# A Benchmark and Comparison of Active Learning for Logistic Regression

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.08618 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08618/

## Key facts

- Cited by 36 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 25 Nov 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 36)

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- [Active Evaluation of General Agents: Problem Definition and Comparison of Baseline Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.07651/) (2026)
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## Abstract (arXiv)

Logistic regression is by far the most widely used classifier in real-world applications. In this paper, we benchmark the state-of-the-art active learning methods for logistic regression and discuss and illustrate their underlying characteristics. Experiments are carried out on three synthetic datasets and 44 real-world datasets, providing insight into the behaviors of these active learning methods with respect to the area of the learning curve (which plots classification accuracy as a function of the number of queried examples) and their computational costs. Surprisingly, one of the earliest and simplest suggested active learning methods, i.e., uncertainty sampling, performs exceptionally well overall. Another remarkable finding is that random sampling, which is the rudimentary baseline to improve upon, is not overwhelmed by individual active learning techniques in many cases.
