
h2=<?,?,no,?,?> Not consistent
 Version Space
A representation of the set of all hypotheses which are consistent with D

Definition: The version space, denoted VSH,D with respect to hypothesis space H
and training examples D, is the subset of hypotheses from H consistent with the
training examples in D
VSH,D ≡{h ∈ H | Consistent(h, D)}

87
88
 The LIST-THEN-ELIMINATE ALGORITHM
The LIST-THEN-ELIMINATE algorithm first initializes the version space to
contain all hypotheses in H and then eliminates any hypothesis found inconsistent
with any training example.

Assume f1 and f2 as two instances with attributes as (A,B) AND (X,Y) respectively.
No of distinct instances=4
Syntactically hypothesis space=16
Semantically hypothesis=9

89
The LIST-THEN-ELIMINATE ALGORITHM

Assume training instance:

F1 F2 TARGET

A X YES

A Y YES

Version space=(A,X)(A,Y)(A,?)(B,X)(B,Y)(B,?)(?,X)(?,Y)(?,?)(Ø,Ø)
By using LIST THEN ELIMINATION ALGORITHM
Version space/ consistent hypothesis=(A,?)(?,?)
 The LIST-THEN-ELIMINATE ALGORITHM

1. VersionSpace c a list containing every hypothesis in H

2. For each training example, (x, c(x))
remove from VersionSpace any hypothesis h for which h(x) ≠ c(x)
3. Output the list of hypotheses in VersionSpace

THE LIST-THEN-ELIMINATE PROBLEMS

• List-Then-Eliminate works in principle, so long as version space is finite.

• However, since it requires exhaustive enumeration of all hypotheses in practice it
is not feasible.

91
 A More Compact Representation for Version Spaces

• The version space is represented by its most general and least general members.
• These members form general and specific boundary sets that delimit the
version space within the partially ordered hypothesis space.

92
 • A version space with its
general and specific boundary
sets.
• The version space includes all
six hypotheses shown here, but
can be represented more
simply by S and G.
• Arrows indicate instance of the
more-general-than relation.
This is the version space for
the Enjoysport concept
learning
Example Sky AirTemp Humidity Wind Water Forecast EnjoySport problem and training

1 Sunny Warm Normal Strong Warm Same Yes examples described in below
table
2 Sunny Warm High Strong Warm Same Yes

3 Rainy Cold High Strong Warm Change No

4 Sunny Warm High Strong Cool Change Yes

93
Definition: The general boundary G, with respect to hypothesis space
H and training data D, is the set of maximally general members of H consistent
with D
G ≡{g ∈ H | Consistent(g, D)∧(¬∃g' ∈ H)[(g' >g g) ∧ Consistent(g', D)]}

Definition: The specific boundary S, with respect to hypothesis space H and

training data D, is the set of minimally general (i.e., maximally specific) members of
H consistent with D.
S ≡{s ∈ H | Consistent(s, D)∧(¬∃s' ∈ H)[(s >gs') ∧ Consistent(s', D)]}

94
 Version Space representation theorem

Theorem: Let X be an arbitrary set of instances and Let H be a set of Boolean-

valued hypotheses defined over X. Let c : X →{O, 1} be an arbitrary target concept
defined over X, and let D be an arbitrary set of training examples {(x, c(x))). For all
X, H, c, and D such that S and G are well defined,

VSH,D={h ∈ H |(∃s ∈ S) (∃g ∈ G) (g ≥g h ≥g s)}

95
 VSH,D={h ∈ H |(∃s ∈ S) (∃g ∈ G) (g ≥g h ≥g s)}
To Prove:
1. Every h satisfying the right hand side of the above expression is in VS H,D
2. Every member of VS H,D satisfies the right-hand side of the expression

