A Bayesian approach to joint feature selection and classifier design

This paper adopts a Bayesian approach to simultaneously learn both an optimal nonlinear classifier and a subset of predictor variables (or features) that are most relevant to the classification task. The approach uses heavy-tailed priors to promote sparsity in the utilization of both basis functions and features; these priors act as regularizers for the likelihood function that rewards good classification on the training data. We derive an expectation- maximization (EM) algorithm to efficiently compute a maximum a posteriori (MAP) point estimate of the various parameters. The algorithm is an extension of recent state-of-the-art sparse Bayesian classifiers, which in turn can be seen as Bayesian counterparts of support vector machines. Experimental comparisons using kernel classifiers demonstrate both parsimonious feature selection and excellent classification accuracy on a range of synthetic and benchmark data sets.     

A new feature selection method on classification of medical datasets: Kernel F-score feature selection

In this paper, we have proposed a new feature selection method called kernel F-score feature selection (KFFS) used as pre-processing step in the classification of medical datasets. KFFS consists of two phases. In the first phase, input spaces (features) of medical datasets have been transformed to kernel space by means of Linear (Lin) or Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel functions. By this way, the dimensions of medical datasets have increased to high dimension feature space. In the second phase, the F-score values of medical datasets with high dimensional feature space have been calculated using F-score formula. And then the mean value of calculated F-scores has been computed. If the F-score value of any feature in medical datasets is bigger than this mean value, that feature will be selected. Otherwise, that feature is removed from feature space. Thanks to KFFS method, the irrelevant or redundant features are removed from high dimensional input feature space. The cause of using kernel functions transforms from non-linearly separable medical dataset to a linearly separable feature space. In this study, we have used the heart disease dataset, SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) images dataset, and Escherichia coli Promoter Gene Sequence dataset taken from UCI (University California, Irvine) machine learning database to test the performance of KFFS method. As classification algorithms, Least Square Support Vector Machine (LS-SVM) and Levenberg–Marquardt Artificial Neural Network have been used. As shown in the obtained results, the proposed feature selection method called KFFS is produced very promising results compared to F-score feature selection.     

文本分类中一种新的特征选择方法

在自动文本分类系统中,特征选择是有效降低文本向量维数的一种方法。在分析了常用的一些特征选择的评价函数的基础上,提出了一个新的评价函数,即互信息比值。实验证明这一方法简单可行,有助于提高所选特征子集的有效性。     

Nearest neighbor classifier: Simultaneous editing and feature selection

Nearest neighbor classifiers demand significant computational resources (time and memory). Editing of the reference set and feature selection are two different approaches to this problem. Here we encode the two approaches within the same genetic algorithm (GA) and simultaneously select features and reference cases. Two data sets were used: the SATIMAGE data and a generated data set. The GA was found to be an expedient solution compared to editing followed by feature selection, feature selection followed by editing, and the individual results from feature selection and editing.     

Discriminant analysis of promoter regions in Escherichia coli sequences

We have previously developed a general method based on the statistical technique of discriminant analysis to predict splice junctions in eukaryotic mRNA sequences [Nakata, K., Kanehisa, M. and DeLisi, C. (1985) Nucleic Acids Res., 13, 5327-5340]. In order to evaluate further applicability of this method, we now analyze the promoter region of Escherichia coli sequences. The attributes used for discrimination include the accuracy of consensus sequence patterns measured by the perceptron algorithm, the thermal stability map, the base composition and the Calladine-Dickerson rules for helical twist angle, roll angle, torsion angle and propeller twist angle. When applied to selected E. coli sequences in the GenBank database, the method correctly identifies 75% of the true promoter regions.     

A new image classification method using interval texture feature and improved Bayesian classifier

Multimedia Tools and Applications - In this paper, a novel technique for image classification is proposed with the three main contributions. First, we give the texture extraction technique for each...     

基于分步特征提取和组合分类器的电信客户流失预测模型

针对电信客户流失数据集存在的数据维度过高及单一分类器预测效果较弱的问题,结合过滤式和封装式特征选择方法的优点及组合分类器的较高预测能力,提出了一种基于Fisher比率与预测风险准则的分步特征选择方法结合组合分类器的电信客户流失预测模型。首先,基于Fisher比率从原始特征集合中提取具有较高判别能力的特征;其次,采用预测风险准则进一步选取对分类模型预测效果影响较大的特征;最后,构建基于平均概率输出和加权概率输出的组合分类器,以进一步提高客户流失预测效果。实验结果表明,相对于单步特征提取和单分类器模型,该方法能够提高对客户流失预测的效果。     

A new particle swarm feature selection method for classification

Searching for an optimal feature subset from a high-dimensional feature space is an NP-complete problem; hence, traditional optimization algorithms are inefficient when solving large-scale feature selection problems. Therefore, meta-heuristic algorithms are extensively adopted to solve such problems efficiently. This study proposes a regression-based particle swarm optimization for feature selection problem. The proposed algorithm can increase population diversity and avoid local optimal trapping by improving the jump ability of flying particles. The data sets collected from UCI machine learning databases are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Classification accuracy is used as a criterion to evaluate classifier performance. Results show that our proposed approach outperforms both genetic algorithms and sequential search algorithms.     

