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Robustly Learning a Single Neuron via Sharpness

Machine Learning 2023-06-14 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms Optimization and Control Statistics Theory Machine Learning Statistics Theory

Abstract

We study the problem of learning a single neuron with respect to the L22L_2^2-loss in the presence of adversarial label noise. We give an efficient algorithm that, for a broad family of activations including ReLUs, approximates the optimal L22L_2^2-error within a constant factor. Our algorithm applies under much milder distributional assumptions compared to prior work. The key ingredient enabling our results is a novel connection to local error bounds from optimization theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.07892,
  title  = {Robustly Learning a Single Neuron via Sharpness},
  author = {Puqian Wang and Nikos Zarifis and Ilias Diakonikolas and Jelena Diakonikolas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.07892},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:04:06.925Z