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\begin{document}


\title{PAC-MDL bounds}
%%%\title{PAC-MDL bounds: Unifying Sample Complexity Bounds via a
%%%Generalized Occam's Razor}
%PAC-MDL bounds: a Generalized Occam's Razor}
%Label Compression Implies Verifiable Learning}


\author{Avrim Blum\thanks{This work is supported in part by NSF grants
CCR-0105488 and NSF-ITR CCR-0122581.}\inst{1} \and John Langford\inst{2}}

\institute{
Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University
\email{avrim@cs.cmu.edu}
\and
IBM, Watson Research Center
\email{jcl@cs.cmu.edu}\\
}
%%
%% Hmm, this ``thanks'' stuff doesn't seem to work with amsart... need
%% to figure it out later.
%%
%% \thanks{Department of Computer Science, Carnegie
%% Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA 15213-3891. {\tt avrim@cs.cmu.edu}.
%% This work is supported in part by NSF grants CCR-0105488 and NSF-ITR
%% CCR-0122581.}

\maketitle

\date{\today{}}

\begin{abstract}
We point out that a number of standard sample complexity bounds
(VC-dimension, PAC-Bayes, and others) are all related to the number of
bits required to communicate the labels given the unlabeled data for a
natural communication game.  Motivated by this observation, we give a
general sample complexity bound based on this game that allows us to
unify these different bounds in one common framework.

%% All bounds on the true error rate of a learned classifier in the
%% i.i.d. sample setting are intrinsically related to the communication
%% complexity of the labels given the unlabeled data. Furthermore, a true
%% error rate bound which depends upon only the communication complexity
%% of the labels unifies the VC bound and the Occam's Razor bound.

\end{abstract}

\begin{quotation}
{\it \hspace*{\fill} One Bound to rule them all, One Bound to find them,\\
\hspace*{\fill} One Bound to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.}\\
\hspace*{\fill} --J.R.R. Tolkien (roughly)\footnote{This quote is intended
to describe the motivation for this line of work rather than our
current state --- our hope here is to have made some progress in this
direction.}
\end{quotation}

\section{Introduction}
One of the most basic results about learning in the PAC model is the
``Occam's razor'' theorem \cite{BEHW} that states that if we can
explain the labels of a set of $m$ training examples by a hypothesis
that can be described using only $k\ll m$ bits, then we can be confident
that this hypothesis generalizes well to future data.  One way to view
this statement is to consider a setting in which two players \A\ and
\B\ are each given the $m$ examples, but only \A\ is given the $m$
labels, and \A\ must communicate these labels to \B.  In this case, the
result tells us that compression implies learning {\em for the
description language of hypotheses} (that is, \A\ communicates the $m$
labels by sending a hypothesis $h$ to \B, and \B\ then reconstitutes
the labels by evaluating $h$ on each example).  

What if we allow more general procedures for label transmission?  In
particular, a label transmission procedure is simply an agreement on
how a string of bits $\sigma$, together with a list of $m$ unlabeled
examples, should produce a list of $m$ labels.  Instead of being a
function from $X$ to $Y$ (which is then run $m$ times by the
receiver), in general, a compressed string could represent any
function from $X^m$ to $Y^m$.

%% In this paper, we do two things. First, we provide PAC confidence
%% bounds for these more general forms of compression as well.  That is,
%% we show that if \A\ can communicate the labels of the training data in
%% a small number of bits, then \A\ can be confident in her ability to
%% predict well on new data (see Section \ref{sec:newbounds} for a formal
%% description).  Second,
%% what makes this interesting is that we show this more general notion
%% of compressibility unifies a number of standard sample complexity
%% bounds.  In particular, besides the Occam's razor bound, these include:
%% 
%% {\tt [John, you may prefer to replace the above paragraph with one I
%% wrote but commented out here.]}

We start by pointing out that a number of standard sample complexity
bounds can be viewed as stating that ``compression implies learning''
for different description languages in the above game.  Motivated by
this observation, we give a general bound showing that for any
description language, if \A\ can communicate the labels of the training
data in a small number of bits, then \A\ can be confident in her
ability to predict well on new data (see Section \ref{sec:newbounds}
for a formal description).  We then show how this statement allows us
to derive these other bounds as special cases.  In particular, besides
the Occam's razor bound, the standard bounds we consider include:

\begin{enumerate}
%%\item The Occam's Razor bound \cite{BEHW}, which states for any
%%``prior'' \( P(c) \) over classifiers, a bound on the gap between
%%training error and true error of a chosen classifier as a function of
%%its probability under the prior.
\item The PAC-Bayes bound \cite{PB}, which states for any ``prior'' \(
P(c) \) and any ``posterior'' \( Q(c) \), a bound on the true error
rate of a stochastic classifier as a function of the KL divergence
between $P$ and $Q$.
\item The VC bound \cite{Vapnik} (of which there are many variants),
which states that any classifier chosen from a class of VC dimension
\( d \) (or a fixed covering number, or a VC entropy) has a true error
bound related to \( d \).
\item The Compression bound \cite{Compression}\cite{FW}, which states
that any classifier learned using only a small subset of the training
examples has a true error bound related to performance on unused
examples.\footnote{Unlike the other bounds considered we can not,
quite, reproduce the Compression bound with our results.}
\end{enumerate}
\subsection{Viewing sample complexity bounds as label compression}
Consider the case of VC-dimension.  Suppose \A\ and \B\ agree on a
hypothesis class $H$ of VC-dimension $d$, and \A\ is able to find a
hypothesis in $H$ that is consistent with the training data.  This
means that in the above communication game, \A\ can send the labels to
\B\ using only $O(d\log m)$ bits. That is because $H$ makes only
$O(m^d)$ different partitions of the data and, since \B\ has the
unlabeled sample, \A\ can just send the index of the appropriate one
in some canonical ordering.\footnote{One might be concerned that the
{\em computational} task of finding the index of this partition could
be quite expensive. But since this is just for the purpose of a
sample-complexity bound that depends on the number of bits
transmitted, \A\ does not need to actually produce this index so long
as she knows an upper bound on its length.}  For Structural
Risk-Minimization, in which a set of nested hypothesis classes are
used, \A\ first uses $O(\log d)$ bits to send the hypothesis class, a
low-order additive term.  Thus, the statement that we can have
confidence in consistent hypotheses from a class of low VC-dimension
can be thought of as an instantiation of the statement that label
compression implies learning, for this particular transmission
language.  In fact, not surprisingly, the proof for this generalized
form of Occam's razor involves a similar random-partitioning trick as
used in the standard proof of VC-dimension bounds.  The bound also
works for lossy compression, so we can recover the VC guarantees in
the unrealizable case as well.

