Title: Faster Learning by Reduction of Data Access Time,
Abstract: Nowadays, the major challenge in machine learning is the Big Data challenge.
The big data problems due to large number of data points or large number of
features in each data point, or both, the training of models have become very
slow. The training time has two major components: Time to access the data and
time to process (learn from) the data. So far, the research has focused only on
the second part, i.e., learning from the data. In this paper, we have proposed
one possible solution to handle the big data problems in machine learning. The
idea is to reduce the training time through reducing data access time by
proposing systematic sampling and cyclic/sequential sampling to select
mini-batches from the dataset. To prove the effectiveness of proposed sampling
techniques, we have used Empirical Risk Minimization, which is commonly used
machine learning problem, for strongly convex and smooth case. The problem has
been solved using SAG, SAGA, SVRG, SAAG-II and MBSGD (Mini-batched SGD), each
using two step determination techniques, namely, constant step size and
backtracking line search method. Theoretical results prove the same convergence
for systematic sampling, cyclic sampling and the widely used random sampling
technique, in expectation. Experimental results with bench marked datasets
prove the efficacy of the proposed sampling techniques and show up to six times
faster training.