Large margin cost-sensitive learning of conditional random fields

We tackle the structured output classification problem using the Conditional Random Fields (CRFs). Unlike the standard 0/1 loss case, we consider a cost-sensitive learning setting where we are given a non-0/1 misclassification cost matrix at the individual output level. Although the task of cost-sensitive classification has many interesting practical applications that retain domain-specific scales in the output space (e.g., hierarchical or ordinal scale), most CRF learning algorithms are unable to effectively deal with the cost-sensitive scenarios as they merely assume a nominal scale (hence 0/1 loss) in the output space. In this paper, we incorporate the cost-sensitive loss into the large margin learning framework. By large margin learning, the proposed algorithm inherits most benefits from the SVM-like margin-based classifiers, such as the provable generalization error bounds. Moreover, the soft-max approximation employed in our approach yields a convex optimization similar to the standard CRF learning with only slight modification in the potential functions. We also provide the theoretical cost-sensitive generalization error bound. We demonstrate the improved prediction performance of the proposed method over the existing approaches in a diverse set of sequence/image structured prediction problems that often arise in pattern recognition and computer vision domains.     

Cost-sensitive learning with conditional Markov networks

There has been a recent, growing interest in classification and link prediction in structured domains. Methods such as conditional random fields and relational Markov networks support flexible mechanisms for modeling correlations due to the link structure. In addition, in many structured domains, there is an interesting structure in the risk or cost function associated with different misclassifications. There is a rich tradition of cost-sensitive learning applied to unstructured (IID) data. Here we propose a general framework which can capture correlations in the link structure and handle structured cost functions. We present two new cost-sensitive structured classifiers based on maximum entropy principles. The first determines the cost-sensitive classification by minimizing the expected cost of misclassification. The second directly determines the cost-sensitive classification without going through a probability estimation step. We contrast these approaches with an approach which employs a standard 0/1-loss structured classifier to estimate class conditional probabilities followed by minimization of the expected cost of misclassification and with a cost-sensitive IID classifier that does not utilize the correlations present in the link structure. We demonstrate the utility of our cost-sensitive structured classifiers with experiments on both synthetic and real-world data.     

代价敏感学习中的损失函数设计

一般的学习算法通过最小化分类损失使分类错误率最小化,而代价敏感学习则以最小化分类代价为目标,需构造代价敏感损失.本文探讨代价敏感损失的设计准则,首先介绍基于代价敏感风险优化的代价敏感学习方法,然后在Bayes最优分类理论框架下,提出两条代价敏感损失设计准则.接着采用两种常用代价敏感损失生成方法构造平方损失、指数损失、对数损失、支持向量机损失等经典损失函数的代价敏感扩展形式.根据所提出的设计准则,从理论上分析这些代价敏感损失的性能.最后通过实验表明,同时满足两条设计准则的代价敏感损失能有效降低分类代价,从而证明了本文提出的代价敏感损失设计准则的合理性.     

多标签代价敏感分类集成学习算法

尽管多标签分类问题可以转换成一般多分类问题解决,但多标签代价敏感分类问题却很难转换成多类代价敏感分类问题.通过对多分类代价敏感学习算法扩展为多标签代价敏感学习算法时遇到的一些问题进行分析,提出了一种多标签代价敏感分类集成学习算法.算法的平均错分代价为误检标签代价和漏检标签代价之和,算法的流程类似于自适应提升（Adaptive boosting,AdaBoost）算法,其可以自动学习多个弱分类器来组合成强分类器,强分类器的平均错分代价将随着弱分类器增加而逐渐降低.详细分析了多标签代价敏感分类集成学习算法和多类代价敏感AdaBoost算法的区别,包括输出标签的依据和错分代价的含义.不同于通常的多类代价敏感分类问题,多标签代价敏感分类问题的错分代价要受到一定的限制,详细分析并给出了具体的限制条件.简化该算法得到了一种多标签AdaBoost算法和一种多类代价敏感AdaBoost算法.理论分析和实验结果均表明提出的多标签代价敏感分类集成学习算法是有效的,该算法能实现平均错分代价的最小化.特别地,对于不同类错分代价相差较大的多分类问题,该算法的效果明显好于已有的多类代价敏感AdaBoost算法.     

