Ensemble Validation: Selectivity has a Price, but Variety is Free

Abstract: Suppose some classifiers are selected from a set of hypothesis classifiers to form an equally-weighted ensemble that selects a member classifier at random for each input example. Then the ensemble has an error bound consisting of the average error bound for the member classifiers, a term for selectivity that varies from zero (if all hypothesis classifiers are selected) to a standard uniform error bound (if only a single classifier is selected), and small constants. There is no penalty for using a richer hypothesis set if the same fraction of the hypothesis classifiers are selected for the ensemble.