A randomized learning algorithm {POLLY} is presented that efficiently learns intersections of
s halfspaces in
n dimensions, in time polynomial in both
s and
n . The learning protocol is the PAC (probably approximately correct) model of Valiant, augmented with membership queries.
In particular, {POLLY} receives a set
S of
m = poly(n,s,1/ε,1/δ) randomly generated points from an arbitrary distribution over the unit hypercube, and is told exactly which points are contained
in, and which points are not contained in, the convex polyhedron
P defined by the halfspaces. {POLLY} may also obtain the same information about points of its own choosing. It is shown that
after
poly(n ,
s ,
1/ε ,
1/δ ,
log(1/d) ) time, the probability that {POLLY} fails to output a collection of
s halfspaces with classification error at most
ε , is at most
δ . Here,
d is the minimum distance between the boundary of the target and those examples in
S that are not lying on the boundary. The parameter
log(1/d) can be bounded by the number of bits needed to encode the coefficients of the bounding hyperplanes and the coordinates of
the sampled examples
S . Moreover, {POLLY} can be extended to learn unions of
k disjoint polyhedra with each polyhedron having at most
s facets, in time
poly(n ,
k ,
s ,
1/ε ,
1/δ ,
log(1/d) ,
1/γ ) where
γ is the minimum distance between any two distinct polyhedra.
Key words. PAC learning, Membership queries, Intersections of halfspaces, Unions of polyhedra, Occam algorithm.
Received February 5, 1997; revised July 1, 1997.