A new feature selection method for Gaussian mixture clustering

With the wide applications of Gaussian mixture clustering, e.g., in semantic video classification [H. Luo, J. Fan, J. Xiao, X. Zhu, Semantic principal video shot classification via mixture Gaussian, in: Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, vol. 2, 2003, pp. 189-192], it is a nontrivial task to select the useful features in Gaussian mixture clustering without class labels. This paper, therefore, proposes a new feature selection method, through which not only the most relevant features are identified, but the redundant features are also eliminated so that the smallest relevant feature subset can be found. We integrate this method with our recently proposed Gaussian mixture clustering approach, namely rival penalized expectation-maximization (RPEM) algorithm [Y.M. Cheung, A rival penalized EM algorithm towards maximizing weighted likelihood for density mixture clustering with automatic model selection, in: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, 2004, pp. 633-636; Y.M. Cheung, Maximum weighted likelihood via rival penalized EM for density mixture clustering with automatic model selection, IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. 17(6) (2005) 750-761], which is able to determine the number of components (i.e., the model order selection) in a Gaussian mixture automatically. Subsequently, the data clustering, model selection, and the feature selection are all performed in a single learning process. Experimental results have shown the efficacy of the proposed approach.     

A sparse Bayesian approach for joint feature selection and classifier learning

In this paper we present a new method for Joint Feature Selection and Classifier Learning using a sparse Bayesian approach. These tasks are performed by optimizing a global loss function that includes a term associated with the empirical loss and another one representing a feature selection and regularization constraint on the parameters. To minimize this function we use a recently proposed technique, the Boosted Lasso algorithm, that follows the regularization path of the empirical risk associated with our loss function. We develop the algorithm for a well known non-parametrical classification method, the relevance vector machine, and perform experiments using a synthetic data set and three databases from the UCI Machine Learning Repository. The results show that our method is able to select the relevant features, increasing in some cases the classification accuracy when feature selection is performed.     

A new hybrid method for gene selection

Gene selection is a significant preprocessing of the discriminant analysis of microarray data. The classical gene selection methods can be classified into three categories: the filters, the wrappers and the embedded methods. In this paper, a novel hybrid gene selection method (HGSM) is proposed by exploring both the mutual information criterion (filters) and leave-one-out-error criterion (wrappers) under the framework of an improved ant algorithm. Extensive experiments are conducted on three benchmark datasets and the results confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of HGSM.     

Rotation forest: A new classifier ensemble method

We propose a method for generating classifier ensembles based on feature extraction. To create the training data for a base classifier, the feature set is randomly split into K subsets (K is a parameter of the algorithm) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to each subset. All principal components are retained in order to preserve the variability information in the data. Thus, K axis rotations take place to form the new features for a base classifier. The idea of the rotation approach is to encourage simultaneously individual accuracy and diversity within the ensemble. Diversity is promoted through the feature extraction for each base classifier. Decision trees were chosen here because they are sensitive to rotation of the feature axes, hence the name "forest.” Accuracy is sought by keeping all principal components and also using the whole data set to train each base classifier. Using WEKA, we examined the Rotation Forest ensemble on a random selection of 33 benchmark data sets from the UCI repository and compared it with Bagging, AdaBoost, and Random Forest. The results were favorable to Rotation Forest and prompted an investigation into diversity-accuracy landscape of the ensemble models. Diversity-error diagrams revealed that Rotation Forest ensembles construct individual classifiers which are more accurate than these in AdaBoost and Random Forest, and more diverse than these in Bagging, sometimes more accurate as well.     

Constraint Score: A new filter method for feature selection with pairwise constraints

Feature selection is an important preprocessing step in mining high-dimensional data. Generally, supervised feature selection methods with supervision information are superior to unsupervised ones without supervision information. In the literature, nearly all existing supervised feature selection methods use class labels as supervision information. In this paper, we propose to use another form of supervision information for feature selection, i.e. pairwise constraints, which specifies whether a pair of data samples belong to the same class (must-link constraints) or different classes (cannot-link constraints). Pairwise constraints arise naturally in many tasks and are more practical and inexpensive than class labels. This topic has not yet been addressed in feature selection research. We call our pairwise constraints guided feature selection algorithm as Constraint Score and compare it with the well-known Fisher Score and Laplacian Score algorithms. Experiments are carried out on several high-dimensional UCI and face data sets. Experimental results show that, with very few pairwise constraints, Constraint Score achieves similar or even higher performance than Fisher Score with full class labels on the whole training data, and significantly outperforms Laplacian Score.     

