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The standard definition of PAC learning (Valiant 1984) requires learners to succeed under all distributions -- even ones that are intractable to sample from. This stands in contrast to samplable PAC learning (Blum, Furst, Kearns, and Lipton…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Guy Blanc , Caleb Koch , Jane Lange , Carmen Strassle , Li-Yang Tan

We study the problem of learning mixtures of Gaussians with approximate differential privacy. We prove that roughly $kd^2 + k^{1.5} d^{1.75} + k^2 d$ samples suffice to learn a mixture of $k$ arbitrary $d$-dimensional Gaussians up to low…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Hassan Ashtiani , Mahbod Majid , Shyam Narayanan

We study the efficient learnability of geometric concept classes - specifically, low-degree polynomial threshold functions (PTFs) and intersections of halfspaces - when a fraction of the data is adversarially corrupted. We give the first…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-07-06 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane , Alistair Stewart

A standard approach in pattern classification is to estimate the distributions of the label classes, and then to apply the Bayes classifier to the estimates of the distributions in order to classify unlabeled examples. As one might expect,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Nick Palmer , Paul W. Goldberg

In this work, we initiate a formal study of probably approximately correct (PAC) learning under evasion attacks, where the adversary's goal is to \emph{misclassify} the adversarially perturbed sample point $\widetilde{x}$, i.e.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-14 Dimitrios I. Diochnos , Saeed Mahloujifar , Mohammad Mahmoody

The increased availability of data in recent years has led several authors to ask whether it is possible to use data as a {\em computational} resource. That is, if more data is available, beyond the sample complexity limit, is it possible…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-11-12 Amit Daniely , Nati Linial , Shai Shalev Shwartz

Towards understanding the statistical complexity of learning from heterogeneous sources, we study the problem of multi-distribution learning. Given $k$ data sources, the goal is to output a classifier for each source by exploiting shared…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-25 Rafael Hanashiro , Abhishek Shetty , Patrick Jaillet

We consider the relationship between learnability of a "base class" of functions on a set $X$, and learnability of a class of statistical functions derived from the base class. For example, we refine results showing that learnability of a…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-05-28 Aaron Anderson , Michael Benedikt

In learning theory, a standard assumption is that the data is generated from a finite mixture model. But what happens when the number of components is not known in advance? The problem of estimating the number of components, also called…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-04-25 Jerry Li , Allen Liu , Ankur Moitra

Probably Approximately Correct (i.e., PAC) learning is a core concept of sample complexity theory, and efficient PAC learnability is often seen as a natural counterpart to the class P in classical computational complexity. But while the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2023-04-28 Cornelius Brand , Robert Ganian , Kirill Simonov

We initiate the study of tolerant adversarial PAC-learning with respect to metric perturbation sets. In adversarial PAC-learning, an adversary is allowed to replace a test point $x$ with an arbitrary point in a closed ball of radius $r$…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-02-16 Hassan Ashtiani , Vinayak Pathak , Ruth Urner

We give an algorithm that learns arbitrary Boolean functions of $k$ arbitrary halfspaces over $\mathbb{R}^n$, in the challenging distribution-free Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) learning model, running in time $2^{\sqrt{n} \cdot (\log…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Josh Alman , Shyamal Patel , Rocco A. Servedio

The concept class of low-degree polynomial threshold functions (PTFs) plays a fundamental role in machine learning. In this paper, we study PAC learning of $K$-sparse degree-$d$ PTFs on $\mathbb{R}^n$, where any such concept depends only on…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-03-20 Shiwei Zeng , Jie Shen

We study the efficient learnability of high-dimensional Gaussian mixtures in the outlier-robust setting, where a small constant fraction of the data is adversarially corrupted. We resolve the polynomial learnability of this problem when the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-05-14 Ilias Diakonikolas , Samuel B. Hopkins , Daniel Kane , Sushrut Karmalkar

We show that the class of strongly connected graphical models with treewidth at most k can be properly efficiently PAC-learnt with respect to the Kullback-Leibler Divergence. Previous approaches to this problem, such as those of Chow ([1]),…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-07-19 Mukund Narasimhan , Jeff A. Bilmes

We study the problem of PAC learning $\gamma$-margin halfspaces in the presence of Massart noise. Without computational considerations, the sample complexity of this learning problem is known to be $\widetilde{\Theta}(1/(\gamma^2…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-17 Ilias Diakonikolas , Nikos Zarifis

We revisit the problem of learning mixtures of spherical Gaussians. Given samples from mixture $\frac{1}{k}\sum_{j=1}^{k}\mathcal{N}(\mu_j, I_d)$, the goal is to estimate the means $\mu_1, \mu_2, \ldots, \mu_k \in \mathbb{R}^d$ up to a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-07 Mingda Qiao , Guru Guruganesh , Ankit Singh Rawat , Avinava Dubey , Manzil Zaheer

We consider a moving target that we seek to learn from samples. Our results extend randomized techniques developed in control and optimization for a constant target to the case where the target is changing. We derive a novel bound on the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-11 Nikolaus Vertovec , Kostas Margellos , Maria Prandini

A fundamental problem in adversarial machine learning is to quantify how much training data is needed in the presence of evasion attacks. In this paper we address this issue within the framework of PAC learning, focusing on the class of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-13 Pascale Gourdeau , Varun Kanade , Marta Kwiatkowska , James Worrell

We study the efficient PAC learnability of halfspaces in the presence of Tsybakov noise. In the Tsybakov noise model, each label is independently flipped with some probability which is controlled by an adversary. This noise model…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-12 Ilias Diakonikolas , Vasilis Kontonis , Christos Tzamos , Nikos Zarifis