semisupervised

Semisupervised learning is a machine learning paradigm that uses both labeled and unlabeled data for training. It aims to improve performance when labeled data are scarce by leveraging the information contained in a large pool of unlabeled samples.

SSL relies on assumptions about data structure, such as the cluster assumption (points in the same cluster tend to share a label) and the manifold or smoothness assumptions, which suggest that labels vary slowly along the data geometry. When these assumptions hold, unlabeled data can reveal underlying structure and guide the learning process.

Common approaches include self-training, where a model trained on labeled data labels unlabeled examples and retrains on high-confidence predictions; co-training, where multiple classifiers teach each other; graph-based methods that propagate labels on a similarity graph; and semi-supervised deep learning using consistency regularization and pseudo-labeling. Variants such as mean teacher and Pi-Model are notable in neural settings, especially with modern data augmentation.

Applications span image and video classification, natural language processing, speech recognition, and biology, particularly when labeled data are limited relative to the available unlabeled data. Practical challenges include ensuring that SSL assumptions hold for a given domain, avoiding confirmation bias from incorrect pseudo-labels, handling class imbalance, and managing computational resources for large unlabeled datasets.

Historically, the concept emerged in the 1990s, with early work such as co-training proposed by Blum and Mitchell (1998). In recent years, semisupervised methods have gained prominence in deep learning, where semi-supervised objectives and augmentation strategies are widely used.