Multiobjective optimization for classifier ensemble and feature selection: an application to named entity recognition

In this paper, the concept of finding an appropriate classifier ensemble for named entity recognition is posed as a multiobjective optimization (MOO) problem. Our underlying assumption is that instead of searching for the best-fitting feature set for a particular classifier, ensembling of several classifiers those are trained using different feature representations could be a more fruitful approach, but it is crucial to determine the appropriate subset of classifiers that are most suitable for the ensemble. We use three heterogenous classifiers namely maximum entropy, conditional random field, and support vector machine in order to build a number of models depending upon the various representations of the available features. The proposed MOO-based ensemble technique is evaluated for three resource-constrained languages, namely Bengali, Hindi, and Telugu. Evaluation results yield the recall, precision, and F-measure values of 92.21, 92.72, and 92.46%, respectively, for Bengali; 97.07, 89.63, and 93.20%, respectively, for Hindi; and 80.79, 93.18, and 86.54%, respectively, for Telugu. We also evaluate our proposed technique with the CoNLL-2003 shared task English data sets that yield the recall, precision, and F-measure values of 89.72, 89.84, and 89.78%, respectively. Experimental results show that the classifier ensemble identified by our proposed MOO-based approach outperforms all the individual classifiers, two different conventional baseline ensembles, and the classifier ensemble identified by a single objective?Cbased approach. In a part of the paper, we formulate the problem of feature selection in any classifier under the MOO framework and show that our proposed classifier ensemble attains superior performance to it.     

MIFS-ND: A mutual information-based feature selection method

Feature selection is used to choose a subset of relevant features for effective classification of data. In high dimensional data classification, the performance of a classifier often depends on the feature subset used for classification. In this paper, we introduce a greedy feature selection method using mutual information. This method combines both feature–feature mutual information and feature–class mutual information to find an optimal subset of features to minimize redundancy and to maximize relevance among features. The effectiveness of the selected feature subset is evaluated using multiple classifiers on multiple datasets. The performance of our method both in terms of classification accuracy and execution time performance, has been found significantly high for twelve real-life datasets of varied dimensionality and number of instances when compared with several competing feature selection techniques.     

A neural network classifier with rough set-based feature selection to classify multiclass IC package products

The choice of packaging type is important to the process of researching and developing an integrated circuit (IC). Indeed, for an IC chip designer, the importance can be compared to an architect’s choice of construction design. Since there are considerable variations in characteristics and in the types of products available, collecting information about packaging technologies and products can be difficult and time-consuming. Therefore, finding the means to provide packaging information to designers quickly and efficiently is necessary and important, as this will not only help designers accurately decide on design methods for an IC, but also significantly reduce processing risks. In this study, existing product information, such as the dimensions, characteristics and design and application criteria, of a product was analyzed. One of the biggest issues when data from multi-dimensional measurements are represented as a feature vector is that the feature space of the raw data often has very large dimensions. This study explores the use of rough set attribute reduction (RSAR) to reduce attributes of the IC package family dataset, and artificial neural networks, to construct an efficient IC package type classifier model. The experimental results show that the features produced by RSAR improve on generalization accuracy: the training and testing set classification accuracy rates were 96.9% and 98.2%, respectively.     

A new ensemble feature selection and its application to pattern classification

Neural network ensemble based on rough sets reduct is proposed to decrease the computational complexity of conventional ensemble feature selection algorithm. First, a dynamic reduction technology combining genetic algorithm with resampling method is adopted to obtain reducts with good generalization ability. Second, Multiple BP neural networks based on different reducts are built as base classifiers. According to the idea of selective ensemble, the neural network ensemble with best generalization ability can be found by search strategies. Finally, classification based on neural network ensemble is implemented by combining the predictions of component networks with voting. The method has been verified in the experiment of remote sensing image and five UCI datasets classification. Compared with conventional ensemble feature selection algorithms, it costs less time and lower computing complexity, and the classification accuracy is satisfactory.     

基于SVM的特征筛选方法及其若干应用

对于拟合问题，传统的模式识别特征筛选方法以各特征量对训练数据拟合能力的贡献为取舍标准，未考虑经验风险最小化和结构风险最小化间的差别，不能获得预报能力最强的特征筛选结果。为此我们提出了结合支持向量回归法与留一法的特征筛选新算法，并将它试用于镍氢电池材料和氧化铝溶出率两套实验数据集的特征筛选。     

A novel feature selection method and its application

In this paper, a novel feature selection method based on rough sets and mutual information is proposed. The dependency of each feature guides the selection, and mutual information is employed to reduce the features which do not favor addition of dependency significantly. So the dependency of the subset found by our method reaches maximum with small number of features. Since our method evaluates both definitive relevance and uncertain relevance by a combined selection criterion of dependency and class-based distance metric, the feature subset is more relevant than other rough sets based methods. As a result, the subset is near optimal solution. In order to verify the contribution, eight different classification applications are employed. Our method is also employed on a real Alzheimer’s disease dataset, and finds a feature subset where classification accuracy arrives at 81.3 %. Those present results verify the contribution of our method.