Instance weighting versus threshold adjusting for cost-sensitive classification

In real-world classification problems, different types of misclassification errors often have asymmetric costs, thus demanding cost-sensitive learning methods that attempt to minimize average misclassification cost rather than plain error rate. Instance weighting and post hoc threshold adjusting are two major approaches to cost-sensitive classifier learning. This paper compares the effects of these two approaches on several standard, off-the-shelf classification methods. The comparison indicates that the two approaches lead to similar results for some classification methods, such as Naïve Bayes, logistic regression, and backpropagation neural network, but very different results for other methods, such as decision tree, decision table, and decision rule learners. The findings from this research have important implications on the selection of the cost-sensitive classifier learning approach as well as on the interpretation of a recently published finding about the relative performance of Naïve Bayes and decision trees.     

Improving specific class mapping from remotely sensed data by cost-sensitive learning

In many remote-sensing projects, one is usually interested in a small number of land-cover classes present in a study area and not in all the land-cover classes that make-up the landscape. Previous studies in supervised classification of satellite images have tackled specific class mapping problem by isolating the classes of interest and combining all other classes into one large class, usually called others, and by developing a binary classifier to discriminate the class of interest from the others. Here, this approach is called focused approach. The strength of the focused approach is to decompose the original multi-class supervised classification problem into a binary classification problem, focusing the process on the discrimination of the class of interest. Previous studies have shown that this method is able to discriminate more accurately the classes of interest when compared with the standard multi-class supervised approach. However, it may be susceptible to data imbalance problems present in the training data set, since the classes of interest are often a small part of the training set. A result the classification may be biased towards the largest classes and, thus, be sub-optimal for the discrimination of the classes of interest. This study presents a way to minimize the effects of data imbalance problems in specific class mapping using cost-sensitive learning. In this approach errors committed in the minority class are treated as being costlier than errors committed in the majority class. Cost-sensitive approaches are typically implemented by weighting training data points accordingly to their importance to the analysis. By changing the weight of individual data points, it is possible to shift the weight from the larger classes to the smaller ones, balancing the data set. To illustrate the use of the cost-sensitive approach to map specific classes of interest, a series of experiments with weighted support vector machines classifier and Landsat Thematic Mapper data were conducted to discriminate two types of mangrove forest (high-mangrove and low-mangrove) in Saloum estuary, Senegal, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage site. Results suggest an increase in overall classification accuracy with the use of cost-sensitive method (97.3%) over the standard multi-class (94.3%) and the focused approach (91.0%). In particular, cost-sensitive method yielded higher sensitivity and specificity values on the discrimination of the classes of interest when compared with the standard multi-class and focused approaches.     

Cost-Sensitive back-propagation neural networks with binarization techniques in addressing multi-class problems and non-competent classifiers

Multi-class classification problems can be addressed by using decomposition strategy. One of the most popular decomposition techniques is the One-vs-One (OVO) strategy, which consists of dividing multi-class classification problems into as many as possible pairs of easier-to-solve binary sub-problems. To discuss the presence of classes with different cost, in this paper, we examine the behavior of an ensemble of Cost-Sensitive Back-Propagation Neural Networks (CSBPNN) with OVO binarization techniques for multi-class problems. To implement this, the original multi-class cost-sensitive problem is decomposed into as many sub-problems as possible pairs of classes and each sub-problem is learnt in an independent manner using CSBPNN. Then a combination method is used to aggregate the binary cost-sensitive classifiers. To verify the synergy of the binarization technique and CSBPNN for multi-class cost-sensitive problems, we carry out a thorough experimental study. Specifically, we first develop the study to check the effectiveness of the OVO strategy for multi-class cost-sensitive learning problems. Then, we develop a comparison of several well-known aggregation strategies in our scenario. Finally, we explore whether further improvement can be achieved by using the management of non-competent classifiers. The experimental study is performed with three types of cost matrices and proper statistical analysis is employed to extract the meaningful findings.     

