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We introduce a data-driven approach to analyze the performance of continuous optimization algorithms using generalization guarantees from statistical learning theory. We study classical and learned optimizers to solve families of parametric…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-07 Rajiv Sambharya , Bartolomeo Stellato

We derive PAC-Bayesian learning guarantees for heavy-tailed losses, and obtain a novel optimal Gibbs posterior which enjoys finite-sample excess risk bounds at logarithmic confidence. Our core technique itself makes use of PAC-Bayesian…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-12-19 Matthew J. Holland

Generalization is a central concept in machine learning theory, yet for quantum models, it is predominantly analyzed through uniform bounds that depend on a model's overall capacity rather than the specific function learned. These…

Meta learning automatically infers an inductive bias, that includes the hyperparameter of the base-learning algorithm, by observing data from a finite number of related tasks. This paper studies PAC-Bayes bounds on meta generalization gap.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-14 Arezou Rezazadeh

When utilising PAC-Bayes theory for risk certification, it is usually necessary to estimate and bound the Gibbs risk of the PAC-Bayes posterior. Many works in the literature employ a method for this which requires a large number of passes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-21 Felix Biggs

Generalised Bayesian learning algorithms are increasingly popular in machine learning, due to their PAC generalisation properties and flexibility. The present paper aims at providing a self-contained survey on the resulting PAC-Bayes…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-02-06 Benjamin Guedj

PAC-Bayes is a useful framework for deriving generalization bounds which was introduced by McAllester ('98). This framework has the flexibility of deriving distribution- and algorithm-dependent bounds, which are often tighter than…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-06 Roi Livni , Shay Moran

In this work, we propose a PAC-Bayes bound for the generalization risk of the Gibbs classifier in the multi-class classification framework. The novelty of our work is the critical use of the confusion matrix of a classifier as an error…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-10-23 Emilie Morvant , Sokol Koço , Liva Ralaivola

Previous research on PAC-Bayes learning theory has focused extensively on establishing tight upper bounds for test errors. A recently proposed training procedure called PAC-Bayes training, updates the model toward minimizing these bounds.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-22 Xitong Zhang , Avrajit Ghosh , Guangliang Liu , Rongrong Wang

A learning method is self-certified if it uses all available data to simultaneously learn a predictor and certify its quality with a tight statistical certificate that is valid on unseen data. Recent work has shown that neural network…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-13 Maria Perez-Ortiz , Omar Rivasplata , Emilio Parrado-Hernandez , Benjamin Guedj , John Shawe-Taylor

Empirically, the PAC-Bayesian analysis is known to produce tight risk bounds for practical machine learning algorithms. However, in its naive form, it can only deal with stochastic predictors while such predictors are rarely used and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-11-22 Kohei Miyaguchi

We derive explicit non-asymptotic PAC-Bayes generalization bounds for Gibbs posteriors, that is, data-dependent distributions over model parameters obtained by exponentially tilting a prior with the empirical risk. Unlike classical…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-21 Chenyang Wang , Yun Yang

We introduce a modified version of the excess risk, which can be used to obtain tighter, fast-rate PAC-Bayesian generalisation bounds. This modified excess risk leverages information about the relative hardness of data examples to reduce…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-25 Felix Biggs , Benjamin Guedj

We present a family of novel block-sample MAC-Bayes bounds (mean approximately correct). While PAC-Bayes bounds (probably approximately correct) typically give bounds for the generalization error that hold with high probability, MAC-Bayes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-16 Matthias Frey , Jingge Zhu , Michael C. Gastpar

While PAC-Bayes is now an established learning framework for light-tailed losses (\emph{e.g.}, subgaussian or subexponential), its extension to the case of heavy-tailed losses remains largely uncharted and has attracted a growing interest…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-04-25 Maxime Haddouche , Benjamin Guedj

PAC-Bayesian is an analysis framework where the training error can be expressed as the weighted average of the hypotheses in the posterior distribution whilst incorporating the prior knowledge. In addition to being a pure generalization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-07 Wei Huang , Chunrui Liu , Yilan Chen , Tianyu Liu , Richard Yi Da Xu

This tutorial gives a concise overview of existing PAC-Bayesian theory focusing on three generalization bounds. The first is an Occam bound which handles rules with finite precision parameters and which states that generalization loss is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-07-09 David McAllester

Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) bounds are widely used to derive probabilistic guarantees for the generalisation of machine learning models. They highlight the components of the model which contribute to its generalisation capacity.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-30 Thomas Walker , Alessio Lomuscio

With a goal of understanding what drives generalization in deep networks, we consider several recently suggested explanations, including norm-based control, sharpness and robustness. We study how these measures can ensure generalization,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-07-07 Behnam Neyshabur , Srinadh Bhojanapalli , David McAllester , Nathan Srebro

Symmetries are known to improve the empirical performance of machine learning models, yet theoretical guarantees explaining these gains remain limited. Prior work has focused mainly on compact group symmetries and often assumes that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Armin Beck , Peter Ochs