As another example, consider PAC-Bayes bounds (the
realizable case for simplicity).  In this case, instead of agreeing on
a hypothesis {\em class}, \A\ and \B\ agree in advance on a ``prior''
$P(c)$ over hypotheses.  Notice, now, that given any list of $m$
unlabeled examples $x^m = (x_1, \ldots, x_m)$, this prior on hypotheses
induces a prior over labelings $P(y^m)= \sum_{c:c(x_1)=y_1,
c(x_2)=y_2, \ldots, c(x_m)=y_m} P(c)$.
This means that any particular labeling $y^m$ can be described in roughly
$\log(1/P(y^m))$ bits.  Thus, if the data is such that the ``version
space'' of consistent classifiers has high total probability mass
under $P$ (i.e., $P(y^m)$ is large), then this labeling can be
transmitted in a small number of bits.

\subsection{Stating a PAC-MDL bound} Our goal, then, is to state a
kind of Occam's razor bound, which we call a PAC-MDL bound, that holds
for this general communication game.  One technical ``detail'' we need
to address in order to give such a bound is a method for interpreting
an arbitrary compression procedure as a way of predicting on new
examples.  In particular, even though the string $\sigma$ is a
function from $X^m$ to $Y^m$, it is not necessarily in itself a good
prediction rule on new data.  For example, in the ``VC-dimension
language'' considered above, \A\ might send to \B\ a string indicating
that she is using the 57th linear separator in some canonical ordering
--- but on some new data set, the 57th linear separator might look
totally different depending on how this canonical ordering is defined
and perform very badly.

To address this issue without introducing a lot of excess baggage, we
define the bound in a transductive setting.  In particular, we assume
that \A\ is given both a set of labeled training data and a set of
unlabeled test data.  \B\ has the all the data without labels, given
in some canonical order (e.g., lexicographic) so that he does not know
which are training examples and which are test examples.  \A\ is
required to send a string that uncompresses to a labeling on the
entire data set.  The conclusion is that if this string is small and
uncompresses to a labeling with low error on the training set, then
\A\ can be confident in the labels it yields on the test set.  

Working in the transductive setting somewhat complicates arguments
like those above for viewing standard bounds in the context of label
compression.  The VC-dimension case does not change by much: if there
are $m$ training examples and $n$ test examples, then \A\ sends $O(d
\log (m+n))$ bits to transmit the labeling given by some function in
the class.  However, for the PAC-Bayes language, the different
consistent hypotheses may well not agree over the test data.  We could
just send the shortest string corresponding to a labeling that agrees
with the training data, but we use a somewhat different argument in
order to get the best bounds.

In Sections \ref{sec:qualitative} and \ref{sec:quantitative} we show
how these transductive bounds can be used to imply standard {\em
inductive} sample-complexity bounds.  The high-level idea of the
argument is the same as one that appears in standard VC-dimension
arguments.  In particular, to take the contrapositive, if there were a
significant probability of having a hypothesis with low empirical
error but high true error, then there must also be a significant
probability of having a hypothesis with low empirical error on the
training set and high error on a similarly-sized test set, violating
the transductive bounds.

%%Since induction
%%can be viewed as a specialized form of transduction, bounds for
%%induction are implied as well.

%%{\tt [do we want to say something like what's below???  Flesh out the
%%inductive case??]}
%%An alternative way to define things would be to use the more intuitive game
%%in which \A\ is only given the training data, and then to view the
%%string $\sigma$ sent as a hypothesis by feeding it through a generic
%%``prediction-converter''.  For instance, {\tt [can we do this?]}

\section{The setup}
%%\section{Label Compression Implies An Error Bound}
\label{sec:newbounds}

We consider the following compression game between two players \A\ and
\B.  \A\ has available a training set \( S_{{\rm train}} \)
consisting of \( m \) labeled examples drawn independently
from \( D \).  \A\ also has a test set $S_{\rm test}$ of \( n \)
unlabeled examples drawn independently from \( D \). Bob has available
just the unlabeled versions of the test set and the training set, sorted
together in some canonical order (e.g., lexicographic) so that he does
not know which are training and which are test examples.  Pictorially,
the available information is:

\vspace{0.3cm}

\psfig{figure=game.eps,width=4.7in}
%{\par\centering \includegraphics{game.eps} \par}

\vspace{0.3cm}

Alice's goal is to communicate labels to Bob using as few bits as possible.
Alice encodes with a function \( A:(X\times Y)^{m}\times X^{n}\rightarrow \{0,1\}^{*} \)
and Bob decodes with a function \( B:X^{m+n}\times
\{0,1\}^{*}\rightarrow Y^{m+n} \).  We assume the string $\sigma$ sent
is self-terminating, i.e., is given in a prefix-free code.
Given any compression/decompression procedure
\( (A,B) \), we can view the transmitted string \( \sigma  \) as representing
a function \( \sigma :\, \, X^{m+n}\rightarrow Y^{m+n} \).   Formally,
we define the labeling given by $\sigma$ to be the labeling produced
by running $\sigma$ on the $m+n$ examples in sorted order (the order
in which Bob has the examples).
Thus, we can view
the encoded information as something more general than just a hypothesis from
\( X \) to \( Y \). 

For a compression algorithm \( A \), labeled training set \( S_{{\rm train}} \)
and unlabeled test set \( S_{{\rm test}} \), the output \( \sigma =A(S_{{\rm train}},S_{{\rm test}}) \)
has a specific number of bits \( |\sigma | \) sent to Bob in order to label
the training and test sets.   Let $y(x)$ be the correct labeling of some
example $x$ and $y_\sigma(x)$ be the labeling that Bob computes.  We
can then define 
\( \hat{e}(\sigma ,S_{{\rm test}})=\frac{1}{n}\sum _{x\in
S_{{\rm test}}}I(y_{\sigma }(x)\neq y(x)) \) 
to be the rate of errors on the test set of the labeling induced by \( \sigma  \).
Similarly, \( \hat{e}(\sigma ,S_{{\rm train}}) \) is the rate of errors
on the training set.


