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An Idiot’s guide to Support vector
machines (SVMs)
R. Berwick, Village Idiot
SVMs: A New
Generation of Learning Algorithms
• Pre 1980:
– Almost all learning methods learned linear decision surfaces.
– Linear learning methods have nice theoretical properties
• 1980’s
– Decision trees and NNs allowed efficient learning of non-
linear decision surfaces
– Little theoretical basis and all suffer from local minima
• 1990’s
– Efficient learning algorithms for non-linear functions based
on computational learning theory developed
– Nice theoretical properties.