Cost-sensitive boosting for classification of imbalanced data

Classification of data with imbalanced class distribution has posed a significant drawback of the performance attainable by most standard classifier learning algorithms, which assume a relatively balanced class distribution and equal misclassification costs. The significant difficulty and frequent occurrence of the class imbalance problem indicate the need for extra research efforts. The objective of this paper is to investigate meta-techniques applicable to most classifier learning algorithms, with the aim to advance the classification of imbalanced data. The AdaBoost algorithm is reported as a successful meta-technique for improving classification accuracy. The insight gained from a comprehensive analysis of the AdaBoost algorithm in terms of its advantages and shortcomings in tacking the class imbalance problem leads to the exploration of three cost-sensitive boosting algorithms, which are developed by introducing cost items into the learning framework of AdaBoost. Further analysis shows that one of the proposed algorithms tallies with the stagewise additive modelling in statistics to minimize the cost exponential loss. These boosting algorithms are also studied with respect to their weighting strategies towards different types of samples, and their effectiveness in identifying rare cases through experiments on several real world medical data sets, where the class imbalance problem prevails.     

Regularized margin-based conditional log-likelihood loss for prototype learning

The classification performance of nearest prototype classifiers largely relies on the prototype learning algorithm. The minimum classification error (MCE) method and the soft nearest prototype classifier (SNPC) method are two important algorithms using misclassification loss. This paper proposes a new prototype learning algorithm based on the conditional log-likelihood loss (CLL), which is based on the discriminative model called log-likelihood of margin (LOGM). A regularization term is added to avoid over-fitting in training as well as to maximize the hypothesis margin. The CLL in the LOGM algorithm is a convex function of margin, and so, shows better convergence than the MCE. In addition, we show the effects of distance metric learning with both prototype-dependent weighting and prototype-independent weighting. Our empirical study on the benchmark datasets demonstrates that the LOGM algorithm yields higher classification accuracies than the MCE, generalized learning vector quantization (GLVQ), soft nearest prototype classifier (SNPC) and the robust soft learning vector quantization (RSLVQ), and moreover, the LOGM with prototype-dependent weighting achieves comparable accuracies to the support vector machine (SVM) classifier.     

代价敏感的列表排序算法

排序学习是信息检索与机器学习中的研究热点之一.在信息检索中,预测排序列表中顶部排序非常重要.但是,排序学习中一类经典的排序算法——列表排序算法——无法强调预测排序列表中顶部排序.为了解决此问题,将代价敏感学习的思想融入到列表排序算法中,提出代价敏感的列表排序算法框架.该框架是在列表排序算法的损失函数中对文档引入权重,且基于性能评价指标NDCG计算文档的权重.在此基础之上,进一步证明了代价敏感的列表排序算法的损失函数是NDCG损失的上界.为了验证代价敏感的列表排序算法的有效性,在此框架下提出了一种代价敏感的ListMLE排序算法,并对该算法开展序保持与泛化性的理论研究工作,从理论上验证了该算法具有序保持特性.在基准数据集上的实验结果表明,在预测排序列表中顶部排序中,代价敏感的ListMLE比传统排序学习算法能取得更好的性能.     

An empirical study of cost-sensitive learning in cultural modeling

Cultural modeling aims at developing behavioral models of groups and analyzing the impact of culture factors on group behavior using computational methods. Machine learning methods and in particular classification, play a central role in such applications. In modeling cultural data, it is expected that standard classifiers yield good performance under the assumption that different classification errors have uniform costs. However, this assumption is often violated in practice. Therefore, the performance of standard classifiers is severely hindered. To handle this problem, this paper empirically studies cost-sensitive learning in cultural modeling. We consider cost factor when building the classifiers, with the aim of minimizing total misclassification costs. We conduct experiments to investigate four typical cost-sensitive learning methods, combine them with six standard classifiers and evaluate their performance under various conditions. Our empirical study verifies the effectiveness of cost-sensitive learning in cultural modeling. Based on the experimental results, we gain a thorough insight into the problem of non-uniform misclassification costs, as well as the selection of cost-sensitive methods, base classifiers and method-classifier pairs for this domain. Furthermore, we propose an improved algorithm which outperforms the best method-classifier pair using the benchmark cultural datasets.     

