Combining feature selection and classifier ensemble using a multiobjective simulated annealing approach: application to named entity recognition

In this paper, we propose a two-stage multiobjective-simulated annealing (MOSA)-based technique for named entity recognition (NER). At first, MOSA is used for feature selection under two statistical classifiers, viz. conditional random field (CRF) and support vector machine (SVM). Each solution on the final Pareto optimal front provides a different classifier. These classifiers are then combined together by using a new classifier ensemble technique based on MOSA. Several different versions of the objective functions are exploited. We hypothesize that the reliability of prediction of each classifier differs among the various output classes. Thus, in an ensemble system, it is necessary to find out the appropriate weight of vote for each output class in each classifier. We propose a MOSA-based technique to determine the weights for votes automatically. The proposed two-stage technique is evaluated for NER in Bengali, a resource-poor language, as well as for English. Evaluation results yield the highest recall, precision and F-measure values of 93.95, 95.15 and 94.55 %, respectively for Bengali and 89.01, 89.35 and 89.18 %, respectively for English. Experiments also suggest that the classifier ensemble identified by the proposed MOO-based approach optimizing the F-measure values of named entity (NE) boundary detection outperforms all the individual classifiers and four conventional baseline models.