Similarity-based learning and its extensions

This paper synthesizes a number of approaches to concept representation and learning in a multilayered model. The paper emphasizes what has been called similarity-based learning (SBL) from examples, although this review is extended to address wider issues. The paper pays particular attention to requirements for incremental and uncertain environments, and to interrelationships among concept purpose, concept representation, and concept learning.
One goal of the paper is to unite some of the notions underlying recent research, in an attempt to construct a more complete and extensible framework. This framework is designed to capture representations and methods such as those based on hypothesis search and bias selection, and to extend the ideas for greater system capability. This leads to a specific perspective for multilayered learning which has several advantages, such as greater clarity, more uniform learning, and more powerful induction.
The approach clarifies and unifies various aspects of the problem of concept learning. Some results'are (1) Various concept representations (such as logic, prototypes, and decision trees) are subsumed by a standard form which is well suited to learning, particularly in incremental and uncertain environments; (2) Concept learning may be enhanced by exploiting a particular phenomenon in many spaces-this phenomenon is a certain kind of smoothness or regularity, one instance of which underlies the similarity in SBL systems; (3) The paper treats the phenomenon in a general way and applies it hierarchically. This has various advantages of uniformity. For example the model allows layered learning algorithms for concept learning all to be instantiations of one basic algorithm. A single kind of representation (an instantiation of the standard form) is prominent at each level. The combination of representation and algorithm allows fast, accurate, concise, and robust concept learning.