James Mercer (January 15,1883 - February 21,1932) was a mathematician, born in Bootle, Liverpool, England.
He was educated at Manchester University, and then Cambridge. Mercer died in London, England.
He proved Mercer's theorem, which states that positive definite kernels can be expressed as a dot product in a high-dimensional space. This theorem is the basis of the kernel trick (applied by Aizerman), which allows linear algorithms to be easily converted into non-linear algorithms.
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Last updated: 05-18-2005 16:09:21