\section{Realizable Case}

We begin by considering the realizable case: that is, the setting in
which the string $\sigma$ provides a lossless compression of the labels
on the training set.  We then use our bounds to derive the realizable
case of a number of standard sample complexity bounds. 
%% In this section we attempt to state our bounds in a simple form and do not
%% worry about do not worry about stating the bounds in their absolutely
%% tightest form.  
%% 
%% Our first statement is an easy approximation of the main result. It is 
%% meant to provide some intuition.

\begin{thm}
\label{cor-realizable}(Realizable PAC-MDL bound) For all description
languages (i.e., methods of describing the labels via strings
$\sigma$), for all $\delta > 0$:
\[
\Pr _{S\sim D^m,S'\sim D^{n}}\left( \forall \sigma :\,\,\,\hat{e}(\sigma
,S)>0 \textrm{ or } \hat{e}(\sigma ,S')\leq \frac{|\sigma|\ln 2 +\ln
\frac{1}{\delta }}{n\ln \left( 1+\frac{m}{n}\right) }\right) >1-\delta
\] 

\end{thm}
In other words, it is unlikely there will exist a short string
$\sigma$ that uncompresses perfectly on the training data and yet has
high error on the test set.  This statement has a bound which is
linear in the description complexity, \( |\sigma | \).  The exact
bound is controlled by the size of the sample set \( m \), test set \(
n \), and the required confidence, \( \delta \).

\begin{proof}  Rather than give a proof from first principles, we 
simplify our more general Theorem \ref{thm:PAC-MDL} (Section
\ref{sec:agnostic}) for the realizable case of $\hat{e}(\sigma ,S)=0$,
using a prior $P(\sigma) = 2^{-|\sigma|}$.  
Since the training error is $0$ in this setting, Theorem
\ref{thm:PAC-MDL} simplifies as:

With probability at least $1-\delta$, all $\sigma$ with $\hat{e}(\sigma,S)=0$ satisfy:

\[
\frac{\left( \begin{array}{c}
n\\
n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')
\end{array}\right) }{\left( \begin{array}{c}
m+n\\
n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')
\end{array}\right) } \geq 2^{-|\sigma|}\delta 
\] 

%%\[
%%\Rightarrow \frac{n!(m+n-n\hat{e}(\sigma ,S'))!}{(n-n\hat{e}(\sigma ,S'))!(m+n)!}\geq \delta P(\sigma )\]
 
\[
\Rightarrow \frac{n(n-1)...(n-n\hat{e}(\sigma ,S')+1)}{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+n-n\hat{e}(\sigma ,S')+1)} \geq 2^{-|\sigma|} \delta \]
Using the crude approximation: \(
\frac{n(n-1)...(n-t+1)}{(m+n)(m+n-1)...(m+n-t+1)}\leq \left(
\frac{n}{m + n}\right) ^{t} \) we get:
\[
\left( \frac{n}{m+n}\right) ^{n\hat{e}(\sigma ,S')} \geq 2^{-|\sigma|} \delta \]
Taking the \( \ln  \) of both sides, we get: 
\[
n\hat{e}(\sigma ,S')\ln \left( 1+\frac{m}{n}\right) \leq 
\ln 2^{|\sigma|}+\ln \frac{1}{\delta }\]
\[
\Rightarrow \; \hat{e}(\sigma ,S') \; \leq \; \frac{\ln
2^{|\sigma|}+\ln \frac{1}{\delta }}{n\ln \left(
1+\frac{m}{n}\right) }
\; \leq \; \frac{|\sigma|\ln 2 +\ln
\frac{1}{\delta }}{n\ln \left( 1+\frac{m}{n}\right) }
\]
\qed 
\end{proof}
\subsection{Comparison to standard bounds: qualitative results}
%\section{Transduction to Induction}
\label{sec:qualitative}
In the transductive setting discussed above, we have a training set
and test set and desire a bound on the number of mistakes on the test
set based on observable quantities (like the error rate on the
training set and the number of bits needed to communicate the labels).  In the
inductive setting, which most standard bounds are concerned with, we
simply have a training set and desire a bound on the future error rate
of a resulting prediction procedure.  In this section we show how the
PAC-MDL bound can be used to derive standard bounds at the qualitative
level.  By ``qualitative'' we mean that we are not concerned with
exact constants and we will only focus on the realizable case.  Later,
we discuss the agnostic case and quantitative comparisons.

Let us begin by considering two special cases of Theorem
\ref{cor-realizable}: the limit as $n \rightarrow \infty$, and the
case of $n=m$. 

\begin{cor}\label{cor:infty}
For all description languages over strings $\sigma$,
\[
\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }\Pr _{S\sim D^m,S'\sim D^{n}}\left( \forall \sigma \,\,\,\hat{e}(\sigma ,S)>0\textrm{ or }\hat{e}(\sigma ,S')\leq \frac{|\sigma |\ln 2+\ln \frac{1}{\delta }}{m}\right) >1-\delta \]

\end{cor}
\begin{proof}
Apply the asymptotically tight approximation, \( n\ln \left( 1+\frac{m}{n}\right) =n\frac{m}{n}=m \)
to Theorem \ref{cor-realizable}.
\qed \end{proof}

\begin{cor}\label{cor:samesize}
For all description languages over strings $\sigma$,
\[
\Pr _{S\sim D^m, S'\sim D^{m}}\left( \forall \sigma
\,\,\,\hat{e}(\sigma ,S)>0\textrm{ or }\hat{e}(\sigma ,S')\leq
\frac{|\sigma | +\log_2\frac{1}{\delta }}{m}\right) >1-\delta \]
\end{cor}
\begin{proof}
Just plug in $n=m$ into Theorem \ref{cor-realizable}.
\qed \end{proof}

One first observation is that Corollary \ref{cor:infty} immediately
implies the standard Occam's Razor bound, because in that case
$|\sigma|$ is just the size in bits of the hypothesis, and as
$n\rightarrow\infty$, $\hat{e}(\sigma,S')$ approaches the true error
with probability 1.  

