Gene selection and disease prediction from gene expression data using a two-stage hetero-associative memory

In general, gene expression microarrays consist of a vast number of genes and very few samples, which represents a critical challenge for disease prediction and diagnosis. This paper develops a two-stage algorithm that integrates feature selection and prediction by extending a type of hetero-associative neural networks. In the first level, the algorithm generates the associative memory, whereas the second level picks the most relevant genes.With the purpose of illustrating the applicability and efficiency of the method proposed here, we use four different gene expression microarray databases and compare their classification performance against that of other renowned classifiers built on the whole (original) feature (gene) space. The experimental results show that the two-stage hetero-associative memory is quite competitive with standard classification models regarding the overall accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. In addition, it also produces a significant decrease in computational efforts and an increase in the biological interpretability of microarrays because worthless (irrelevant and/or redundant) genes are discarded

Associative learning on imbalanced environments: An empirical study

Associative memories have emerged as a powerful computational neural network model for several pattern classification problems. Like most traditional classifiers, these models assume that the classes share similar prior probabilities. However, in many real-life applications the ratios of prior probabilities between classes are extremely skewed. Although the literature has provided numerous studies that examine the performance degradation of renowned classifiers on different imbalanced scenarios, so far this effect has not been supported by a thorough empirical study in the context of associative memories. In this paper, we fix our attention on the applicability of the associative neural networks to the classification of imbalanced data. The key questions here addressed are whether these models perform better, the same or worse than other popular classifiers, how the level of imbalance affects their performance, and whether distinct resampling strategies produce a different impact on the associative memories. In order to answer these questions and gain further insight into the feasibility and efficiency of the associative memories, a large-scale experimental evaluation with 31 databases, seven classification models and four resampling algorithms is carried out here, along with a non-parametric statistical test to discover any significant differences between each pair of classifiers.This work has partially been supported by the Mexican Science and Technology Council (CONACYT-Mexico) through the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (232167), the Mexican PRODEP(DSA/103.5/15/7004), the Spanish Ministry of Economy(TIN2013-46522-P) and the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEOII/2014/062)

Model Selection for Financial Distress Prediction by Aggregating TOPSIS and PROMETHEE Rankings

Ponencia presentada al 11th International Conference, HAIS 2016, Seville, Spain, April 18-20, 2016Many models have been explored for financial distress prediction, but no consistent conclusions have been drawn on which method shows the best behavior when different performance evaluation measures are employed. Accordingly, this paper proposes the integration of the ranking scores given by two popular multiple-criteria decision-making tools as an important step to help decision makers in selecting the model(s) properly. Selection of the most appropriate prediction method is here shaped as a multiple-criteria decision-making problem that involves a number of performance measures (criteria) and a set of techniques (alternatives). An empirical study is carried out to assess the performance of ten algorithms over six real-life bankruptcy and credit risk databases. The results reveal that the use of a unique performance measure often leads to contradictory conclusions, while the multiple-criteria decision-making techniques may yield a more reliable analysis. Besides, these allow the decision makers to weight the relevance of the individual performance metrics as a function of each particular problem.This work has partially been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy [TIN2013-46522-P], the Generalitat Valenciana [PROMETEOII/2014/062], the Mexican PRODEP [DSA/103.5/15/7004] and the Mexican Science and Technology Council through the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program [232167]

Financial distress prediction using the hybrid associative memory with translation

This paper presents an alternative technique for financial distress prediction systems. The method is based on a type of neural network, which is called hybrid associative memory with translation. While many different neural network architectures have successfully been used to predict credit risk and corporate failure, the power of associative memories for financial decision-making has not been explored in any depth as yet. The performance of the hybrid associative memory with translation is compared to four traditional neural networks, a support vector machine and a logistic regression model in terms of their prediction capabilities. The experimental results over nine real-life data sets show that the associative memory here proposed constitutes an appropriate solution for bankruptcy and credit risk prediction, performing significantly better than the rest of models under class imbalance and data overlapping conditions in terms of the true positive rate and the geometric mean of true positive and true negative rates.This work has partially been supported by the Mexican CONACYT through the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program [232167], the Spanish Ministry of Economy [TIN2013-46522-P], the Generalitat Valenciana [PROMETEOII/2014/062] and the Mexican PRODEP [DSA/103.5/15/7004]. We would like to thank the Reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which have helped to improve the quality of this paper substantially

Equilibrating the recognition of the minority Class in the imbalance context

In pattern recognition, it is well known that the classifier performance depends on the classification rule and the complexities presented in the data sets (such as class overlapping, class imbalance, outliers, high-dimensional data sets among others). In this way, the issue of class imbalance is exhibited when one class is less represented with respect to the other classes. If the classifier is trained with imbalanced data sets, the natural tendency is to recognize the samples included in the majority class, ignoring the minority classes. This situation is not desirable because in real problems it is necessary to recognize the minority class more without sacrificing the precision of the majority class. In this work we analyze the behaviour of four classifiers taking into a count a relative balance among the accuracy classes