Multiple Models Book: Local learning in Local Model Nets

This chapter deals with the local/global trade-off in learning. It points out problems with global learning methods in Local Model Networks when the network is locally over-parameterised or poorly structured. The bias-variance trade-offs for local and global learning are examined, illustrating the regularising effect of local learning, which can be advantageous compared to direct maximisation of a global cost function. Smoothing analysis is used to explain the results, and graphical interpretation of the theoretical smoothing results allows more intuitive explanations of differences in learning algorithms. The methods are then related to Expectation Maximisation (EM) techniques, and the smooth-based estimates of the degrees of freedom are used to develop a new learning algorithm which minimises the generalised cross-validation (GCV) error statistic.
R Murray-Smith
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