Robust support vector model based on bounded asymmetric elastic net loss for binary classification

arXiv stat.ML / 4/9/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper introduces a bounded asymmetric elastic net (L_baen) loss function and integrates it with support vector machines to form BAEN-SVM for binary classification.
  • L_baen is bounded and asymmetric, and it can reduce to several known losses (including asymmetric elastic net hinge, pinball, and asymmetric least-squares), aiming to better manage noise-contaminated data.
  • The authors address issues in traditional SVM by proving an upper bound for violation tolerance (VTUB) and showing bounded influence functions to provide theoretical robustness guarantees.
  • Despite the non-convexity of L_baen, the work proposes a clipping dual coordinate descent with a half-quadratic approach to solve the optimization effectively.
  • Experiments on synthetic and benchmark datasets show BAEN-SVM outperforming classical and advanced SVM variants, especially under noisy conditions.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel bounded asymmetric elastic net (L_{baen}) loss function and combine it with the support vector machine (SVM), resulting in the BAEN-SVM. The L_{baen} is bounded and asymmetric and can degrade to the asymmetric elastic net hinge loss, pinball loss, and asymmetric least squares loss. BAEN-SVM not only effectively handles noise-contaminated data but also addresses the geometric irrationalities in the traditional SVM. By proving the violation tolerance upper bound (VTUB) of BAEN-SVM, we show that the model is geometrically well-defined. Furthermore, we derive that the influence function of BAEN-SVM is bounded, providing a theoretical guarantee of its robustness to noise. The Fisher consistency of the model further ensures its generalization capability. Since the \( L_{\text{baen}} \) loss is non-convex, we designed a clipping dual coordinate descent-based half-quadratic algorithm to solve the non-convex optimization problem efficiently. Experimental results on artificial and benchmark datasets indicate that the proposed method outperforms classical and advanced SVMs, particularly in noisy environments.