Margin Setting: The Early Years

摘要

Margin Setting is very successful way to do pattern recognition. Because it differs fundamentally from prior work it has proved difficult for me to understand even though I invented it years ago and even though it has proved easy to apply and extremely effective. It took me years to understand what I was doing in any fundamental way. Now that I have begun to understand it, the mystery of its success is removed. Its full effects are not well understood, so there is still important basic research to be done. And, the advantages of Margin Setting over prior methods have proved substantial. There seem to me no remaining barriers to its widespread use.