A two-level committee machine: a representation and a learning procedure for general piecewise linear discriminant functions

In order to improve the pattern classification power of the committee machine, a two-level committee machine, which is a committee machine with several lower committees, is proposed and the learning algorithm for it is described. The discriminant function realized by the two-level committee machine can be considered as the general piecewise linear discriminant function which includes Chang's definition.⁽¹⁵⁾ The proposed algorithm is a kind of error-correction procedure, and the learning procedure of the usual committee machine and the perceptron are clearly explained as special cases of the proposed algorithm.