  This paper presents a kernel-based discriminative learning framework on
probability measures. Rather than relying on large collections of vectorial
training examples, our framework learns using a collection of probability
distributions that have been constructed to meaningfully represent training
data. By representing these probability distributions as mean embeddings in the
reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS), we are able to apply many standard
kernel-based learning techniques in straightforward fashion. To accomplish
this, we construct a generalization of the support vector machine (SVM) called
a support measure machine (SMM). Our analyses of SMMs provides several insights
into their relationship to traditional SVMs. Based on such insights, we propose
a flexible SVM (Flex-SVM) that places different kernel functions on each
training example. Experimental results on both synthetic and real-world data
demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed framework.
