Abstract: A computerized system and method for large scale semi-supervised learning is provided. The training set comprises a mix of labeled and unlabeled examples. Linear classifiers based on support vector machine principles are built using these examples. One embodiment uses a fast design of a linear transductive support vector machine using multiple switching. In another embodiment, mean field annealing is used to form a very effective semi-supervised support vector machine.

Abstract: Support vector machines (SVMs), though accurate, are not preferred in applications requiring great classification speed, due to the number of support vectors being large. To overcome this problem a primal system and method with the following properties has been devised: (1) it decouples the idea of basis functions from the concept of support vectors; (2) it greedily finds a set of kernel basis functions of a specified maximum size (dmax) to approximate the SVM primal cost function well; (3) it is efficient and roughly scales as O(ndmax2) where n is the number of training examples; and, (4) the number of basis functions it requires to achieve an accuracy close to the SVM accuracy is usually far less than the number of SVM support vectors.

Abstract: A system and method is provided for supervised learning. A training set is provided to the system. The system selects a training element from the provided training set, and adds the training element to a basis element set I. The system conducts an optimization test on the basis element set I with the selected training element to produce a selection score. The system determines whether the selection score indicates an improvement in optimization for the basis element set I. The system discards the selected element if the selection score does not indicate an improvement, and keeps the selected element if the selection score does indicate improvement. The process may then be repeated for other training elements until either the specified maximum number of basis functions is reached or improvement in optimization is below a threshold. At that point, the chosen set I should represent an optimized basis set.

Abstract: The present invention provides a system and method for building fast and efficient support vector classifiers for large data classification problems which is useful for classifying pages from the World Wide Web and other problems with sparse matrices and large numbers of documents. The method takes advantage of the least squares nature of such problems, employs exact line search in its iterative process and makes use of a conjugate gradient method appropriate to the problem.