Real-time transient stability status prediction using cost-sensitive extreme learning machine

Real-time transient stability status prediction (RTSSP) is very important to maintain the safety and stability of electrical power systems, where any unstable contingency will be likely to cause large-scale blackout. Most of machine learning methods used for RTSSP attempt to attain a low classification error, which implies that the misclassification costs of different categories are the same. However, misclassifying an unstable case as stable one usually leads to much higher costs than misclassifying a stable case as unstable one. In this paper, a new RTSSP method based on cost-sensitive extreme learning machine (CELM) is proposed, which recognizes the RTSSP as a cost-sensitive classification problem. The CELM is constructed pursuing the minimum misclassification costs, and its detailed implementation procedures for RSSTP are also researched in this work. The proposed method is implemented on the New England 39-bus electrical power system. Compared with three cost-blind methods (ELM, SVM and DT) and two cost-sensitive methods (cost-sensitive DT, cost-sensitive SVM), the simulation results have proved that the lower total misclassification costs and false dismissal rate with low computational complexity can be achieved by the proposed method, which meets the demands for the computation speed and the reliability of RTSSP.     

基于分解策略处理多分类不均衡问题的方法

针对多分类不均衡问题,提出了一种新的基于一对一（one-versus-one,OVO）分解策略的方法。首先基于OVO分解策略将多分类不均衡问题分解成多个二值分类问题;再利用处理不均衡二值分类问题的算法建立二值分类器;接着利用SMOTE过抽样技术处理原始数据集;然后采用基于距离相对竞争力加权方法处理冗余分类器;最后通过加权投票法获得输出结果。在KEEL不均衡数据集上的大量实验结果表明,所提算法比其他经典方法具有显著的优势。     

A multi-class SVM classification system based on learning methods from indistinguishable chinese official documents

Support Vector Machines (SVM) has been developed for Chinese official document classification in One-against-All (OAA) multi-class scheme. Several data retrieving techniques including sentence segmentation, term weighting, and feature extraction are used in preprocess. We observe that most documents of which contents are indistinguishable make poor classification results. The traditional solution is to add misclassified documents to the training set in order to adjust classification rules. In this paper, indistinguishable documents are observed to be informative for strengthening prediction performance since their labels are predicted by the current model in low confidence. A general approach is proposed to utilize decision values in SVM to identify indistinguishable documents. Based on verified classification results and distinguishability of documents, four learning strategies that select certain documents to training sets are proposed to improve classification performance. Experiments report that indistinguishable documents are able to be identified in a high probability and are informative for learning strategies. Furthermore, LMID that adds both of misclassified documents and indistinguishable documents to training sets is the most effective learning strategy in SVM classification for large set of Chinese official documents in terms of computing efficiency and classification accuracy.     

多分类问题代价敏感AdaBoost算法

针对目前多分类代价敏感分类问题在转换成二分类代价敏感分类问题存在的代价合并问题, 研究并构造出了可直接应用于多分类问题的代价敏感AdaBoost算法.算法具有与连续AdaBoost算法 类似的流程和误差估计. 当代价完全相等时, 该算法就变成了一种新的多分类的连续AdaBoost算法, 算法能够确保训练错误率随着训练的分类器的个数增加而降低, 但不直接要求各个分类器相互独立条件, 或者说独立性条件可以通过算法规则来保证, 但现有多分类连续AdaBoost算法的推导必须要求各个分类器相互独立. 实验数据表明, 算法可以真正实现分类结果偏向错分代价较小的类, 特别当每一类被错分成其他类的代价不平衡但平均代价相等时, 目前已有的多分类代价敏感学习算法会失效, 但新方法仍然能 实现最小的错分代价. 研究方法为进一步研究集成学习算法提供了一种新的思路, 得到了一种易操作并近似满足分类错误率最小的多标签分类问题的AdaBoost算法.     

Online classifier adaptation for cost-sensitive learning

In this paper, we propose the problem of online cost-sensitive classifier adaptation and the first algorithm to solve it. We assume that we have a base classifier for a cost-sensitive classification problem, but it is trained with respect to a cost setting different to the desired one. Moreover, we also have some training data samples streaming to the algorithm one by one. The problem is to adapt the given base classifier to the desired cost setting using the steaming training samples online. To solve this problem, we propose to learn a new classifier by adding an adaptation function to the base classifier, and update the adaptation function parameter according to the streaming data samples. Given an input data sample and the cost of misclassifying it, we update the adaptation function parameter by minimizing cost-weighted hinge loss and respecting previous learned parameter simultaneously. The proposed algorithm is compared to both online and off-line cost-sensitive algorithms on two cost-sensitive classification problems, and the experiments show that it not only outperforms them on classification performances, but also requires significantly less running time.

