RSVM: Reduced Support Vector Machines

Abstract An algorithm is proposed which generates a nonlinear kernel-based separating surface that requires as little as 1% of a large dataset for its explicit evaluation. To generate this nonlinear surface, the entire dataset is used as a constraint in an optimization problem with very few variables corresponding to the 1% of the data kept. The remainder of the data can be thrown away after solving the optimization problem. This is achieved by making use of a rectangular m×m̄ kernel K(A, Ā) that greatly reduces the size of the quadratic program to be solved and simplifies the characterization of the nonlinear separating surface. Here, the m rows of A represent the original m data points while the m̄ rows of Ā represent a greatly reduced m̄ data points. Computational results indicate that test set correctness for the reduced support vector machine (RSVM), with a nonlinear separating surface that depends on a small randomly selected portion of the dataset, is better than that of a conventional support vector machine (SVM) with a nonlinear surface that explicitly depends on the entire dataset, and much better than a conventional SVM using a small random sample of the data. Computational times, as well as memory usage, are much smaller for RSVM than that of a conventional SVM using the entire dataset.