(Neural Computation. 2001;13:2533-2548.)
© 2001 The MIT Press
Random Embedding Machines for Pattern Recognition
Yoram Baram
Department of Computer Science, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel
Real classification problems involve structured data that can be essentially grouped into a relatively small number of clusters. It is shown that, under a local clustering condition, a set of points of a given class, embedded in binary space by a set of randomly parameterized surfaces, is linearly separable from other classes, with arbitrarily high probability. We call such a data set a local relative cluster. The size of the embedding set is shown to be inversely proportional to the squared local clustering degree. A simple parameterization by embedding hyperplanes, implementing a voting system, results in a random reduction of the nearest-neighbor method and leads to the separation of multicluster data by a network with two internal layers. This represents a considerable reduction of the learning problem with respect to known techniques, resolving a long-standing question on the complexity of random embedding. Numerical tests show that the proposed method performs as well as state-of the-art methods and in a small fraction of the time.
Copyright © 2001 by The MIT Press.