Learning with Maximum-Entropy Distributions

Abstract

We are interested in distributions which are derived as a maximum entropy distribution from a given set of constraints. More specifically, we are interested in the case where the constraints are the expectation of individual and pairs of attributes. For such a given maximum entropy distribution (with some technical restrictions) we develop an efficient learning algorithm for read-once DNF. We extend our results to monotone read-k DNF following the techniques of (Hancock & Mansour, 1991).