AdaBoost (Adaptive Boosting) is an ensemble learning algorithm used to improve
the accuracy of weak classifiers by combining them into a strong classifier. A
classifier is a model that can predict the class or category of input, and a weak
classifier is a model that performs better than random guessing but not as well
as a strong classifier.
The AdaBoost algorithm works by iteratively training a series of weak classifiers
on the data and adjusting the weights of the samples in training set at each
iteration. The algorithm assigns higher weights to the samples misclassified by
the previous classifiers and lower weights to the samples correctly classified.
This process is repeated for a fixed number of iterations or until a stopping
criterion is met.
At the end of the process, the algorithm combines the outputs of all the weak
classifiers into a final strong classifier. The combination is done by assigning a
weight to each weak classifier based on its accuracy. The last strong classifier
assigns a class or category to the input by taking a weighted majority vote of the
outputs of all the weak classifiers.
AdaBoost is a powerful algorithm that has been used in various applications,
including image and speech recognition, object detection, and bioinformatics. It
is beneficial when the data is noisy or has multiple features and is resistant to
overfitting.
One of the main advantages of AdaBoost is that it can be used with a variety of
weak classifiers, including decision trees, neural networks, and support vector
machines. It's also simple to implement and computationally efficient. However,
it is sensitive to outliers and noise in the data, and it can be affected by choice of
weak classifier and the number of iterations.