An extensive empirical study of feature selection metrics for text classification

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An extensive empirical study of feature selection metrics for text classification (2003)

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by George Forman , Isabelle Guyon , André Elisseeff

Venue:	J. of Machine Learning Research
Citations:	496 - 15 self

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@ARTICLE{Forman03anextensive,
    author = {George Forman and Isabelle Guyon and André Elisseeff},
    title = {An extensive empirical study of feature selection metrics for text classification},
    journal = {J. of Machine Learning Research},
    year = {2003},
    pages = {3--1289}
}

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Abstract

Machine learning for text classification is the cornerstone of document categorization, news filtering, document routing, and personalization. In text domains, effective feature selection is essential to make the learning task efficient and more accurate. This paper presents an empirical comparison of twelve feature selection methods (e.g. Information Gain) evaluated on a benchmark of 229 text classification problem instances that were gathered from Reuters, TREC, OHSUMED, etc. The results are analyzed from multiple goal perspectives—accuracy, F-measure, precision, and recall—since each is appropriate in different situations. The results reveal that a new feature selection metric we call ‘Bi-Normal Separation ’ (BNS), outperformed the others by a substantial margin in most situations. This margin widened in tasks with high class skew, which is rampant in text classification problems and is particularly challenging for induction algorithms. A new evaluation methodology is offered that focuses on the needs of the data mining practitioner faced with a single dataset who seeks to choose one (or a pair of) metrics that are most likely to yield the best performance. From this perspective, BNS was the top single choice for all goals except precision, for which Information Gain yielded the best result most often. This analysis also revealed, for example, that Information Gain and Chi-Squared have correlated failures, and so they work poorly together. When choosing optimal pairs of metrics for each of the four performance goals, BNS is consistently a member of the pair—e.g., for greatest recall, the pair BNS + F1-measure yielded the best performance on the greatest number of tasks by a considerable margin.

Keyphrases

text classification extensive empirical study feature selection metric information gain pair bns f1-measure top single choice multiple goal perspective new feature selection text domain single dataset new evaluation methodology bi-normal separation considerable margin high class skew document routing induction algorithm learning task efficient optimal pair twelve feature selection method document categorization text classification problem substantial margin empirical comparison different situation news filtering data mining practitioner text classification problem instance effective feature selection performance goal

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