Statistical Methods in Learning

In this paper we describe an ESPRIT project known as ‘Stat-Log’ whose purpose is the comparison of learning algorithms. We give a brief summary of some of the algorithms in the project: linear and quadratic discriminant analysis, k nearest neighbour, CART, backpropagation, SMART, ALLOC80 and Pearl's polytree algorithm. We discuss the results obtained for two datasets, one of handwritten digits and the other of vehicle silhouettes.