Motivated by a question of Vincent Lafforgue, we study the Banach spaces X satisfying the following property: there is a function ε → ∆ X (ε) tending to zero with ε > 0 such that every operator T : L 2 → L 2 with T ≤ ε that is simultaneously contractive (i.e. of norm ≤ 1) on L 1 and on L ∞ must be of norm ≤ ∆ X (ε) on L 2 (X). We show that ∆ X (ε) ∈ O(ε α) for some α > 0 iff X is isomorphic to ...

This paper reviews the functional aspects of statistical learning theory. The main point under consideration is the nature of the hypothesis set when no prior information is available but data. Within this framework we first discuss about the hypothesis set: it is a vectorial space, it is a set of pointwise defined functions, and the evaluation functional on this set is a continuous mapping. Ba...