\subsection{VC-bounds}
For the case of VC-dimension, the number of bits sent {\em does}
depend on the number of test examples, so we instead use Corollary
\ref{cor:samesize}, together with the fact that any hypothesis
violating the VC bound (having zero empirical error but high true
error) likely has a high error rate on a randomly chosen test set.
Notice that this argument is also used in the standard proof of
VC-bounds.  
%% It should be unsurprising that using the PAC-MDL theorem
%% with a VC-related description language in the inductive setting
%% mimics the standard proof of VC-dimension bounds.

\begin{thm}
Let $H$ be a hypothesis class of VC-dimension $d$.  Then,
$$\Pr_{S\sim D^m} \left( \exists c \in H : \hat{e}(c,S)=0 \mbox{ and }
e(c) > \frac{1}{m}\left(d\log_2(2m)+\log_2\frac{4}{\delta}\right) \right)
\leq \delta.$$ 
\end{thm}
\begin{proof}
Suppose this were false. That is, suppose there were a chance greater
than $\delta$ that a hypothesis in $H$ existed with zero empirical
error but true error greater than the above bound. Then, since the
mean and median of the binomial are within 1, this implies that
$$\Pr_{S\sim D^m,S'\sim D^m} \left( \exists c \in H: \hat{e}(c,S)=0
\mbox{ and } \hat{e}(c,S') > \frac{1}{m}\left(d\log_2(2m) +
\log_2\frac{2}{\delta}\right)\right)$$
$$ >\;  \delta/2.$$   But, now we appeal to
Sauer's lemma which states that the number of ways to label any \( m
\) examples using hypotheses in a class of VC-dimension $d$ is at most
$m^d$.  Thus, for the setting of Corollary \ref{cor:samesize} where we
have $2m$ examples, the labeling given by any $c\in H$ can be
transmitted in only a number of bits $|\sigma| = d\log(2m)$ by sending
its index in some canonical ordering. But then this violates Corollary
\ref{cor:samesize} using ``$\delta$'' of $\delta/2$.
\qed \end{proof}

\subsection{PAC-Bayes bounds}
We can also reconstruct PAC-Bayes bounds (again, focusing on the
realizable case for simplicity).  PAC-Bayes bounds state that for any
``prior'' $P(c)$ over hypotheses, if the learning algorithm finds a set of
consistent hypotheses $U$ with large probability mass, then we can be 
confident that the stochastic prediction strategy that randomizes over
concepts in $U$ has low true error. To view this in our setting, we consider
a communication protocol in which \A\ and \B\ agree on the prior $P$,
and also agree on a common random string.  This common random string
is then used to repeatedly sample from the prior $P$, and the message
$\sigma$ that \A\ sends to \B\ is just the index of the first consistent
hypothesis produced by this sampling.  Notice that (as with the Occam
bounds) the string $\sigma$ does not depend on the test data and so we
are able to use Corollary \ref{cor:infty}.  In the statement below,
let $P(U) = \sum_{c \in U} P(c)$.

\begin{thm}
Let $P(c)$ be any distribution over classifiers.  Then,
$$\Pr_{S\sim D^m} \left( \exists U: \hat{e}(U,S)=0 \mbox{ and } e(U) >
\frac{1}{m}\left(\ln\frac{m}{P(U)} + \ln\ln \frac{2}{\delta} +
\ln\frac{2}{\delta} + 1\right)\right) \leq \delta,$$ where $e(U)$ is
the expected true error of a random hypothesis drawn from $U$
(according to $P|_U$), and
likewise $\hat{e}(U,S)$ is the expected empirical error of a random
hypothesis from $U$ on set $S$.  
%%Similarly, $P(U)$ is the probability
%%of the set $U$ under the distribution $P(c)$.
\end{thm}

The argument used here is (essentially) a
derandomization of the bits-back argument used by Hinton and van Camp
\cite{bitsback}.  A similar 
argument also appears in the Slepian-Wolf theorem \cite{TnC} of
information theory.

%% This argument also works in an agnostic setting where errors exist in
%% the train set.

\begin{proof}
Suppose this were false. That is, there was a chance greater than
$\delta$ that a bad set $U$ existed (one satisfying the conditions of
the theorem).  For any such set $U$, let $U' =
\{c\in U: e(c) \geq e(U)-1/m\}$.  Since the error rate of any
classifier is at most 1, we know $P(U') \geq P(U)/m$.   
Now, for any fixed such $U'$, if we
repeatedly sample from $P$, the expected number of samples until we
first pick a classifier in $U'$ is at most
$\frac{m}{P(U)}$.  Furthermore, the chance 
that we do not pick such a classifer in
$\frac{m}{P(U)}\ln\frac{2}{\delta}$ samples is at most $\delta/2$.
This means that over the sample $S$ and the common random oracle
between \A\ and \B, there is a greater than $\delta/2$ chance that a
consistent classifier $c \in U'$ exists whose description length
$|\sigma_c|$ satisfies 
$$|\sigma_c| \leq \log_2\left(\frac{m}{P(U)}\ln\frac{2}{\delta}\right).$$
Now, by definition of $U'$, we have 
\begin{eqnarray*}
e(c) & \geq & e(U) - 1/m\\
& > & \frac{1}{m}\left(\ln\frac{m}{P(U)} + \ln\ln
\frac{2}{\delta} + \ln\frac{2}{\delta}\right)\\
& \geq & \frac{1}{m}\left(|\sigma_c|\ln 2 + \ln\frac{2}{\delta}\right).
\end{eqnarray*}
Putting this all together, there is a probability greater than
$\delta/2$ over the sample and common random oracle that such a classifier
exists, violating Corollary \ref{cor:infty} for ``$\delta$'' of
$\delta/2$. \qed 
\end{proof}

\section{The Agnostic Case}
\label{sec:agnostic}
To discuss the agnostic case, it will be convenient to make the
following definitions.  First, imagine we have a bucket with $m$ red
balls and $n$ blue balls, and we draw $a+b$ of them without
replacement.  Let us define $\bucket(m,n,a,b)$ to be the probability
that we get at least $b$ blue balls.  That is,
\begin{eqnarray*}
\bucket(m,n,a,b) & = & \sum_{t=b}^{a+b} \frac{{n \choose t}{m \choose
a+b-t}}{{n+m \choose a+b}}.
\end{eqnarray*}
Notice that $\bucket$ is a decreasing function of $b$.
Now, for a given value of $\delta$, let $\bmax\left(n,\frac{a}{m},\delta \right)$ be the
largest value of $b$ such that $\bucket(m,n,a,b) \geq \delta$. In
other words, for any $b> \bmax\left(n,\frac{a}{m},\delta \right)$, if
we pick $a+b$ balls out of the $m+n$, the chance we get more than $b$
blue balls is less than $\delta$.
We now give our main result.

