Support Vector Machines, overarching aims

A Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a very powerful and versatile Machine Learning model, capable of performing linear or nonlinear classification, regression, and even outlier detection. It is one of the most popular models in Machine Learning, and anyone interested in Machine Learning should have it in their toolbox. SVMs are particularly well suited for classification of complex but small-sized or medium-sized datasets.

The case with two well-separated classes only can be understood in an intuitive way in terms of lines in a two-dimensional space separating the two classes (see figure below).

The basic mathematics behind the SVM is however less familiar to most of us. It relies on the definition of hyperplanes and the definition of a margin which separates classes (in case of classification problems) of variables. It is also used for regression problems.

With SVMs we distinguish between hard margin and soft margins. The latter introduces a so-called softening parameter to be discussed below. We distinguish also between linear and non-linear approaches. The latter are the most frequent ones since it is rather unlikely that we can separate classes easily by say straight lines.

Note: several figures are missing. They will be added shortly. To run the codes, use the jupyter notebook