5
$\begingroup$

This has been bothering me for a bit -- we have a machine learning tag and a learning theory tag. Now given that this site is a theory site, every ML question should also be a Learning Theory question in some sense. On the other hand, the focus of learning theory is different than of all of machine learning, but I'm not sure if this distinction is needed on this site.

Should we have one tag or use both?

$\endgroup$

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4
$\begingroup$

There is a third tag called [lg.learning]. I am not familiar with machine learning or learning theory, and I am fine if relevant people are not confused by these tags, but I just wanted to draw attention to the existence of the third tag.

(I should have realized the other two tags existed before asking for an edit of the tag wiki of [lg.learning].)

$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ thanks - it also seems that the learning-theory tag is getting auto-converted to lg.learning... $\endgroup$
    – Lev Reyzin Mod
    Sep 23, 2010 at 0:29
2
$\begingroup$

Learning theory (and correct me if I'm wrong) appears to be the narrower, and more well defined notion (say, everything that appears in COLT/ALT). Whereas a question on (say) consensus clustering or generative models for clustering problems, or even learning Gaussians, might not fit under 'learning-theory' but is easily placed under 'machine learning'.

$\endgroup$
3
  • $\begingroup$ Learning theory certainly has it's own focuses -- but i wonder if this distinction is too fine for this site. For example, should cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/517/… be tagged as learning theory? $\endgroup$
    – Lev Reyzin Mod
    Sep 20, 2010 at 9:10
  • $\begingroup$ I don't know. If learning-theory is defined as COLT+ALT, I'd say no. If learning theory is defined as ML with proofs, then yes :). but this is really a question about statistics. $\endgroup$
    – Suresh Venkat
    Sep 20, 2010 at 15:31
  • $\begingroup$ Okay - your idea sounds reasonable. To be consistent, I will remove the ML tag from cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/1401/… $\endgroup$
    – Lev Reyzin Mod
    Sep 20, 2010 at 21:20

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .