Semi-supervised learning with max-margin graph cuts

arXiv cs.LG / 4/30/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper introduces a new semi-supervised learning algorithm that learns graph cuts by maximizing a max-margin objective relative to labels derived from harmonic function solutions.
  • It provides motivation and a comparison against prior semi-supervised max-margin and graph-based approaches, highlighting where the proposed method differs.
  • The authors prove a generalization-error bound for the algorithm, offering theoretical support for its learning behavior.
  • Experiments on a synthetic task and three UCI datasets show that the method often outperforms manifold regularization for SVMs, reported as a state-of-the-art approach in this area.

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel algorithm for semisupervised learning. This algorithm learns graph cuts that maximize the margin with respect to the labels induced by the harmonic function solution. We motivate the approach, compare it to existing work, and prove a bound on its generalization error. The quality of our solutions is evaluated on a synthetic problem and three UCI ML repository datasets. In most cases, we outperform manifold regularization of support vector machines, which is a state-of-the-art approach to semi-supervised max-margin learning.