\begin{thm}\label{thm:PAC-MDL}
(PAC-MDL bound) Let \( P(\sigma ) \) be any probability distribution
over strings $\sigma$ (a ``prior'').  With probability at least $1-\delta$ over the
draw of the train and test sets $S,S'\sim D^{m+n}$:
\[
\forall \sigma \,\,\,\,\,\, n\hat{e}(\sigma,S') \leq
\bmax\left(n,\hat{e}(\sigma,S), P(\sigma)\delta\right).
\]
%% \sum_{t=n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')}^{n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')+m\hat{e}(\sigma,S)}
%% \frac{\left( \begin{array}{c}
%% n\\
%% t
%% \end{array}\right) \left( \begin{array}{c}
%% m\\
%% n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')+m\hat{e}(\sigma,S)-t
%% \end{array}\right) }{\left( \begin{array}{c}
%% n+m\\
%% n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')+m\hat{e}(\sigma,S)
%% \end{array}\right) } \geq P(\sigma )\delta 
%% \]
\end{thm}
Intuitively, this theorem statement can be thought of as ``with high
probability, the test set error rate is not too much larger than the
the training error rate.'' 
%%  Here, the constraint defining ``small'' is given by the equation.
\begin{proof}
Assume for the moment that we have a fixed vector of labeled examples,
\( (x,y)^{m+n} \) so that we can use an argument similar to the
``double sample trick'' in VC bounds. Let \( S,S'\sim \pi (m,n) \)
denote a binary partition drawn uniformly from the set of ${m+n
\choose n}$ possible binary partitions into sets of size \( m,n
\). For any particular string, \( \sigma \), there is a total number
of errors \( e_{\sigma} \) on the labeled data. What we wish to disallow is the
possibility that most of these errors are in the test set. We know
that:
\[
\Pr _{S,S'\sim \pi (m,n)}(t\textrm{ test set errors and }e_{\sigma}-t\textrm{ train set errors})=
\frac{{n \choose t}{m \choose e_{\sigma}-t}
}{{{m+n} \choose e_{\sigma}}}\]
In order to construct a confidence interval we must choose some set of ``bad
events'' to exclude.  In our case, this set of bad events
consists of all test errors $t \geq \min \{b :
\bucket(m,n,e_\sigma-b,b) < P(\sigma) \delta \}$.  Notice that there
is at most a $P(\sigma)\delta$ probability that the number of test errors
is such that: $$\bucket(m,n,m\hat{e}(\sigma,S),n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')) <
P(\sigma)\delta.$$
%Therefore, A ``bad event'' occurs precisely when
%$\bucket(m,n,m\hat{e}(\sigma,S),n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')) <
%P(\sigma)\delta$.
Therefore, we have: 
\[
\forall (x,y)^{m+n}\forall \sigma \, \, \, \Pr _{S,S'\sim \pi (m,n)}(\bucket(m,n,m\hat{e}(\sigma,S),n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')) < P(\sigma)\delta)\leq P(\sigma )\delta \]
(note that this is the step which requires that Bob not know which samples are
in the train set and which are in the test set) The union bound implies:
\[
\forall (x,y)^{m+n}\, \, \, \Pr _{S,S'\sim \pi (m,n)}(\exists \sigma :\, \, \bucket(m,n,m\hat{e}(\sigma,S),n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')) < P(\sigma)\delta)\leq \delta \]
Taking the expectation over draws, \( (x,y)^{m+n}\sim D^{m+n} \), we get: 
\[
E_{(x,y)^{m+n}\sim D^{m+n}}\Pr _{S,S'\sim \pi (m,n)}(\exists \sigma \,\,\,\bucket(m,n,m\hat{e}(\sigma,S),n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')) < P(\sigma)\delta)\leq \delta \]
 
\[
\Rightarrow \Pr _{(x,y)^{m+n}\sim D^{m+n}}(\exists \sigma \,\,\,\bucket(m,n,m\hat{e}(\sigma,S),n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')) < P(\sigma)\delta)\leq \delta \]

Negating this statement, we get:

\[
\Rightarrow \Pr _{(x,y)^{m+n}\sim D^{m+n}}(\forall \sigma \,\,\,\bucket(m,n,m\hat{e}(\sigma,S),n\hat{e}(\sigma,S')) \geq P(\sigma)\delta ) > 1- \delta \]

To construct a bound we must take a worst case over unknown
quantities.  In this case, the unknown quantity is the number of test
errors, or equivalently the total number of errors.  Taking the worst
case over the number of test errors, we get the theorem.  \qed
\end{proof}

\subsection{Lower bound}

Here, we show that there exists no other bound which is a significant
improvement on the PAC-MDL bound for the communication game we
consider.

\begin{thm}
(PAC-MDL lower bound) For all ``priors'' over descriptions, \(
P(\sigma ) \) there exists transductive classifiers \( \sigma \) and
distributions \( D \) so that with probability $\frac{\delta}{(n+1)(m+1)}
-\frac{\delta^2}{(n+1)^2(m+1)^2}$
\[
\exists \sigma:\,\,\,\,\, n\hat{e}(\sigma,S') >
\bmax\left(n,\hat{e}(\sigma,S), P(\sigma)\delta \right).
\]
Furthermore, if any \( \sigma  \) satisfies the clause, it is the \( \sigma  \)
with smallest train error. 
\end{thm}
Intuitively, this theorem says ``the probabability that one of the
transductive classifiers has a large test error rate is within a $(n+1)(m+1)$ fraction of $\delta$''.
\begin{proof}
Let \( D \) be the distribution which is uniform on any domain \( X \) and
always chooses \( Y=0 \).

Pick any fixed train error rate \( e_{\textrm{train}} \). For each possible string, \( \sigma  \),
pick $e_\sigma$ according to:
\[
e_\sigma = e_{\textrm{train}} + \bmax\left(n,\hat{e}(\sigma,S), P(\sigma)\delta\right).
\]

Define $F_e$ to be the set of all functions from $X^{m+n}$ to $Y^{m+n}$ such that for every
input we have exactly $e$ 1's in the output.
We now define $\sigma$ to be a random element in $F_{e_{\sigma}}$.
This choice implies that every description
decodes to \( e_\sigma \) total errors.  Since errors in the test set
and errors in the train set have a constant total, any string with a
too-large number of test errors has a number of train errors less than
\( e_{\textrm{train}} \).

