INSTANCE-BASED LEARNING ALGORITHMS Presented by Yan T. Yang

Agenda Background what is instance-based learning? Two simple algorithms Extensions [Aha, 1994]: Feedback algorithm Noise reduction Irrelevant attribute elimination Novel attribute adoption

Learning Paradigms Cognitive psychology: how people/animals/ machines learn? Jerome Bruner Two schools of thoughts: [Bruner, Goodnow and Austin 1967] Abstraction-based: Form a generalized idea from the examples, then use it to classify new objects.

Learning Paradigms Cognitive psychology: how people/animals/ machines learn? Jerome Bruner Two schools of thoughts: [Bruner, Goodnow and Austin 1967] Abstraction-based: Examples: Artificial Neural Network, Support Vector Machine, Rule based learner/decision trees: If not animated… then not an animal

Learning Paradigms Cognitive psychology: how people/animals/ machines learn? Jerome Bruner Two schools of thoughts: [Bruner, Goodnow and Austin 1967] Instance-based: Store all (suitable) training examples, compare new objects to the examples.

Comparison Between Two Paradigms Abstraction Based Generalization: Rules Discriminant planes or functions Trees Workload is during training time Little work during query time Instance Based Store (suitable) examples Saved instances Workload is during query time Little work during training time

Instance-based Learning Training Set Example [Aha, 1994]: Attributes – is enrolled, has MS degree, and is married (, PhD student) (, not PhD student) (, PhD student)

Instance-based Learning Training Set Instance-based learning Algorithm Concept Description

Instance-based Learning Training Set Instance-based learning Algorithm Concept Description Similarity Function

Instance-based Learning Training Set Instance-based learning Algorithm Concept Description Similarity Function Classification Function

Instance-based Learning Algorithm Input: Training set Output: Concept Description Similarity function Classification function Optional: Keep track of each concept description instances correct and incorrect rates Concept Description Adder Concept Description Remover

Instance-based Learning Algorithm Advantages and disadvantages [Mitchell, 1997] Advantages: Training is very fast Learn complex class membership Do not lose information Disadvantages: Slow at query time Easily fooled by irrelevant attributes

Instance-based Learning Algorithm Example IBL1: Assign the class of the most similar concept description instance to the new instance. Nearest neighbor Save all training instances in concept description CD= concept description

Instance-based Learning Algorithm Example IBL1: –Assign the class of the most similar concept description instance to the new instance. –Nearest neighbor –Save all training instances in concept description Voronoi Tessellation Training data

Instance-based Learning Algorithm Example IBL2: Similar to IBL1: nearest neighbor Save only incorrectly classified instances in training set: Intuition: These are nearly always lies in the boundary between two classes. So, only if these are fully saved, the rest which are far from boundaries, can be easily deduced by using the similarity function [Karadeniz,1996] CD= concept description

Criticisms Mainly because of Nearest Neighbor Algorithms as the basis: [Brieman, Friedman, Olshen and Stone, 1984 ] 1. They are expensive due to their storage 2. They are sensitive to the choice of the similarity function 3. They cannot easily work with missing attribute values 4. They cannot easily work with nominal attributes 5. They do not yield concise summaries of concepts

Criticisms Mainly because of Nearest Neighbor Algorithms as the basis: [Brieman, Friedman, Olshen and Stone, 1984 ] 1. They are expensive due to their storage 2. They are sensitive to the choice of the similarity function 3. They cannot easily work with missing attribute values 4. They cannot easily work with nominal attributes 5. They do not yield concise summaries of concepts [Aha, 1992] –IBL2 rectifies 1. –Extensions (following slides) rectifies 1,2,3. –[Stanfill and Waltz, 1986] rectifies 4. –[Salzberg, 1990] rectifies 5.

Extension: Filtering Noisy Training Instances (IBL3) Modification: 1. Maintain classification records 2. Only significantly good instances are saved; and 3. Discard noisy saved instance (i.e. those instances with significantly poor classification performance)

Extension: Filtering Noisy Training Instances (IBL3) ComponentIBL2IBL3 Similarity FunctionEuclidean distance Classification Function Nearest acceptable neighbor Concept Description Updater - Save only misclassified instances -Use only significantly good saved instances -Remove significantly bad saved instances

Extension: Filtering Noisy Training Instances (IBL3) Signficantly good or bad: use statistical confidence intervals (CI). construct CI for the current instances classification accuracy. construct CI for its classs current observed relative frequency. Class frequency Classification accuracy Significantly good

Extension: Filtering Noisy Training Instances (IBL3) Signficantly good or bad: use statistical confidence intervals (CI). construct CI for the current instances classification accuracy. construct CI for its classs current observed relative frequency. Class frequency Classification accuracy Significantly bad

Extension: Filtering Noisy Training Instances (IBL3) Signficantly good or bad: use statistical confidence intervals (CI). construct CI for the current instances classification accuracy. construct CI for its classs current observed relative frequency. [Hogg and Tanis, 1983]

Extension: Tolerate irrelevant attributes (IBL4) IBL1-IBL3: Assume all attributes have equal relevance ; Real World: some attributes are more discriminative than others; Irrelevant attributes cause poor performance.

Extension: Tolerate irrelevant attributes (IBL4) Regular similarity measure (Euclidean Distance) IBL4s similarity measure (Euclidean Distance) Concept-dependent: sim(animal, tiger, cat) > sim(pet, tiger, cat)

Extension: Tolerate irrelevant attributes (IBL4) IBL4s similarity measure (Euclidean Distance)

Extension: Tolerate irrelevant attributes (IBL4) IBL4s similarity measure (Euclidean Distance)

Extension: Tolerate novel attributes (IBL5) (IBL1– IBL4) assume: all attributes are known a priori to the training process; Everyday situations: instances may not initially described by all possible attributes; Missing value: a different issue. 1) assigning dont know; 2) assigning the most probable value; 3) assigning all possible values [Gams and Lavrac, 1987]

Extension: Tolerate novel attributes (IBL5) Extension (IBL5): allow novel attributes introduced late in the training process (extra: handle missing values in a novel way) IBL4s similarity measure (Euclidean Distance) IBL5s similarity measure (Euclidean Distance)

Extension: Tolerate novel attributes (IBL5) Extension (IBL5): allow novel attributes introduced late in the training process (extra: handle missing values in a novel way) IBL5s similarity measure (Euclidean Distance)

Results IB = instance based learning (IBL)

Results

Thanks Q and A