Near-Optimal Bounds for Learning Gaussian Halfspaces with Random Classification Noise

Neural Information Processing Systems 

We study the problem of learning general (i.e., not necessarily homogeneous) halfspaces with Random Classification Noise under the Gaussian distribution. We establish nearly-matching algorithmic and Statistical Query (SQ) lower bound results revealing a surprising information-computation gap for this basic problem. Specifically, the sample complexity of this learning problem is Θ(d/ϵ), where d is the dimension and ϵ is the excess error.