ICMS Workshop on the Vapnik-Chervonenkis Dimension, Edinburgh

[Mark Jerrum]

[For distribution on the connectionist mailing list:  thanks!]

        **************************************************************
        ***                                                        ***
        ***   ICMS WORKSHOP on the VAPNIK-CHERVONENKIS DIMENSION   ***
        ***          Edinburgh, 9th--13th September 1996           ***
        ***                                                        ***
        ***       An interdisciplinary meeting of interest to      ***
        ***    probabilists, statisticians, theoretical computer   ***
        ***     scientists, and the machine learning community     ***    
        ***                                                        ***
        **************************************************************


The International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS) at Edinburgh 
will hold a Workshop on the Vapnik-Chervonenkis Dimension(*) in the week 
9th--13th September 1996.  The workshop will take place at the ICMS's 
headquarters at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, the birthplace of James Clerk 
Maxwell, which has recently been adapted to support meetings with about 
50 participants.  We (the organisers or the workshop) envisage 
a multidisciplinary meeting covering the topic in all its aspects: 
probability and statistics, computational learning theory, geometry, 
and applications in computer science.  The following invited speakers 
have agreed to participate: 

     Shai Ben-David, Technion, Haifa, Israel; 
     David Haussler, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA; 
     Jiri Matousek, Charles University, Prag, Czech Republic; 
     V. N. Vapnik, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ, USA. 

A registration form is available from the workshop's WWW page at 

    http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/~mrj/VCWorkshop/ 

(also accessible from the ICMS home page).  Alternatively, intending 
participants may contact the ICMS by post or e-mail: 
 
     Margaret Cook
     ICMS 
     14 India Street
     Edinburgh EH3 6EZ
     Scotland
     
     Phone:  +44 (0)131-220-1777
     Fax:    +44 (0)131-220-1053 
     E-mail: icms at maths.ed.ac.uk 

Those interested in participating should return the registration form 
as soon as possible, as the total number of places is limited by the size 
of the venue.  There will be ample scope for contributed talks.

Mark Jerrum, Angus MacIntyre, and John Shawe-Taylor (Workshop organisers)


(*)  The Vapnik-Chervonenkis (VC) dimension is a combinatorial parameter 
of a set system (equivalently, of a class of predicates) which, informally, 
can be said to characterise the expressibility of the class.  This parameter 
is of great significance in a wide range of applications:  in statistics, 
theoretical computer science, and machine learning, for example. 
In statistics, one may identify ``set'' with ``event,'' in which case 
finite VC dimension entails a _uniform_ analogue of the strong law of large 
numbers for the class of events in question.  (This is the situation 
described by the phrase ``uniform convergence of empirical measure.'')  
In learning theory (the mathematical theory of inductive inference), 
one may identify ``set'' with ``concept,'' in which case the VC dimension 
of the concept class gives quite tight bounds on the sample size that 
is necessary and sufficient for a learner to form an accurate hypothesis 
from classified examples.