Sketch of proof:
1. let g, h, s be arbitrary members of G, H, S respectively with g ≥g h ≥g s
By the definition of S, s must be satisfied by all positive examples in D. Because h ≥g s , h must also
be satisfied by all positive examples in D.
By the definition of G, g cannot be satisfied by any negative example in D, and because g ≥g h h
cannot be satisfied by any negative example in D. Because h is satisfied by all positive examples in D
and by no negative examples in D, h is consistent with D, and therefore h is a member of VSH,D

2.It can be proven by assuming some h in VSH,D,that does not satisfy the right-hand side of the
expression, then showing that this leads to an inconsistency
96
The CANDIDATE-ELIMINATION Learning Algorithm

The CANDIDATE-ELIMINATION algorithm computes the version space

containing all hypotheses from H that are consistent with an observed sequence of
training examples.

97
Initialize G to the set of maximally general hypotheses in H
Initialize S to the set of maximally specific hypotheses in H
For each training example d, do
• If d is a positive example
• Remove from G any hypothesis inconsistent with d
• For each hypothesis s in S that is not consistent with d
• Remove s from S
• Add to S all minimal generalizations h of s such that
• h is consistent with d, and some member of G is more general than h
• Remove from S any hypothesis that is more general than another hypothesis in S

• If d is a negative example
• Remove from S any hypothesis inconsistent with d
• For each hypothesis g in G that is not consistent with d
• Remove g from G
• Add to G all minimal specializations h of g such that
• h is consistent with d, and some member of S is more specific than h
• Remove from G any hypothesis that is less general than another hypothesis in G
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 An Illustrative Example
The boundary sets are first initialized to Go andSo, the most general
and most specific hypotheses in H.

S0 〈∅, ∅, ∅, ∅, ∅, ∅〉

G0 〈?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?〉

99
For training example d,

〈Sunny, Warm, Normal, Strong, Warm, Same 〉 +

S0 〈∅, ∅, ∅, ∅, ∅. ∅〉

S1 〈Sunny, Warm, Normal, Strong, Warm, Same〉

G0, G1 〈?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?〉

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0
For training example d,

〈Sunny, Warm, High, Strong, Warm, Same〉 +

S1 〈Sunny, Warm, Normal, Strong, Warm, Same〉

S2 〈Sunny, Warm, ?, Strong, Warm, Same〉

G1, G2 〈?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?〉

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1
For training example d,

〈Rainy, Cold, High, Strong, Warm, Change 〉 −

S S
2, 3
〈Sunny, Warm, ?, Strong, Warm, Same〉

G3 〈Sunny, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?〉 〈?, Warm, ?, ?, ?, ?〉 〈?, ?, ?, ?, ?, Same〉

G2 〈?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?〉

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2
For training example d,

〈Sunny, Warm, High, Strong, Cool Change 〉 +

S3 〈Sunny, Warm, ?, Strong, Warm, Same〉

S4 〈Sunny, Warm, ?, Strong, ?, ?〉

G4 〈Sunny, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?〉 〈?, Warm, ?, ?, ?, ?〉

G3 〈Sunny, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?〉 〈?, Warm, ?, ?, ?, ?〉 〈?, ?, ?, ?, ?, Same〉

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3
The final version space for the EnjoySport concept learning problem and training
examples described earlier. 84
Example 1 :

Compute number of consistent hypothesis for above data using candidate

elimination
Example 2 :

Compute number of consistent hypothesis for above data using candidate

elimination
Example 3 :

Compute number of consistent hypothesis for above data using candidate

elimination
Example 4:

Compute number of consistent hypothesis for above data using candidate

elimination
Example 5:

Compute number of consistent hypothesis for above data using candidate

elimination
Example 6:

Compute number of consistent hypothesis for above data using candidate

elimination
Example 7:

Compute number of consistent hypothesis for above data using candidate

elimination
VERSION SPACE AND CANDIDATE ELIMINATION
REMARKS

1. Will candidate elimination algorithm converge to correct hypothesis?

2. How can partially learned concepts be used
3. What training example should learner request next?
 1. Will the CANDIDATE-ELIMINATION Algorithm Converge to the Correct Hypothesis?

