63,924 research outputs found
Specifying nonspecific evidence
In an earlier article [J. Schubert, On nonspecific evidence, Int. J. Intell.
Syst. 8(6), 711-725 (1993)] we established within Dempster-Shafer theory a
criterion function called the metaconflict function. With this criterion we can
partition into subsets a set of several pieces of evidence with propositions
that are weakly specified in the sense that it may be uncertain to which event
a proposition is referring. Each subset in the partitioning is representing a
separate event. The metaconflict function was derived as the plausibility that
the partitioning is correct when viewing the conflict in Dempster's rule within
each subset as a newly constructed piece of metalevel evidence with a
proposition giving support against the entire partitioning. In this article we
extend the results of the previous article. We will not only find the most
plausible subset for each piece of evidence as was done in the earlier article.
In addition we will specify each piece of nonspecific evidence, in the sense
that we find to which events the proposition might be referring, by finding the
plausibility for every subset that this piece of evidence belong to the subset.
In doing this we will automatically receive indication that some evidence might
be false. We will then develop a new methodology to exploit these newly
specified pieces of evidence in a subsequent reasoning process. This will
include methods to discount evidence based on their degree of falsity and on
their degree of credibility due to a partial specification of affiliation, as
well as a refined method to infer the event of each subset.Comment: 39 pages, 2 figure
Adaptive imputation of missing values for incomplete pattern classification
In classification of incomplete pattern, the missing values can either play a
crucial role in the class determination, or have only little influence (or
eventually none) on the classification results according to the context. We
propose a credal classification method for incomplete pattern with adaptive
imputation of missing values based on belief function theory. At first, we try
to classify the object (incomplete pattern) based only on the available
attribute values. As underlying principle, we assume that the missing
information is not crucial for the classification if a specific class for the
object can be found using only the available information. In this case, the
object is committed to this particular class. However, if the object cannot be
classified without ambiguity, it means that the missing values play a main role
for achieving an accurate classification. In this case, the missing values will
be imputed based on the K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) and self-organizing map (SOM)
techniques, and the edited pattern with the imputation is then classified. The
(original or edited) pattern is respectively classified according to each
training class, and the classification results represented by basic belief
assignments are fused with proper combination rules for making the credal
classification. The object is allowed to belong with different masses of belief
to the specific classes and meta-classes (which are particular disjunctions of
several single classes). The credal classification captures well the
uncertainty and imprecision of classification, and reduces effectively the rate
of misclassifications thanks to the introduction of meta-classes. The
effectiveness of the proposed method with respect to other classical methods is
demonstrated based on several experiments using artificial and real data sets
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