Speaker
Description
As machine learning algorithms become increasingly sophisticated to exploit subtle features of the data, they often become more dependent on simulations. This paper presents a new approach to classification called weak supervision in which class proportions are the only input into the machine learning algorithm. A simple and general regularization technique is used to solve this non-convex problem. Using one of the most important binary classification tasks in high energy physics - quark versus gluon tagging - we show that weak supervision can match the performance of fully supervised algorithms. Furthermore, by design, the new algorithm is insensitive to any mis-modeling of discriminating features in the data by the simulation. Weak supervision is a general procedure that could be applied to a variety of learning problems and as such could add robustness to a wide range of learning problems.
