Fast feature selection algorithm for neighborhood rough set model based on Bucket and Trie structures

Abstract

Feature selection is viewed as the problem of finding the minimal number of features from an original set with the minimum information loss. Due to its high importance in the fields of pattern recognition and data mining, it is necessary to investigate fast and effective search algorithms. In this paper, we introduce a novel fast feature selection algorithm for neighborhood rough set model based on Bucket and Trie structures. This proposed algorithm can guarantee to find the optimal minimal reduct by adopting a global search strategy. In addition, the dependence degree is subsequently used to evaluate the relevance of the attribute subset. Consequently, the proposed algorithm is tested on several standard data sets from UCI repository and compared with the most recent related approaches. The obtained theoretical and experimental results reveal that the present algorithm is very effective and convenient for the problem of feature selection, indicating that it could be useful for many pattern recognition and data mining systems.