# Support Vector Machines (Kernels)

The SVM algorithm is implemented in practice using a kernel.

The learning of the hyperplane in linear SVM is done by transforming the problem using some linear algebra, which is out of the scope of this introduction to SVM.

A powerful insight is that the linear SVM can be rephrased using the inner product of any two given observations, rather than the observations themselves. The inner product between two vectors is the sum of the multiplication of each pair of input values.

For example, the inner product of the vectors [2, 3] and [5, 6] is 2*5 + 3*6 or 28.

The equation for making a prediction for a new input using the dot product between the input (x) and each support vector (xi) is calculated as follows:

f(x) = B0 + sum(ai * (x,xi))

This is an equation that involves calculating the inner products of a new input vector (x) with all support vectors in training data. The coefficients B0 and ai (for each input) must be estimated from the training data by the learning algorithm.

### Linear Kernel SVM

The dot-product is called the kernel and can be re-written as:

K(x, xi) = sum(x * xi)

The kernel defines the similarity or a distance measure between new data and the support vectors. The dot product is the similarity measure used for linear SVM or a linear kernel because the distance is a linear combination of the inputs.

Other kernels can be used that transform the input space into higher dimensions such as a Polynomial Kernel and a Radial Kernel. This is called the Kernel Trick.

It is desirable to use more complex kernels as it allows lines to separate the classes that are curved or even more complex. This in turn can lead to more accurate classifiers.

### Polynomial Kernel SVM

Instead of the dot-product, we can use a polynomial kernel, for example:

K(x,xi) = 1 + sum(x * xi)^d

Where the degree of the polynomial must be specified by hand to the learning algorithm. When d=1 this is the same as the linear kernel. The polynomial kernel allows for curved lines in the input space.

### Radial Kernel SVM

Finally, we can also have a more complex radial kernel. For example:

K(x,xi) = exp(-gamma * sum((x – xi^2))

Where gamma is a parameter that must be specified to the learning algorithm. A good default value for gamma is 0.1, where gamma is often 0 < gamma < 1. The radial kernel is very local and can create complex regions within the feature space, like closed polygons in two-dimensional space.

http://machinelearningmastery.com/support-vector-machines-for-machine-learning/

# Soft Margin Classifier

In practice, real data is messy and cannot be separated perfectly with a hyperplane.

The constraint of maximizing the margin of the line that separates the classes must be relaxed. This is often called the soft margin classifier. This change allows some points in the training data to violate the separating line.

An additional set of coefficients are introduced that give the margin wiggle room in each dimension. These coefficients are sometimes called slack variables. This increases the complexity of the model as there are more parameters for the model to fit to the data to provide this complexity.

A tuning parameter is introduced called simply C that defines the magnitude of the wiggle allowed across all dimensions. The C parameters defines the amount of violation of the margin allowed. A C=0 is no violation and we are back to the inflexible Maximal-Margin Classifier described above. The larger the value of C the more violations of the hyperplane are permitted.

During the learning of the hyperplane from data, all training instances that lie within the distance of the margin will affect the placement of the hyperplane and are referred to as support vectors. And as C affects the number of instances that are allowed to fall within the margin, C influences the number of support vectors used by the model.

• The smaller the value of C, the more sensitive the algorithm is to the training data (higher variance and lower bias).
• The larger the value of C, the less sensitive the algorithm is to the training data (lower variance and higher bias).

http://machinelearningmastery.com/support-vector-machines-for-machine-learning/

# Maximal-Margin Classifier

The Maximal-Margin Classifier is a hypothetical classifier that best explains how SVM works in practice.

The numeric input variables (x) in your data (the columns) form an n-dimensional space. For example, if you had two input variables, this would form a two-dimensional space.

A hyperplane is a line that splits the input variable space. In SVM, a hyperplane is selected to best separate the points in the input variable space by their class, either class 0 or class 1. In two-dimensions you can visualize this as a line and let’s assume that all of our input points can be completely separated by this line. For example:

B0 + (B1 * X1) + (B2 * X2) = 0

Where the coefficients (B1 and B2) that determine the slope of the line and the intercept (B0) are found by the learning algorithm, and X1 and X2 are the two input variables.

You can make classifications using this line. By plugging in input values into the line equation, you can calculate whether a new point is above or below the line.

• Above the line, the equation returns a value greater than 0 and the point belongs to the first class (class 0).
• Below the line, the equation returns a value less than 0 and the point belongs to the second class (class 1).
• A value close to the line returns a value close to zero and the point may be difficult to classify.
• If the magnitude of the value is large, the model may have more confidence in the prediction.

The distance between the line and the closest data points is referred to as the margin. The best or optimal line that can separate the two classes is the line that as the largest margin. This is called the Maximal-Margin hyperplane.

The margin is calculated as the perpendicular distance from the line to only the closest points. Only these points are relevant in defining the line and in the construction of the classifier. These points are called the support vectors. They support or define the hyperplane.

The hyperplane is learned from training data using an optimization procedure that maximizes the margin.

http://machinelearningmastery.com/support-vector-machines-for-machine-learning/

# How is the optimal hyperplane computed?

Let’s introduce the notation used to define formally a hyperplane:

where is known as the weight vector and as the bias.

The optimal hyperplane can be represented in an infinite number of different ways by scaling of and . As a matter of convention, among all the possible representations of the hyperplane, the one chosen is

where symbolizes the training examples closest to the hyperplane. In general, the training examples that are closest to the hyperplane are called support vectors. This representation is known as the canonical hyperplane.

Now, we use the result of geometry that gives the distance between a point and a hyperplane :

In particular, for the canonical hyperplane, the numerator is equal to one and the distance to the support vectors is

Recall that the margin introduced in the previous section, here denoted as , is twice the distance to the closest examples:

Finally, the problem of maximizing is equivalent to the problem of minimizing a function subject to some constraints. The constraints model the requirement for the hyperplane to classify correctly all the training examples . Formally,

where represents each of the labels of the training examples.

This is a problem of Lagrangian optimization that can be solved using Lagrange multipliers to obtain the weight vector and the bias of the optimal hyperplane.

# What is a SVM?

A Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a discriminative classifier formally defined by a separating hyperplane. In other words, given labeled training data (supervised learning), the algorithm outputs an optimal hyperplane which categorizes new examples.

In which sense is the hyperplane obtained optimal? Let’s consider the following simple problem:

For a linearly separable set of 2D-points which belong to one of two classes, find a separating straight line.

In the above picture you can see that there exists multiple lines that offer a solution to the problem. Is any of them better than the others? We can intuitively define a criterion to estimate the worth of the lines:

A line is bad if it passes too close to the points because it will be noise sensitive and it will not generalize correctly. Therefore, our goal should be to find the line passing as far as possible from all points.

Then, the operation of the SVM algorithm is based on finding the hyperplane that gives the largest minimum distance to the training examples. Twice, this distance receives the important name of margin within SVM’s theory. Therefore, the optimal separating hyperplane maximizes the margin of the training data.