What is the Learning Problem?

Learning = Improving with experience at some task

• Improve over task T,
• with respect to performance measure P,
• based on experience E.

E.g., Learn to play checkers
Chinook, http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/$^\sim$chinook/
TD-Gammon, http://forum.swarthmore.edu/$^\sim$jay/learn-game/systems/td-gammon.html

• T: Play checkers
• P: % of games won in world tournament
• E: opportunity to play against self

Learning to Diagnose Patients

• T: Diagnose patients
• P: Percent of patients correctly diagnosed
• E: Pre-diagnosed medical histories of patients