73,369 research outputs found
Are screening methods useful in feature selection? An empirical study
Filter or screening methods are often used as a preprocessing step for
reducing the number of variables used by a learning algorithm in obtaining a
classification or regression model. While there are many such filter methods,
there is a need for an objective evaluation of these methods. Such an
evaluation is needed to compare them with each other and also to answer whether
they are at all useful, or a learning algorithm could do a better job without
them. For this purpose, many popular screening methods are partnered in this
paper with three regression learners and five classification learners and
evaluated on ten real datasets to obtain accuracy criteria such as R-square and
area under the ROC curve (AUC). The obtained results are compared through curve
plots and comparison tables in order to find out whether screening methods help
improve the performance of learning algorithms and how they fare with each
other. Our findings revealed that the screening methods were useful in
improving the prediction of the best learner on two regression and two
classification datasets out of the ten datasets evaluated.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures, 21 table
Ensembles of probability estimation trees for customer churn prediction
Customer churn prediction is one of the most, important elements tents of a company's Customer Relationship Management, (CRM) strategy In tins study, two strategies are investigated to increase the lift. performance of ensemble classification models, i.e (1) using probability estimation trees (PETs) instead of standard decision trees as base classifiers; and (n) implementing alternative fusion rules based on lift weights lot the combination of ensemble member's outputs Experiments ale conducted lot font popular ensemble strategics on five real-life chin n data sets In general, the results demonstrate how lift performance can be substantially improved by using alternative base classifiers and fusion tides However: the effect vanes lot the (Idol cut ensemble strategies lit particular, the results indicate an increase of lift performance of (1) Bagging by implementing C4 4 base classifiets. (n) the Random Subspace Method (RSM) by using lift-weighted fusion rules, and (in) AdaBoost, by implementing both
Automated data pre-processing via meta-learning
The final publication is available at link.springer.comA data mining algorithm may perform differently on datasets with different characteristics, e.g., it might perform better on a dataset with continuous attributes rather than with categorical attributes, or the other way around.
As a matter of fact, a dataset usually needs to be pre-processed. Taking into account all the possible pre-processing operators, there exists a staggeringly large number of alternatives and nonexperienced users become overwhelmed.
We show that this problem can be addressed by an automated approach, leveraging ideas from metalearning.
Specifically, we consider a wide range of data pre-processing techniques and a set of data mining algorithms. For each data mining algorithm and selected dataset, we are able to predict the transformations that improve the result
of the algorithm on the respective dataset. Our approach will help non-expert users to more effectively identify the transformations appropriate to their applications, and hence to achieve improved results.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Pairwise meta-rules for better meta-learning-based algorithm ranking
In this paper, we present a novel meta-feature generation method in the context of meta-learning, which is based on rules that compare the performance of individual base learners in a one-against-one manner. In addition to these new meta-features, we also introduce a new meta-learner called Approximate Ranking Tree Forests (ART Forests) that performs very competitively when compared with several state-of-the-art meta-learners. Our experimental results are based on a large collection of datasets and show that the proposed new techniques can improve the overall performance of meta-learning for algorithm ranking significantly. A key point in our approach is that each performance figure of any base learner for any specific dataset is generated by optimising the parameters of the base learner separately for each dataset
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