MFlexDT: multi flexible fuzzy decision tree for data stream classification

Abstract

In many real-world applications, instances (data) arrive sequentially in the form of streams. Processing such data poses challenges to machine learning. While adhering to on-line learning strategies, in this paper we extend the Flexible Fuzzy Decision Tree (FlexDT) algorithm with multiple partitioning that makes it possible to carry out automatic on-line fuzzy data classification. The proposed method is aimed to balance accuracy and tree size in data stream mining. The objective of the classification problem is to predict the true class of each incoming instances in real time. In terms of evaluation of the method, accuracy, tree depth, and the learning time are significant factors influencing the performance. A series of experiments demonstrate that the proposed method produces optimal trees for both numeric and nominal features (variables).