Bayesian Classifier for Sparsity-Promoting Feature Selection

Abstract

A Bayesian classifier for sparsity-promoting feature selection is developed in this paper, where a set of nonlinear mappings for the original data is performed as a pre-processing step. The linear classification model with such mappings from the original input space to a nonlinear transformation space can not only construct the nonlinear classification boundary, but also realize the feature selection for the original data. A zero-mean Gaussian prior with Gamma precision and a finite approximation of Beta process prior are used to promote sparsity in the utilization of features and nonlinear mappings in our model, respectively. We derive the Variational Bayesian (VB) inference algorithm for the proposed linear classifier. Experimental results based on the synthetic data set, measured radar data set, high-dimensional gene expression data set, and several benchmark data sets demonstrate the aggressive and robust feature selection capability and comparable classification accuracy of our method comparing with some other existing classifiers.