  We show how to obtain improved active learning methods in the agnostic
(adversarial noise) setting by combining marginal leverage score sampling with
non-independent sampling strategies that promote spatial coverage. In
particular, we propose an easily implemented method based on the \emph{pivotal
sampling algorithm}, which we test on problems motivated by learning-based
methods for parametric PDEs and uncertainty quantification. In comparison to
independent sampling, our method reduces the number of samples needed to reach
a given target accuracy by up to $50\%$. We support our findings with two
theoretical results. First, we show that any non-independent leverage score
sampling method that obeys a weak \emph{one-sided $\ell_{\infty}$ independence
condition} (which includes pivotal sampling) can actively learn $d$ dimensional
linear functions with $O(d\log d)$ samples, matching independent sampling. This
result extends recent work on matrix Chernoff bounds under $\ell_{\infty}$
independence, and may be of interest for analyzing other sampling strategies
beyond pivotal sampling. Second, we show that, for the important case of
polynomial regression, our pivotal method obtains an improved bound on $O(d)$
samples.