     

一种基于重取样的代价敏感学习算法

大多数非均衡数据集的研究集中于纯重构数据集或者纯代价敏感学习,本文针对数据集类分布非均衡和不相等误分类代价往往同时发生这一事实,提出了一种以最小误分类代价为目标的基于混合重取样的代价敏感学习算法。该算法将两种不同类型解决方案有机地融合在一起,先用样本类空间重构的方法使原始数据集的两类数据达到基本均衡,然后再引入代价敏感学习算法进行分类,能提高少数类分类精度,同时有效降低总的误分类代价。实验结果验证了该算法在处理非均衡类问题时比传统算法要优越。     

Analysis of preprocessing vs. cost-sensitive learning for imbalanced classification. Open problems on intrinsic data characteristics

Class imbalance is among the most persistent complications which may confront the traditional supervised learning task in real-world applications. The problem occurs, in the binary case, when the number of instances in one class significantly outnumbers the number of instances in the other class. This situation is a handicap when trying to identify the minority class, as the learning algorithms are not usually adapted to such characteristics.The approaches to deal with the problem of imbalanced datasets fall into two major categories: data sampling and algorithmic modification. Cost-sensitive learning solutions incorporating both the data and algorithm level approaches assume higher misclassification costs with samples in the minority class and seek to minimize high cost errors. Nevertheless, there is not a full exhaustive comparison between those models which can help us to determine the most appropriate one under different scenarios.The main objective of this work is to analyze the performance of data level proposals against algorithm level proposals focusing in cost-sensitive models and versus a hybrid procedure that combines those two approaches. We will show, by means of a statistical comparative analysis, that we cannot highlight an unique approach among the rest. This will lead to a discussion about the data intrinsic characteristics of the imbalanced classification problem which will help to follow new paths that can lead to the improvement of current models mainly focusing on class overlap and dataset shift in imbalanced classification.     

Cost-sensitive boosting

A novel framework is proposed for the design of cost-sensitive boosting algorithms. The framework is based on the identification of two necessary conditions for optimal cost-sensitive learning that 1) expected losses must be minimized by optimal cost-sensitive decision rules and 2) empirical loss minimization must emphasize the neighborhood of the target cost-sensitive boundary. It is shown that these conditions enable the derivation of cost-sensitive losses that can be minimized by gradient descent, in the functional space of convex combinations of weak learners, to produce novel boosting algorithms. The proposed framework is applied to the derivation of cost-sensitive extensions of AdaBoost, RealBoost, and LogitBoost. Experimental evidence, with a synthetic problem, standard data sets, and the computer vision problems of face and car detection, is presented in support of the cost-sensitive optimality of the new algorithms. Their performance is also compared to those of various previous cost-sensitive boosting proposals, as well as the popular combination of large-margin classifiers and probability calibration. Cost-sensitive boosting is shown to consistently outperform all other methods.     

价值样本选取的不均衡分类

基于传统模型的实际分类问题,不均衡分类是一个常见的挑战问题。由于传统分类器较难学习少数类数据集内部的本质结构,导致更多地偏向于多数类,从而使少数类样本被误分为多数类样本。与此同时,样本集中的冗余数据和噪音数据也会对分类器造成困扰。为有效处理上述问题,提出一种新的不均衡分类框架SSIC,该框架充分考虑数据统计特性,自适应从大小类中选取有价值样本,并结合代价敏感学习构建不均衡数据分类器。首先,SSIC通过组合部分多数类实例和所有少数类实例来构造几个平衡的数据子集。在每个子集上,SSIC充分利用数据的特征来提取可区分的高级特征并自适应地选择重要样本,从而可以去除冗余噪声数据。其次,SSIC通过在每个样本上自动分配适当的权重来引入一种代价敏感的支持向量机(SVM),以便将少数类视为与多数类相等。