Transductive Inference for Estimating Values of Functions

We introduce an algorithm for estimating the values of a function at a set of test points Xe!, ..., xl m given a set of training points (XI,YI), ...,(xe,Ye) without estimating (as an intermediate step) the regression function . We demonstrate that this direct (transduc(cid:173) ti ve) way for estimating values of the regression (or classification in pattern recognition) can be more accurate than the tradition(cid:173) alone based on two steps, first estimating the function and then calculating the values of this function at the points of interest.