A generic model of multi-class support vector machine

Roughly speaking, there is one main model of pattern recognition support vector machine, with several variants of lower popularity. On the contrary, among the different multi-class support vector machines which can be found in literature, none is clearly favoured. On the one hand, they exhibit distinct statistical properties. On the other hand, multiple comparative studies between multi-class support vector machines and decomposition methods have highlighted the fact that in practice, each model has its advantages and drawbacks. In this article, we introduce a generic model of multi-class support vector machine. It provides the first unifying definition of all the machines of this kind published so far. This contribution makes it possible to devise new machines meeting specific requirements as well as to analyse globally the statistical properties of the multi-class support vector machines.