We have: 
\[
\forall \sigma \,\,\,\Pr _{S,S'\sim D^{m+n}}(\hat{e}(\sigma,S') > \bmax\left(n,\hat{e}(\sigma,S), P(\sigma)\delta\right) ) 
\]
\[
\geq \bucket(m,n,e_{\textrm{train}}-1,e_\sigma-e_{\textrm{train}} + 1)
\]
Noting that $\left(\begin{array}{c}
n\\
k+1
\end{array}\right) > 
{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}\left(\begin{array}{c}
n\\
k
\end{array}\right)
$ and  $\left(\begin{array}{c}
n\\
k-1
\end{array}\right) > 
{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}\left(\begin{array}{c}
n\\
k
\end{array}\right)
$ We get: 
\[
\forall \sigma \,\,\,\Pr _{S,S'\sim D^{m+n}}(\hat{e}(\sigma,S') > \bmax\left(n,\hat{e}(\sigma,S), P(\sigma)\delta\right) )\geq \frac{P(\sigma )\delta}{(n+1)(m+1)} 
\]
Negating, we get:
\[
\forall \sigma \,\,\,\Pr _{S,S'\sim D^{m+n}}(\hat{e}(\sigma,S') \leq \bmax\left(n,\hat{e}(\sigma,S), P(\sigma) \delta\right) )
\leq 1-\frac{P(\sigma )\delta}{(n+1)(m+1)} 
\]
Using independence from the construction of the \( \sigma  \), we get:
\[
\Pr _{S,S'\sim D^{m+n}}(\forall \sigma \,\,\,\hat{e}(\sigma,S') \leq \bmax\left(n,\hat{e}(\sigma,S), P(\sigma) \delta\right))\leq \prod _{\sigma }(1- \frac{P(\sigma )\delta}{(n+1)(m+1)}) \]
Approximating the product, we get:
\[
\Pr _{S,S'\sim D^{m+n}}(\forall \sigma \,\,\,\hat{e}(\sigma,S') \leq \bmax\left(n,\hat{e}(\sigma,S), P(\sigma) \delta\right))\]
\[
\leq 1-(\frac{\delta}{(n+1)(m+1)} -\frac{\delta^2}{(n+1)^2(m+1)^2})\]
And negating again, we get: 
\[
\Pr _{S,S'\sim D^{m+n}}(\exists \sigma \,\,\,\hat{e}(\sigma,S') > \bmax\left(n,\hat{e}(\sigma,S), P(\sigma)\delta\right))\]
\[
\geq \frac{\delta}{(n+1)(m+1)} -\frac{\delta^2}{(n+1)^2(m+1)^2}\]
\qed 
\end{proof}

\section{Comparison to standard bounds: quantitative results}
\label{sec:quantitative}

The goal of this section is making a quantitatively tight comparison
of the PAC-MDL bound to various other bounds in the inductive setting
where other bounds are typically stated.  For a fair quantitative
comparison, we state bounds in their tightest forms, and for this we
work directly with the Binomial tail and its inverse.

\begin{defn}
(Binomial Tail Distribution) 
\[
\textrm{Bin}\left( \frac{k}{m},p\right) 
\equiv \Pr _{X_{1},...X_{m}\sim p^{m}}
 \left( \sum _{i=1}^{m}X_{i}\leq k
 \right) =\sum _{j=1}^{k}
   \left( \begin{array}{c}
     m\\
     j
   \end{array}
   \right)p^{j}(1-p)^{m-j}\]
= the probability a given classifier of true error $p$ has empirical
error at most $\frac{k}{m}$ on a sample of size $m$.
%%\( m \) coins with bias \( p \) produce \( k \) or
%%fewer heads.
\end{defn}
%%For the learning problem, we always choose \( p\equiv e_{D}(c) \) and \( X_{i}= \)error
%%on the \( i \)th example. With these definitions, we can interpret the Binomial
%%tail as the probability of an empirical error less than or equal to \( \frac{k}{m} \). 

Since we are interested in calculating a bound on the true error rate given
a confidence, $\delta$, and an empirical error, \( \hat{e}_{S}(c) \), it
is handy to define the inversion of a Binomial tail.
\begin{defn}
(Binomial Tail Inversion) 
\[
\overline{\textrm{Bin}}\left( \frac{k}{m},\delta \right) \equiv \max _{p}\left\{ p:\, \, \textrm{Bin}\left( \frac{k}{m},p\right) =\delta \right\} \]
= the largest true error rate such that the probability of having empirical
error \( \leq \frac{k}{m} \) is at least \( \delta  \).
\end{defn}
We next state each of the bounds in their tightest form and show how each bound
is related to the description complexity of the labels given the unlabeled
data.

\subsection{The Occam's Razor bound}

\label{sec-ORB} 

The Occam's Razor Bound applies to any measure \( P \) over a set of classifiers,
\( c \)

\begin{thm}
\cite{BEHW} (Occam's Razor Bound) For all ``priors'' \( p(c) \) over the
classifiers, \( c \), for all \( \delta \in (0,1] \):
\[
\forall p(c)\, \, \Pr _{S\sim D^{m}}\left( \exists c:\, \, e(c)\geq \overline{\textrm{Bin}}\left( \hat{e}_{S}(c),\delta p(c)\right) \right) \leq \delta \]

\end{thm}
The prior \( p(c) \) can be interpreted as a language for describing classifiers,
\( c \). Given any prior \( p(c) \), we can construct a language \( L(c) \)
which uses code words of length approximately \( 2^{-|L(c)|}=p(c) \). 

The appropriate method for constructing the Occam's Razor bound from
the PAC-MDL bound uses the limit as \( n\rightarrow \infty \), similar
to Corollary \ref{cor:infty} (although really using Theorem
\ref{thm:PAC-MDL} in order to cover the agnostic case).

Using the PAC-MDL bound, we can construct an inductive bound on the
true error rate given any ``prior'' on classifiers, \( p(c) \).  How
does this compare with the bound constructed with the Occam's Razor
bound directly?

For the agnostic case, we can do a numerical calculation with \(
m_{\textrm{train}}=100 \) training examples, a confidence of \( \delta
p(c)=0.001 \), a near-infinite (size 10000) test set, and a varying
training error. Then, the two true error bounds yield the following
graph:

\vspace{0.3cm}
{\par\centering \rotatebox{270}{\includegraphics{occam_vs_observable.ps}} \par}
\vspace{0.3cm}

Quantitatively, the Occam's Razor bound is essentially a
specialization of the PAC-MDL bound where the description language is
given by the prior on the classifiers.

