  Structured prediction is the cornerstone of several machine learning
applications. Unfortunately, in structured prediction settings with expressive
inter-variable interactions, exact inference-based learning algorithms, e.g.
Structural SVM, are often intractable. We present a new way, Decomposed
Learning (DecL), which performs efficient learning by restricting the inference
step to a limited part of the structured spaces. We provide characterizations
based on the structure, target parameters, and gold labels, under which DecL is
equivalent to exact learning. We then show that in real world settings, where
our theoretical assumptions may not completely hold, DecL-based algorithms are
significantly more efficient and as accurate as exact learning.
