Sharper Bounds for Uniformly Stable Algorithms
Olivier Bousquet, Yegor Klochkov, Nikita Zhivotovskiy
Subject areas: Excess risk bounds and generalization error bounds, Adversarial learning and robustness, Concentration inequalities, Privacy, fairness
Presented in: Session 1A, Session 1E
[Zoom link for poster in Session 1A], [Zoom link for poster in Session 1E]
Abstract:
Deriving generalization bounds for stable algorithms is a classical question in learning theory taking its roots in the early works of Vapnik and Chervonenkis (1974) and Rogers and Wagner (1978). In a series of recent breakthrough papers by Feldman and Vondrak (2018, 2019), it was shown that the best\nknown high probability upper bounds for uniformly stable learning algorithms due to Bousquet and Elisseef (2002) are sub-optimal in some natural regimes. To do so, they proved two generalization bounds that significantly outperform the simple generalization bound of Bousquet and Elisseef (2002). Feldman and Vondrak also asked if it is possible to provide sharper bounds and prove corresponding high probability lower bounds. This paper is devoted to these questions: firstly,\ninspired by the original arguments of Feldman and Vondrak, we provide a short proof of the moment bound that implies the generalization bound stronger than both recent results Feldman and Vondrak (2018, 2019). Secondly, we prove general lower bounds, showing that our moment bound is sharp (up to a logarithmic factor) unless some additional properties of the corresponding random variables are used. Our main probabilistic result is a general concentration inequality for weakly\ncorrelated random variables, which may be of independent interest.