Definition
Support vector machines (SVMs) are a class of linear algorithms that can be used for classification, regression, density estimation, novelty detection, and other applications. In the simplest case of two-class classification, SVMs find a hyperplane that separates the two classes of data with as wide a margin as possible. This leads to good generalization accuracy on unseen data, and supports specialized optimization methods that allow SVM to learn from a large amount of data.
Motivation and Background
Over the past decade, maximum margin models especially SVMs have become popular in machine learning. This technique was developed in three major steps. First, assuming that the two classes of training examples can be separated by a hyperplane, Vapnik and Lerner proposed in 1963 that the optimal hyperplane is the one that separates the training examples with the widest margin. From the 1960s to 1990s, Vapnik and Chervonenkis developed the Vapnik–Chervonenkis theory, which...
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Zhang, X. (2011). Support Vector Machines. In: Sammut, C., Webb, G.I. (eds) Encyclopedia of Machine Learning. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30164-8_804
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