Lecture#9

Support Vector Machine (SVM)

1
 a
Linear Classifiers
x f yest
f(x,w,b) = sign(w. x - b)
denotes +1
denotes -1

How would you

classify this data?
 a
Linear Classifiers
x f yest
f(x,w,b) = sign(w. x - b)
denotes +1
denotes -1

How would you

classify this data?
 a
Linear Classifiers
x f yest
f(x,w,b) = sign(w. x - b)
denotes +1
denotes -1

How would you

classify this data?
 a
Linear Classifiers
x f yest
f(x,w,b) = sign(w. x - b)
denotes +1
denotes -1

How would you

classify this data?
 a
Linear Classifiers
x f yest
f(x,w,b) = sign(w. x - b)
denotes +1
denotes -1

Any of these
would be fine..

..but which is
best?
 a
Classifier Margin
x f yest
f(x,w,b) = sign(w. x - b)
denotes +1
denotes -1 Define the margin
of a linear
classifier as the
width that the
boundary could be
increased by
before hitting a
datapoint.
 a
Maximum Margin
x f yest
f(x,w,b) = sign(w. x - b)
denotes +1
denotes -1 The maximum
margin linear
classifier is the
linear classifier
with the, um,
maximum margin.
This is the
simplest kind of
SVM (Called an
LSVM)
Linear SVM
 a
Maximum Margin
x f yest
f(x,w,b) = sign(w. x - b)
denotes +1
denotes -1 The maximum
margin linear
classifier is the
linear classifier
Support Vectors with the, um,
are those
datapoints that maximum margin.
the margin This is the
pushes up
against simplest kind of
SVM (Called an
LSVM)
Linear SVM
 Why Maximum Margin?
1. Intuitively this feels safest.
f(x,w,b)
2. If we’ve made = sign(w.
a small error inxthe
- b)
denotes +1
location of the boundary (it’s been
denotes -1 The maximum
jolted in its perpendicular direction)
this gives us leastmargin
chance of causing a
linear
misclassification. classifier is the
linear
3. LOOCV is easy since the classifier
model is
Support Vectors immune to removal of any
with the,non-
um,
are those support-vector datapoints.
datapoints that maximum margin.
the margin 4. There’s some theory (using VC
pushes up dimension) that isThis is the
related to (but not
against the same as) the simplest
propositionkind
that of
this
is a good thing. SVM (Called an
LSVM)
5. Empirically it works very very well.
 Specifying a line and margin
Plus-Plane
Classifier Boundary
Minus-Plane

• How do we represent this mathematically?

• …in m input dimensions?
 Specifying a line and margin
Plus-Plane
Classifier Boundary
Minus-Plane

• Plus-plane = { x : w . x + b = +1 }
• Minus-plane = { x : w . x + b = -1 }

Classify as.. +1 if w . x + b >= 1

-1 if w . x + b <= -1
Universe if -1 < w . x + b < 1
explodes
 Computing the margin width
M = Margin Width

How do we compute
M in terms of w
and b?

• Plus-plane = { x : w . x + b = +1 }
• Minus-plane = { x : w . x + b = -1 }
Claim: The vector w is perpendicular to the Plus Plane. Why?
 Computing the margin width
M = Margin Width

How do we compute
M in terms of w
and b?

• Plus-plane = { x : w . x + b = +1 }
• Minus-plane = { x : w . x + b = -1 }
Claim: The vector w is perpendicular to the Plus Plane. Why?
Let u and v be two vectors on the
Plus Plane. What is w . ( u – v ) ?

And so of course the vector w is also

perpendicular to the Minus Plane
 Computing the margin width
x+ M = Margin Width

x-
How do we compute
M in terms of w
and b?

• Plus-plane = { x : w . x + b = +1 }
• Minus-plane = { x : w . x + b = -1 }
• The vector w is perpendicular to the Plus Plane
Any location in
• Let x- be any point on the minus plane mm:: not
R not
necessarily a
• Let x+ be the closest plus-plane-point to x-. datapoint
 Computing the margin width
x+ M = Margin Width

x-

What we know:
• w . x+ + b = +1
• w . x- + b = -1
• x+ = x- + l w
• |x+ - x- | = M
It’s now easy to get M in
terms of w and b
 Computing the margin width
2
x+ M = Margin Width =
w.w

x-

M = |x+ - x- | =| l w |=

What we know:  λ | w |  λ w.w

• w . x+ + b = +1
• w . x- + b = -1 2 w.w 2
• x+ = x- + l w  
w.w w.w
• |x+ - x- | = M
• 2
λ
w.w
 Learning the Maximum Margin Classifier
2
x+ M = Margin Width =
w.w

x-

Given a guess of w and b we can

• Compute whether all data points in the correct half-planes
• Compute the width of the margin
So now we just need to write a program to search the space of w’s
and b’s to find the widest margin that matches all the datapoints.
How?
Gradient descent? Simulated Annealing? Matrix Inversion? EM?
Newton’s Method?