The version space learned by the CANDIDATE-ELIMINATION algorithm will converge toward
the hypothesis that correctly describes the target concept, provided
(1) there are no errors in the training examples, and
(2) there is some hypothesis in H that correctly describes the target concept.

If S & G converge to single hypothesis the concept is exactly learned

If S & G do not converge to single hypothesis the concept is partially learned
If S & G is null means no hypothesis is consistent with training examples.
 2.How can partially learned concepts be used

The learner is required to classify new instances that it has not yet observed
 3.What training example should learner request next?

In this case learner should choose an instance that would be classified as positive by
some of these hypothesis, but negative by others.
One such instance is (Sunny, Warm, Normal, Light, Warm, Same)
 Inductive Bias
The fundamental questions for inductive inference

• What if the target concept is not contained in the hypothesis space?

• Can we avoid this difficulty by using a hypothesis space that includes every possible
hypothesis?
• How does the size of this hypothesis space influence the ability of the algorithm to
generalize to unobserved instances?
• How does the size of the hypothesis space influence the number of training examples
that must be observed?

11
7
 Effect of incomplete hypothesis space
Preceding algorithms work if target function is in H
Will generally not work if target function not in H

Consider following examples which represent target function

“sky = sunny or sky = cloudy”:
〈Sunny Warm Normal Strong Cool Change〉 Y
〈Cloudy Warm Normal Strong Cool Change〉 Y
〈Rainy Warm Normal Strong Cool Change〉 N

If apply Candidate Elimination algorithm as before, end up with empty Version Space

After first two training example

S= 〈? Warm Normal Strong Cool Change〉
New hypothesis is overly general and it covers the third negative training example! Our H does not

include the appropriate c

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8
 An Unbiased Learner
Incomplete hypothesis space
• If c not in H, then consider generalizing representation of H to contain c
• The size of the instance space X of days described by the six available attributes is 96.
The number of distinct subsets that can be defined over a set X containing |X| elements
(i.e., the size of the power set of X) is 2|X|
• Recall that there are 96 instances in EnjoySport; hence there are 296 possible hypotheses
in full space H
• Can do this by using full propositional calculus with AND, OR, NOT
• Hence H defined only by conjunctions of attributes is biased (containing only 973 h’s)

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9
• Let us reformulate the Enjoysport learning task in an unbiased way by defining a
new hypothesis space H' that can represent every subset of instances; that is, let H'
correspond to the power set of X.
• One way to define such an H' is to allow arbitrary disjunctions, conjunctions, and
negations of our earlier hypotheses.

For instance, the target concept "Sky = Sunny or Sky = Cloudy" could then be
described as
(Sunny, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?) V (Cloudy, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)

12
0
Definition:
Consider a concept learning algorithm L for the set of instances X.
• Let c be an arbitrary concept defined over X
• Let Dc = {( x , c(x))} be an arbitrary set of training examples of c.
• Let L(xi, Dc) denote the classification assigned to the instance xi by L after training on the
data Dc.
• The inductive bias of L is any minimal set of assertions B such that for any target concept
c and corresponding training examples Dc

(∀ 〈xi ∈ X ) [(B ∧ Dc ∧ xi) ├ L(xi, Dc)]

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1
Modelling inductive systems by
equivalent deductive systems.
The input-output behavior of the
CANDIDATE-ELIMINATION
algorithm using a hypothesis space H
is identical to that of a deductive
theorem prover utilizing the assertion
"H contains the target concept." This
assertion is therefore called the
inductive bias of the CANDIDATE-
ELIMINATION algorithm.
characterizing inductive systems
by their inductive bias allows
modelling them by their equivalent
deductive systems. This provides a
way to compare inductive
systems according to their policies
for generalizing beyond the
observed training data.

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2