Unsupervised feature selection by learning exponential weights

Abstract

Unsupervised feature selection has gained considerable attention for extracting valuable features from unlabeled datasets. Existing approaches typically rely on sparse mapping matrices to preserve local neighborhood structures. However, this strategy favors large-weight features, potentially overlooking smaller yet valuable ones and distorting data distribution and feature structure. Besides, some methods focus on local structure information, failing to explore global information. To address these limitations, we introduce an exponential weighting mechanism to induce a rational feature distribution and explore data structure in the feature subspace. Specifically, we propose a unified framework incorporating local structure learning and exponentially weighted sparse regression for optimal feature combinations, preserving global and local information. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our approach over existing unsupervised feature selection methods.