# Suport vector machine #2 - Maximal margin classifier

## Suport vector machine is an extention of a simple and intuitive classifier called the maximal margin classifier

Posted by Tianxiang Gao on April 13, 2015

In this blog, I am gonna cover the derivation of maximal marigin classifier. In order to understand the process, you need to know KKT condition, and Lagrange dual. If you are not so familier with those knowledge, please check another blog.

In the previous blog, we derived the formulation of $M$, which is half of margin.

$$M =\cfrac{y(\beta^Tx+\beta_0)}{||\beta||} \label{hypeplane}$$

We want to find maximal margin hyperplane that has the farthest distances from observations. This separating hyperplane is just the solution to the optimization problem.

\begin{align} &\underset{\beta,\beta_0, ||\beta||=1}{\text{max}}& & M\\ & \text{subject to} & & y_i(\beta^Tx_i+\beta_0) \geq M, \; i = 1, \ldots, n. \end{align}

The set of constraints ensure that every observations are at least a signed distance $M$ from the hyperplane which is defined as $\beta^Tx+\beta_0=0$. Note that $||\beta||=1$ is not realy constraint, since if $\beta^Tx+\beta_0=0$ defines a separating hyperplane, so does $k(\beta^Tx+\beta_0)=0$ for any $k\neq0$. However, it adds meaning to constraint (3), because of $\beta$ has been normalized, constraint (3) is the perpendicular distance from the ith observation to the hyperplane. On the other hand we can get rid of it by replacing the constrain (3) with

(which redefines $\beta_0$) or equivalently

Since for any $\beta_0$ and $\beta$ satisfying these inequaties, any positively scaled multiple satisfies them too, just like define a separating hyperplane, we can arbitrarily set $||\beta|| = 1/M$. Thus (2)-(3) is equivalent to

\begin{align} &\underset{\beta,\beta_0}{\text{max}}& & \cfrac{1}{||\beta||}\\ & \text{subject to} & & y_i(\beta^Tx_i+\beta_0) \geq 1, \; i = 1, \ldots, n. \end{align}

Maximizing $1/||\beta||$ is equivalent to minimizing $||\beta||$, and further minimizing $\cfrac{1}{2}||\beta||^2= \cfrac{1}{2}\beta^T\beta$ for mathmatic convinence. Thus, (4)-(5) is equivalent to

\begin{align} &\underset{\beta,\beta_0}{\text{min}}& & \cfrac{1}{2}\beta^T\beta \newline \label{primal:contraint} & \text{subject to} & & y_i(\beta^Tx_i+\beta_0) \geq 1, \; i = 1, \ldots, n. \end{align}

This is a convex optimization problem (quadratic criterion with linear inequality constraints). The Lagrange (primal) function is

$$L(\beta,\beta_0,\alpha)=\cfrac{1}{2}\beta^T\beta-\sum_{i=1}^{n}\alpha_i[y_i(\beta^Tx_i+\beta_0)-1] \label{primal}$$

and the corresponding dual function is

$$g(\alpha) = \underset{\alpha}{\text{min}}\;L(\beta,\beta_0,\alpha) \label{dual:function1}$$

In order to calculate the minimum of $L(\beta,\beta_0,\alpha)$, as it is quadratic function, we can set the partial derivatives for $\beta$ and $\beta_0$ to zero, we obtain:

$$\beta = \sum_{i=1}^{n}\alpha_iy_ix_i \label{beta}$$

$$0 = \sum_{i=1}^{n}\alpha_iy_i \label{0}$$

and substituing these in \eqref{primal} and \eqref{dual:function1}, we obtain the dual function

$$g(\alpha) = \sum_{i=1}^{n}\alpha_1-\cfrac{1}{2}\sum_{i=1}^{n}\sum_{k=1}^{n}\alpha_i\alpha_ky_iy_kx_i^Tx_k \label{dual:function2}$$

The dual problem is \begin{align} &\underset{\alpha}{\text{max}}& & g(\alpha) = \sum_{i=1}^{n}\alpha_1-\cfrac{1}{2}\sum_{i=1}^{n}\sum_{k=1}^{n}\alpha_i\alpha_ky_iy_kx_i^Tx_k\newline \label{alpha} & \text{subject to} & & \alpha_i \geq 0, \; i = 1, \ldots, n.\newline & & & \sum_{i=1}^{n}\alpha_iy_i = 0 \end{align}

The solution is obtained by solving this optimal problem through a standard software. In addition, the solution satisfy the Karush-Kuhn-Tucher conditions, which include \eqref{primal:contraint},\eqref{beta}, \eqref{0}, \eqref{alpha} and

$$\alpha_i[y_i(\beta^Tx_i+\beta_0)-1]=0, \forall i. \label{16}$$

From these we can see that,

• If $\alpha>0$, then $y_i(\beta^Tx_i+\beta_0)=1$, in other words, $x_i$ is support vector;
• If $\alpha=0$, then $y_i(\beta^Tx_i+\beta_0)>1$, and $x_i$ is not support vector.

Solving the optimal problem obtains the values of $\alpha$. $\beta$ and $\beta_0$ can be obtained by \eqref{beta} and \eqref{16} for any suppor vectors.

The optimal separating hyperplane produces a function $\hat{f}(x)=\hat{\beta}^Tx+\hat{\beta}_0$ for classifying new test observations: $$\hat{G} = sign\; \hat{f}(x) \label{17}$$

Although none of the training observations fall in the margin, this will not necessarily the case for test observations. The intuition is that a large margin on the training data will lead to good separation on the test data. The higher the magnitude of $\hat{f}(x)$, the more confidence we are to classify the test observations.