Paper ID: 2410.10243

Measurability in the Fundamental Theorem of Statistical Learning

Lothar Sebastian Krapp, Laura Wirth

The Fundamental Theorem of Statistical Learning states that a hypothesis space is PAC learnable if and only if its VC dimension is finite. For the agnostic model of PAC learning, the literature so far presents proofs of this theorem that often tacitly impose several measurability assumptions on the involved sets and functions. We scrutinize these proofs from a measure-theoretic perspective in order to extract the assumptions needed for a rigorous argument. This leads to a sound statement as well as a detailed and self-contained proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Statistical Learning in the agnostic setting, showcasing the minimal measurability requirements needed. We then discuss applications in Model Theory, considering NIP and o-minimal structures. Our main theorem presents sufficient conditions for the PAC learnability of hypothesis spaces defined over o-minimal expansions of the reals.

Submitted: Oct 14, 2024