Bagged Polynomial Regression and Neural Networks

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Klosin, Sylvia, Vives-i-Bastida, Jaume
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2022
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866910608348151808
author Klosin, Sylvia
Vives-i-Bastida, Jaume
author_facet Klosin, Sylvia
Vives-i-Bastida, Jaume
contents Series and polynomial regression are able to approximate the same function classes as neural networks. However, these methods are rarely used in practice, although they offer more interpretability than neural networks. In this paper, we show that a potential reason for this is the slow convergence rate of polynomial regression estimators and propose the use of \textit{bagged} polynomial regression (BPR) as an attractive alternative to neural networks. Theoretically, we derive new finite sample and asymptotic $L^2$ convergence rates for series estimators. We show that the rates can be improved in smooth settings by splitting the feature space and generating polynomial features separately for each partition. Empirically, we show that our proposed estimator, the BPR, can perform as well as more complex models with more parameters. Our estimator also performs close to state-of-the-art prediction methods in the benchmark MNIST handwritten digit dataset. We demonstrate that BPR performs as well as neural networks in crop classification using satellite data, a setting where prediction accuracy is critical and interpretability is often required for addressing research questions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2205_08609
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bagged Polynomial Regression and Neural Networks
Klosin, Sylvia
Vives-i-Bastida, Jaume
Machine Learning
Methodology
Series and polynomial regression are able to approximate the same function classes as neural networks. However, these methods are rarely used in practice, although they offer more interpretability than neural networks. In this paper, we show that a potential reason for this is the slow convergence rate of polynomial regression estimators and propose the use of \textit{bagged} polynomial regression (BPR) as an attractive alternative to neural networks. Theoretically, we derive new finite sample and asymptotic $L^2$ convergence rates for series estimators. We show that the rates can be improved in smooth settings by splitting the feature space and generating polynomial features separately for each partition. Empirically, we show that our proposed estimator, the BPR, can perform as well as more complex models with more parameters. Our estimator also performs close to state-of-the-art prediction methods in the benchmark MNIST handwritten digit dataset. We demonstrate that BPR performs as well as neural networks in crop classification using satellite data, a setting where prediction accuracy is critical and interpretability is often required for addressing research questions.
title Bagged Polynomial Regression and Neural Networks
topic Machine Learning
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.08609