In the feature subset selection problem, a learning algorithm is faced with the problem of selecting a relevant subset of features upon which to focus its attention, while ignoring the rest. To achieve the best possible performance with a particular learning algorithm on a particular training set, a feature subset selection method should consider how the algorithm and the training set interact. We explore the relation between optimal feature subset selection and relevance. Our wrapper method searches for an optimal feature subset tailored to a particular algorithm and a domain. We study the strengths and weaknesses of the wrapper approach and show a series of improved designs. We compare the wrapper approach to induction without feature subset selection and to Relief, a filter approach to feature subset selection. Significant improvement in accuracy is achieved for some datasets for the two families of induction algorithms used: decision trees and

Abstract. One of the surprising recurring phenomena observed in experiments with boosting is that the test error of the generated classifier usually does not increase as its size becomes very large, and often is observed to decrease even after the training error reaches zero. In this paper, we show that this phenomenon is related to the distribution of margins of the training examples with respect to the generated voting classification rule, where the margin of an example is simply the difference between the number of correct votes and the maximum number of votes received by any incorrect label. We show that techniques used in the analysis of Vapnik’s support vector classifiers and of neural networks with small weights can be applied to voting methods to relate the margin distribution to the test error. We also show theoretically and experimentally that boosting is especially effective at increasing the margins of the training examples. Finally, we compare our explanation to those based on the bias-variance decomposition. 1

We describe several improvements to Freund and Schapire’s AdaBoost boosting algorithm, particularly in a setting in which hypotheses may assign confidences to each of their predictions. We give a simplified analysis of AdaBoost in this setting, and we show how this analysis can be used to find improved parameter settings as well as a refined criterion for training weak hypotheses. We give a specific method for assigning confidences to the predictions of decision trees, a method closely related to one used by Quinlan. This method also suggests a technique for growing decision trees which turns out to be identical to one proposed by Kearns and Mansour. We focus next on how to apply the new boosting algorithms to multiclass classification problems, particularly to the multi-label case in which each example may belong to more than one class. We give two boosting methods for this problem, plus a third method based on output coding. One of these leads to a new method for handling the single-label case which is simpler but as effective as techniques suggested by Freund and Schapire. Finally, we give some experimental results comparing a few of the algorithms discussed in this paper.

The output of a classifier should be a calibrated posterior probability to enable post-processing. Standard SVMs do not provide such probabilities. One method to create probabilities is to directly train a kernel classifier with a logit link function and a regularized maximum likelihood score. However, training with a maximum likelihood score will produce non-sparse kernel machines. Instead, we train an SVM, then train the parameters of an additional sigmoid function to map the SVM outputs into probabilities. This chapter compares classification error rate and likelihood scores for an SVM plus sigmoid versus a kernel method trained with a regularized likelihood error function. These methods are tested on three data-mining-style data sets. The SVM+sigmoid yields probabilities of comparable quality to the regularized maximum likelihood kernel method, while still retaining the sparseness of the SVM.

The simple Bayesian classifier is known to be optimal when attributes are independent given the class, but the question of whether other sufficient conditions for its optimality exist has so far not been explored. Empirical results showing that it performs surprisingly well in many domains containing clear attribute dependences suggest that the answer to this question may be positive. This article shows that, although the Bayesian classifier's probability estimates are only optimal under quadratic loss if the independence assumption holds, the classifier itself can be optimal under zero-one loss (misclassification rate) even when this assumption is violated by a wide margin. The region of quadratic-loss optimality of the Bayesian classifier is in fact a second-order infinitesimal fraction of the region of zero-one optimality. This implies that the Bayesian classifier has a much greater range of applicability than previously thought. For example, in this article it is shown to be opti...

Methods for voting classification algorithms, such as Bagging and AdaBoost, have been shown to be very successful in improving the accuracy of certain classifiers for artificial and real-world datasets. We review these algorithms and describe a large empirical study comparing several variants in conjunction with a decision tree inducer (three variants) and a Naive-Bayes inducer. The purpose of the study is to improve our understanding of why and when these algorithms, which use perturbation, reweighting, and combination techniques, affect classification error. We provide a bias and variance decomposition of the error to show how different methods and variants influence these two terms. This allowed us to determine that Bagging reduced variance of unstable methods, while boosting methods (AdaBoost and Arc-x4) reduced both the bias and variance of unstable methods but increased the variance for Naive-Bayes, which was very stable. We observed that Arc-x4 behaves differently than AdaBoost if reweighting is used instead of resampling, indicating a fundamental difference. Voting variants, some of which are introduced in this paper, include: pruning versus no pruning, use of probabilistic estimates, weight perturbations (Wagging), and backfitting of data. We found that Bagging improves when probabilistic estimates in conjunction with no-pruning are used, as well as when the data was backfit. We measure tree sizes and show an interesting positive correlation between the increase in the average tree size in AdaBoost trials and its success in reducing the error. We compare the mean-squared error of voting methods to non-voting methods and show that the voting methods lead to large and significant reductions in the mean-squared errors. Practical problems that arise in implementing boosting algorithms are explored, including numerical instabilities and underflows. We use scatterplots that graphically show how AdaBoost reweights instances, emphasizing not only "hard" areas but also outliers and noise.

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This article reviews five approximate statistical tests for determining whether one learning algorithm outperforms another on a particular learning task. These tests are compared experimentally to determine their probability of incorrectly detecting a difference when no difference exists (type I error). Two widely used statistical tests are shown to have high probability of type I error in certain situations and should never be used: a test for the difference of two proportions and a paired-differences t test based on taking several random train-test splits. A third test, a paired-differences t test based on 10-fold cross-validation, exhibits somewhat elevated probability of type I error. A fourth test, McNemar’s test, is shown to have low type I error. The fifth test is a new test, 5 × 2 cv, based on five iterations of twofold cross-validation. Experiments show that this test also has acceptable type I error. The article also measures the power (ability to detect algorithm differences when they do exist) of these tests. The cross-validated t test is the most powerful. The 5×2 cv test is shown to be slightly more powerful than McNemar’s test. The choice of the best test is determined by the computational cost of running the learning algorithm. For algorithms that can be executed only once, Mc-Nemar’s test is the only test with acceptable type I error. For algorithms that can be executed 10 times, the 5×2 cv test is recommended, because it is slightly more powerful and because it directly measures variation due to the choice of training set.

The problem of combining preferences arises in several applications, such as combining the results of different search engines. This work describes an efficient algorithm for combining multiple preferences. We first give a formal framework for the problem. We then describe and analyze a new boosting algorithm for combining preferences called RankBoost. We also describe an efficient implementation of the algorithm for certain natural cases. We discuss two experiments we carried out to assess the performance of RankBoost. In the first experiment, we used the algorithm to combine different WWW search strategies, each of which is a query expansion for a given domain. For this task, we compare the performance of RankBoost to the individual search strategies. The second experiment is a collaborative-filtering task for making movie recommendations. Here, we present results comparing RankBoost to nearest-neighbor and regression algorithms.

We show that it is possible to extend hidden Markov models to have a countably infinite number of hidden states. By using the theory of Dirichlet processes we can implicitly integrate out the infinitely many transition parameters, leaving only three hyperparameters which can be learned from data. These three hyperparameters define a hierarchical Dirichlet process capable of capturing a rich set of transition dynamics. The three hyperparameters control the time scale of the dynamics, the sparsity of the underlying state-transition matrix, and the expected number of distinct hidden states in a finite sequence. In this framework it is also natural to allow the alphabet of emitted symbols to be infinite---consider, for example, symbols being possible words appearing in English text.