Setting Attribute Weights for Nearest Neighbor Learning Algorithms Using C4.5

Abstract

Nearest Neighbour (NN) learning algorithms utilize a distance function to determine the classification of testing examples. The attribute weights in the distance function should be set appropriately. We study situations where a simple approach of setting attribute weights using decision trees does not work well, and design three improvements. We test these new methods thoroughly using artificially generated datasets and datasets from the machine learning repository.