A Systematic Study of Feature Selection Methods for Learning to Rank Algorithms

Abstract

This article describes how feature selection for learning to rank algorithms has become an interesting issue. While noisy and irrelevant features influence performance, and result in an overfitting problem in ranking systems, reducing the number of features by illuminating irrelevant and noisy features is a solution. Several studies have applied feature selection for learning to rank, which promote efficiency and effectiveness of ranking models. As the number of features and consequently the number of irrelevant and noisy features is increasing, systematic a review of Feature selection for learning to rank methods is required. In this article, a framework to examine research on feature selection for learning to rank (FSLR) is proposed. Under this framework, the authors review the most state-of-the-art methods and suggest several criteria to analyze them. FSLR offers a structured classification of current algorithms for future research to: a) properly select strategies from existing algorithms using certain criteria or b) to find ways to develop existing methodologies.