Testable Learning of General Halfspaces under Massart Noise

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Diakonikolas, Ilias, Iakovidis, Giannis, Kane, Daniel M., Liu, Sihan
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Diakonikolas, Ilias
Iakovidis, Giannis
Kane, Daniel M.
Liu, Sihan
author_facet Diakonikolas, Ilias
Iakovidis, Giannis
Kane, Daniel M.
Liu, Sihan
contents We study the algorithmic task of testably learning general Massart halfspaces under the Gaussian distribution. In the testable learning setting, the aim is the design of a tester-learner pair satisfying the following properties: (1) if the tester accepts, the learner outputs a hypothesis and a certificate that it achieves near-optimal error, and (2) it is highly unlikely that the tester rejects if the data satisfies the underlying assumptions. Our main result is the first testable learning algorithm for general halfspaces with Massart noise and Gaussian marginals. The complexity of our algorithm is $d^{\mathrm{polylog}(\min\{1/γ, 1/ε\})}$, where $ε$ is the excess error and $γ$ is the bias of the target halfspace, which qualitatively matches the known quasi-polynomial Statistical Query lower bound for the non-testable setting. The analysis of our algorithm hinges on a novel sandwiching polynomial approximation to the sign function with multiplicative error that may be of broader interest.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_22300
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Testable Learning of General Halfspaces under Massart Noise
Diakonikolas, Ilias
Iakovidis, Giannis
Kane, Daniel M.
Liu, Sihan
Data Structures and Algorithms
Machine Learning
We study the algorithmic task of testably learning general Massart halfspaces under the Gaussian distribution. In the testable learning setting, the aim is the design of a tester-learner pair satisfying the following properties: (1) if the tester accepts, the learner outputs a hypothesis and a certificate that it achieves near-optimal error, and (2) it is highly unlikely that the tester rejects if the data satisfies the underlying assumptions. Our main result is the first testable learning algorithm for general halfspaces with Massart noise and Gaussian marginals. The complexity of our algorithm is $d^{\mathrm{polylog}(\min\{1/γ, 1/ε\})}$, where $ε$ is the excess error and $γ$ is the bias of the target halfspace, which qualitatively matches the known quasi-polynomial Statistical Query lower bound for the non-testable setting. The analysis of our algorithm hinges on a novel sandwiching polynomial approximation to the sign function with multiplicative error that may be of broader interest.
title Testable Learning of General Halfspaces under Massart Noise
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22300