easier to understand and more memorable. Quite likely you will find better solutions than
those provided here—let us know when you do!
As far as teachers of courses based on the text are concerned, our notes may be regarded as
a disadvantage, because it may be felt that the exercises in the book can no longer be used
as a source of homework or questions for tests and examinations. This is a slight conflict
of interest between teachers of courses o n the one hand, a nd independent learners on the
other hand. Finding ourselves in the ranks of the independent learners, the position we take
is hardly surprising. Teachers of courses might benefit by comparing their own solutions
with ours, as might students in classes and independent learners. If you, the reader, find
a problem difficult and become stuck, our notes might enable you to unstick yourself. In
addition, there is a myriad of materials on any of the topics this book covers. A search for
“statistical learning theory” on Google (as of 1 January 2010) gave over 4 million hits. The
possible disadvanta ge of not being able to use the book’s problems in an academic course
is not really such a large one. Obt aining additional supplementary problems at the right
level for an academic course is simply a matter of a visit to the library, or a little time spent
surfing the net. And, of course, although one is no t supposed to say this, teachers of courses
can also get stuck.
Acknowledgments
We are hoping that people will find errors, offer insightful suggestions, and generally improve
the understanding of the text, the exercises a nd of our notes, and that they write to us about
this. We will incorporate additions that we think are helpful. Our plan is to gradually add
material as we work through the book. Comments and criticisms ar e a lways welcome. Special
thanks to (most recent comments are listed first): Nicola Doninelli, Mark-Jan Nederhof for
solutions in Chapter 5. Dan Wang for his bug report in the AdaBoost code, Liuzhou Zhuo
for his comments on Exercise 3.25 and R uchi Dhiman for his comments on Chapter 4.
We use the numbering found in the on-line (second edition) version of this text. The first
edition should be similar but may have some differences.
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