\comment{
\subsection{The VC bound}
I decided that this is too nontrivial to get right in the time
remaining.  Later, we may want to work it out exactly.  -John

A typical agnostic VC \cite{Vapnik} result has the form:

\[
\Pr _{S\sim D^{m}}\left( \exists c\in H\, \, \, e(c)\leq
\hat{e}_{S}(c)+\sqrt{\frac{d\left( 1+\ln \frac{2m}{d}\right) +\ln
\frac{4}{\delta }}{m}}\right) >1-\delta \]

If we have a VC dimension of \( d \), Sauer's lemma (used in the proof
of the VC bound) implies that the number of ways to label any \( m \)
points of samples is at most:
\[
\Pi (m)\leq \left( \frac{me}{d}\right) ^{d}\]
This implies that we can construct a ``prior'' over descriptions
$\sigma$ which satisfies:
\[ P(\sigma )=\frac{1}{\Pi (m+n)}\geq \left( \frac{d}{e(m+n)}\right) ^{d} \]
Let \[ \Phi(S,S',\delta) = \forall \sigma :\,\,\,\frac{\left( \begin{array}{c}
n\\
n\hat{e}(\sigma ,S')
\end{array}\right) \left( \begin{array}{c}
m\\
m\hat{e}(\sigma ,S)
\end{array}\right) }{\left( \begin{array}{c}
n+m\\
n\hat{e}(\sigma ,S')+m\hat{e}(\sigma ,S) 
\end{array}\right) } \geq \delta \left( \frac{d}{e(m+n)}\right) ^{d} \]
Using this in the PAC-MDL bound, we get:
\[
\Pr _{S,S'\sim D^{m+n}} (not \Phi(S,S',\delta)) \leq \delta \]
which can be rewritten as:
\[ E_{S \sim D^m} E _{S' \sim D^n} I(not \Phi(S,S',\delta)) \leq \delta \]
We know that in randomization over $S$ and $S'$, the predicate $\Phi$
is violated only a $\delta$ fraction of the time.  Without a
violation, the number of errors is constrained.  

This quantity does not result in a useful bound for large values of \(
n \). However, we can fix a value of $n$ (as in Corollary
\ref{cor:samesize}) and argue that the choice of classifier depends
upon only the \( m \) examples in the train set (implying a constant
\( \hat{e}(\sigma, S) \)) and the bound holds for every description
\( \sigma \). Consequently, the bound holds in expectation over all
test sets which is (by definition) a true error bound.

What value of \( n \) should we use? One obvious choice is \( n=m \), as suggested
by the VC proof, although this is not necessarily optimal. Picking various values
of \( n \), and using Sauer's Lemma \( \Pi (m+n)\leq \left( e\frac{m+n}{d}\right) ^{d} \),
we can apply the PAC-MDL bound and compare it to the VC result.

\vspace{0.3cm}
{\par\centering \rotatebox{270}{\includegraphics{vc.ps}} \par}
\vspace{0.3cm}

Even for the naive choice, \( n=100 \), the PAC-MDL bound provides a
better bound on the true error rate of the learned classifier than
this form of the VC bound. There are actually many forms of the VC
bound, all of which are dependent in some way upon the growth function
\( \Pi (m+n) \). The tightest possible bound we can construct using
the PAC-MDL bound uses the distribution of the growth function, \( \Pr
_{S'\sim D^{n}}(\Pi (m+n)) \) at some value of \( n \) (probably not
\( m \)). This is similar to (but not the same as) the ``VC-entropy''
in \cite{V2}.


\subsection{The PAC-Bayes bound}

The PAC-Bayes bound is similar to the Occam's Razor bound, except that it works
with a ``posterior'' as well as a ``prior'' over hypotheses. 

\begin{thm}
(PAC-Bayes bound) \cite{PB} \( \forall P\sim c \)
\[
\Pr _{S\sim D^{m}}\left( \exists Q\sim c\, \, \, \textrm{KL}(E_{c\sim Q}\hat{e}(c)||E_{c\sim Q}e(c))\geq \frac{\textrm{KL}(Q||P)+\ln \frac{m+1}{\delta }}{m}\right) \leq \delta \]

\end{thm}
The PAC-Bayes bound is generally superior to the Occam's Razor bound because
redundant classifiers do not necessarily worsen the bound. 

For any \( Q \), the ``bits back'' \cite{bitsback} argument is sufficient
to show that the description complexity of the labels is only \( \textrm{KL}(Q||P) \). 

\subsection{The realizable case}

In the realizable case, the optimal distribution \( Q \) is \( Q(c)=\frac{P(c)}{\int P(c)I(\hat{e}(c)=0)dc} \)
which implies \( KL(Q||P)=\ln \frac{1}{\int P(c)I(\hat{e}(c)=0)dc} \). This
is the description length of the labels given the ``prior'' \( P \) induces
on labelings. In particular, let: 
\[
R(y^{m})=\int _{c}P(c)\prod _{i}I(c(x_{i})=y_{i})dc\]
The description language is simply given by \( R(y^{m}) \), and the analysis
is identical to the Occam's Razor bound. It is interesting to note that we improve
on the PAC-Bayes bound by an additive constant of \( \frac{\ln (m+1)}{m} \).


\subsection{The agnostic case}

For the unrealizable setting, suppose that our average satisfies \( E_{c\sim Q}\hat{e}(c)=K \).
The distribution minimizing \( \textrm{KL}(Q||P) \) has the form: \( Q^{*}(c)=\frac{P(c)e^{-\beta \hat{e}(c)}}{Z(\beta )} \)
for some constant \( \beta  \). Markov's inequality tells us: \( \Pr _{c\sim Q}\left( \hat{e}(c)\leq K+\frac{1}{m}\right) \geq \frac{1}{K+1} \).
Let \( Q_{\leq K}(c)=\frac{1}{N}Q^{*}(c) \) if \( \hat{e}(c)\leq K+\frac{1}{m} \)
and \( 0 \) otherwise. Then, \( \textrm{KL}(Q_{\leq K}||P)\leq \textrm{KL}(Q^{*}||P)+\ln (K+1) \).

