Attribute reduction algorithms with an anti-noise mechanism for hybrid data based on fuzzy evidence theory

Abstract

Attribute reduction can remove data noise and redundancy, thus reducing computational complexity, which is very important for machine learning. Because the difference between nominal attribute values is difficult to measure, attribute reduction for hybrid data faces challenges. In addition, most of the existing methods are sensitive to noise due to the lack of an anti-noise mechanism. Decision attribute contains the most important information of data. This paper proposes some techniques that consider the above problems from the perspective of fuzzy evidence theory. First of all, a new distance incorporating decision attributes is defined, and then a new fuzzy relation with an anti-noise mechanism is defined. Furthermore, fuzzy belief and fuzzy plausibility are defined based on the defined new distance and new fuzzy relation. In this framework, two anti-noise attribute reduction algorithms for hybrid data are proposed. Experiments on 12 data sets of various types show that compared with the other 8 state-of-the-art algorithms, the proposed algorithms improve the classification accuracy by at least 2% and the anti-noise ability by at least 11%. Therefore, it can be concluded that the proposed algorithms have excellent anti-noise ability while maintaining good feature selection ability.