Self-Paced Learning for Latent Variable Models

Latent variable models are a powerful tool for addressing several tasks in machine learning. However, the algorithms for learning the parameters of latent variable models are prone to getting stuck in a bad local optimum. To alleviate this problem, we build on the intuition that, rather than considering all samples simultaneously, the algorithm should be presented with the training data in a meaningful order that facilitates learning. The order of the samples is determined by how easy they are. The main challenge is that often we are not provided with a readily computable measure of the easiness of samples.