This argument can also be made by using the distribution: \( Q(c)=\frac{P(c)}{\int P(c)I(\hat{e}(c)\leq K)dc} \)
for \( \hat{e}(c)\leq K \) and \( 0 \) otherwise. The KL divergence is then:
\( \ln \frac{1}{\int P(c)I(\hat{e}(c)\leq K)dc} \) = the prior probability
of a labeling with \( K \) or fewer errors. We have \( \ln \frac{1}{\int P(c)I(\hat{e}(c)\leq K)dc}\leq \textrm{KL}(Q^{*}||P)+\ln (K+1) \)
so, we can send a codeword \( \sigma  \) with length bounded by \( \textrm{KL}(Q^{*}||P)+\ln (K+1) \)
having less than \( K \) errors.

\subsection{derivation}

In order to unify the PAC-Bayes bound, we need to use the bits-back argument
which notes that Alice can first draw a classifier from \( Q \) using \( H(Q) \)
bits and then transmit it to Bob using \( H(Q)+KL(Q||P) \) bits. Bob can then
label his examples using the transmitted classifier. Using the labeled data
on the train set, Bob can learn the distribution \( Q \) and recover the \( H(Q) \)
bits used by Alice to pick the original classifier. 

Examining the bits-back argument, we see that only \( KL(Q||P) \) bits
are actually required to transmit the classifier because Alice and Bob
could have agreed upon the \( H(Q) \) bits in advance and the protocol
works in expectation over that agreement.

\emph{This needs to be spelled out in much greater detail.}

}
\subsection{The Compression Bound}

The compression bound works from the observation that examples which
do not affect the output hypothesis are ``sort of'' test examples. In
particular, if we knew in advance which examples are unnecessary, then
the ``unnecessary'' examples would be independent of the chosen
hypothesis and a test set bound would apply.  We don't know in
advance, so it is necessary to worsen the results by some factor.

Let \( |A(S)| \) be the number of examples used by the learning algorithm and
\( \bar{A}(S) \) be the set of examples not used by the learning algorithm. 

\begin{thm}
(Compression Bound) \cite{Compression}\cite{FW} 
\[
\Pr _{S\sim D^{m}}\left( e(c)\geq \overline{\textrm{Bin}}\left( \hat{e}_{\bar{A}(S)}(c),\frac{\delta }{\left( \begin{array}{c}
m\\
|A(S)|
\end{array}\right) (m+1)}\right) \right) \leq \delta \]

\end{thm}
(Note: we have improved the compression bound here to work in the agnostic setting)

The language here is quite simple. First, specify the size of the compression
set using \( \log (m+1) \) bits, then specify the compression set using \( \log \left( \begin{array}{c}
m\\
|A(S)|
\end{array}\right)  \) bits, and then specify the labels using \( |A(S)| \) bits. Given the labels
of the compression set, the decoding end can run the learning algorithm and
produce labels for all of the examples. 

The compression bound is similar (but not identical) to the PAC-MDL
bound with a specific language: the language which states the labels
of the critical subset of \( |A(S)| \) labels. Given the critical
subset, it is possible to learn the hypothesis, and given the
hypothesis, a labeling of all the data exists.

The number of bits required to specify the critical subset of labels
is \( \log _{2}(m+n+1) \) (to specify the size of the subset) plus \(
\log _{2}\left( \begin{array}{c} m+n\\ |A(S)|
\end{array}\right)  \) (to specify the particular subset) plus \( |A(S)| \) (to specify the labels
of the subset). We compare these two bounds (with \( \delta =0.05 \)
on a training set of size \( 100 \)) and find the following graph:

\vspace{0.3cm}
{\par\centering \rotatebox{270}{\includegraphics{compression_vs_observable.ps}} \par}
\vspace{0.3cm}

The PAC-MDL bound does somewhat worse because we are forced to choose from
a larger set, of size \( m+n \) rather than \( n \).

\section{Discussion}

There are a few things we have accomplished here.
\begin{enumerate}
\item Bound unification. All of the major bounds can be thought of as
(approximate or exact) applications of the PAC-MDL bound.
\item Generalization.  We have a better understanding of the
transductive setting since the PAC-MDL bound is naturally
transductive.  This allows us to bound the error rate on a given test
set in many situations where it might be much more difficult to state
an inductive bound.
\item Simplification. Proving bounds becomes an exercise in showing
that we have some language for labels.
\end{enumerate}

The qualitative and quantitative comparisons with the inductive bounds
were made in the inductive setting where a ``home court advantage''
exists for naturally inductive bounds.  If instead, we compare in a
transductive setting, with a specific train and test set, the
advantage shifts towards the naturally transductive PAC-MDL bound.

Information theory has a few implications for the PAC-MDL bound.  If
we let $H(Y|X)$ be the conditional entropy of the label given the
unlabeled data, we know that asymptotically $H(Y|X)$ bits per label
are required transfer the labels.  Thus, for the realizable case, we
can (asymptotically) find a code where $| \sigma | / (m+n) = H(Y|X)$.

It is worth noting that there are a few effects which are \emph{not}
captured by the PAC-MDL bound.  Results which depend upon the
distribution of observed empirical errors, such as shell bounds, are
not captured.  It may be possible to create an PAC-MDL bound which
handles this as well, but that is an item for future work.

\begin{thebibliography}{1}
\bibitem{BEHW}A. Blumer, A. Ehrenfeucht, D. Haussler, M. Warmuth. ``Occam's Razor.'' Information
Processing Letters 24: 377-380, 1987.
\bibitem{TnC}Thomas Cover and Joy Thomas, ``Elements of Information Theory'' Wiley, New York
1991.
\bibitem{FW}Sally Floyd and Manfred Warmuth, \char`\"{}Sample Compression, Learnability,
and the Vapnik-Chervonenkis Dimension\char`\"{}, Machine Learning, Vol.21 (3),
pp. 269--304.
\bibitem{bitsback}G. E. Hinton and D. van Camp, ``Keeping neural networks simple by minimizing
the description length of the weights'', COLT 1993.
\bibitem{thesis}John Langford ``Quantitatively Tight Sample Complexity Bounds'', Carnegie
Mellon Thesis, 2002.
\bibitem{Compression}Nick Littlestone and Manfred Warmuth, ``Relating Data Compression and Learnability'',
Unpublished manuscript. June 10, 1986.
\bibitem{PB}David McAllester, ``PAC-Bayesian Model Averaging'' COLT 1999.
\bibitem{Vapnik}V. N. Vapnik and A. Y. Chervonenkis. ``On the uniform convergence of relative
frequencies of events to their probabilities.'' Theory of Probab. and its Applications,
16(2):264-280, 1971. 
\bibitem{V2}Vladimir N. Vapnik, ``Statistical Learning Theory'', Wiley, December 1999.
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}
