Valerie Cross and Michael Zmuda, Miami University, USA

Current machine learning research is addressing the problem that occurs when the data set includes numerous features but the number of training data is small. Microarray data, for example, typically has a very large number of features, the genes, as compared to the number of training data examples, the patients. An important research problem is to develop techniques to effectively reduce the number of features by selecting the best set of features for use in a machine learning process, referred to as the feature selection problem. Another means of addressing high dimensional data is the use of an ensemble of base classifiers. Ensembles have been shown to improve the predictive performance of a single model by training multiple models and combining their predictions. This paper examines combining an enhancement of the random subspace model of feature selection using fuzzy set similarity measures with different measures of evaluating feature subsets in the construction of an ensemble classifier. Experimental results show that in most cases a fuzzy set similarity measure paired with a feature subset evaluator outperforms the corresponding fuzzy similarity measure by itself and the learning process only needs to occur on typically about half the number of base classifiers since the features subset evaluator eliminates those feature subsets of low quality from use in the ensemble. In general, the fuzzy consistency index is the better performing feature subset evaluator, and inclusion maximum is the better performing fuzzy similarity measure.

Feature selection, fuzzy set similarity measures, concordance correlation coefficient, feature subset evaluators, microarray data, ensemble learning.