Making weak learners stronger
• Suppose you have a weak learning module (a “base
classifier”) that can always get 0.5+epsilon correct when
given a two-way classification task
– That seems like a weak assumption but beware!
• Can you apply this learning module many times to get a
strong learner that can get close to zero error rate on the
training data?
– Theorists showed how to do this and it actually led to
an effective new learning procedure (Freund &
Shapire, 1996)