2003 Gödel Prize
2003 Gödel Prize
Yoav Freund and Robert Schapire
The prize was awarded to Yoav Freund and Robert
Schapire for their paper
"A Decision Theoretic Generalization of On-Line Learning and an Application to Boosting," Journal of Computer and
System Sciences 55 (1997), pp. 119-139.
This paper introduced AdaBoost,
an adaptive algorithm to improve the accuracy of hypotheses in machine learning. The algorithm
demonstrated novel possibilities in analysing data and is a permanent contribution to science even beyond computer science.
Because of a combination of features, including its elegance, the simplicity of its implementation,
its wide applicability, and its striking
success in reducing errors in benchmark
applications even while its theoretical assumptions are not known to hold, the algorithm set off an
explosion of research in the fields of statistics, artificial intelligence, experimental machine learning,
and data mining. The algorithm is now widely used in practice.
The paper highlights the fact that theoretical computer science continues to be a fount
of powerful and entirely novel ideas with significant and direct impact even in areas,
such as data analysis, that have been studied extensively
by other communities.
Created by
Wolfgang Bein,
July 25,2003