Here we propose a general theoretical method for analyzing the risk bound in the presence of adversaries. Specifically, we try to fit the adversarial learning problem into the minimax framework. We first show that the original adversarial learning problem can be reduced to a minimax statistical learning problem by introducing a transport map between distributions. Then, we prove a new risk bound for this minimax problem in terms of covering numbers under a weak version of Lipschitz condition. Our method can be applied to multi-class classification problems and commonly used loss functions such as the hinge and ramp losses. As some illustrative examples, we derive the adversarial risk bounds for SVMs, deep neural networks, and PCA, and our bounds have two data-dependent terms, which can be optimized for achieving adversarial robustness.
  We derive generalization bounds for learning algorithms based on their robustness: the property that if a testing sample is "similar" to a training sample, then the testing error is close to the training error. This provides a novel approach, different from complexity or stability arguments, to study generalization of learning algorithms. One advantage of the robustness approach, compared to previous methods, is the geometric intuition it conveys. Consequently, robustness-based analysis is easy to extend to learning in non-standard setups such as Markovian samples or quantile loss. We further show that a weak notion of robustness is both sufficient and necessary for generalizability, which implies that robustness is a fundamental property that is required for learning algorithms to work. We discuss basic prediction theory and its impact on classification success evaluation, implications for learning algorithm design, and uses in learning algorithm execution. This tutorial is meant to be a comprehensive compilation of results which are both theoretically rigorous and quantitatively useful.There are two important implications of the results presented here. The first is that common practices for reporting results in classification should change to use the test set bound. The second is that train set bounds can sometimes be used to directly motivate learning algorithms.  We present a generalization bound for feedforward neural networks in terms of the product of the spectral norm of the layers and the Frobenius norm of the weights. The generalization bound is derived using a PAC-Bayes analysis. One of the central questions in statistical learning theory is to determine the conditions under which agents can learn from experience. This includes the necessary and sufficient conditions for generalization from a given finite training set to new observations. In this paper, we prove that algorithmic stability in the inference process is equivalent to uniform generalization across all parametric loss functions. We provide various interpretations of this result. For instance, a relationship is proved between stability and data processing, which reveals that algorithmic stability can be improved by post-processing the inferred hypothesis or by augmenting training examples with artificial noise prior to learning. In addition, we establish a relationship between algorithmic stability and the size of the observation space, which provides a formal justification for dimensionality reduction methods. Finally, we connect algorithmic stability to the size of the hypothesis space, which recovers the classical PAC result that the size (complexity) of the hypothesis space should be controlled in order to improve algorithmic stability and improve generalization.  The problem of characterizing learnability is the most basic question of statistical learning theory. A fundamental and long-standing answer, at least for the case of supervised classification and regression, is that learnability is equivalent to uniform convergence of the empirical risk to the population risk, and that if a problem is learnable, it is learnable via empirical risk minimization. In this paper, we consider the General Learning Setting (introduced by Vapnik), which includes most statistical learning problems as special cases. We show that in this setting, there are non-trivial learning problems where uniform convergence does not hold, empirical risk minimization fails, and yet they are learnable using alternative mechanisms. Instead of uniform convergence, we identify stability as the key necessary and sufficient condition for learnability. Moreover, we show that the conditions for learnability in the general setting are significantly more complex than in supervised classification and regression.  We investigate the use of certain data-dependent estimates of the complexity of a function class, called Rademacher and Gaussian complexities. In a decision theoretic setting, we prove general risk bounds in terms of these complexities. We consider function classes that can be expressed as combinations of functions from basis classes and show how the Rademacher and Gaussian complexities of such a function class can be bounded in terms of the complexity of the basis classes. We give examples of the application of these techniques in finding data-dependent risk bounds for decision trees, neural networks and support vector machines. The covering number of a ball of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space as a subset of the continuous function space plays an important role in Learning Theory. We give estimates for this covering number by means of the regularity of the Mercer kernel K. For convolution type kernels K(x, t) = k(x - t) on [0, 1]n, we provide estimates depending on the decay of k, the Fourier transform of k. In particular, when k decays exponentially, our estimate for this covering number is better than all the previous results and covers many important Mercer kernels. A counter example is presented to show that the eigenfunctions of the Hilbert-Schmidt operator LK associated with a Mercer kernel K may not be uniformly bounded. Hence some previous methods used for estimating the covering number in Learning Theory are not valid. We also provide an example of a Mercer kernel to show that LK½ may not be generated by a Mercer kernel. We derive upper bounds on the generalization error of a learning algorithm in terms of the mutual information between its input and output. The bounds provide an information-theoretic understanding of generalization in learning problems, and give theoretical guidelines for striking the right balance between data fit and generalization by controlling the input-output mutual information. We propose a number of methods for this purpose, among which are algorithms that regularize the ERM algorithm with relative entropy or with random noise. Our work extends and leads to nontrivial improvements on the recent results of Russo and Zou.     Statistical learning theory was introduced in the late 1960's. Until the 1990's it was a purely theoretical analysis of the problem of function estimation from a given collection of data. In the middle of the 1990's new types of learning algorithms (called support vector machines) based on the developed theory were proposed. This made statistical learning theory not only a tool for the theoretical analysis but also a tool for creating practical algorithms for estimating multidimensional functions. This article presents a very general overview of statistical learning theory including both theoretical and algorithmic aspects of the theory. The goal of this overview is to demonstrate how the abstract learning theory established conditions for generalization which are more general than those discussed in classical statistical paradigms and how the understanding of these conditions inspired new algorithmic approaches to function estimation problems.  