Attribute selection for partially labeled data based on uncertainty measure

Abstract

Due to the relatively high cost of labeling data, only a fraction of the available data is typically labeled in machine learning. Some existing research handled attribute selection for partially labeled data by using the importance of an attribute subset or uncertainty measure (UM). Nevertheless, it overlooked the missing rate of labels or the choice of the UM with optimal performance. This study uses discernibility relation and the missing rate of labels to UM for partially labeled data and applies it to attribute selection. To begin with, a decision information system for partially labeled data (pl-DIS) can be used to induce two equivalent decision information systems (DISs): a DIS is constructed for labeled data (l-DIS), and separately, another DIS is constructed for unlabeled data (ul-DIS). Subsequently, a discernibility relation and the percentage of missing labels are introduced. Afterwards, four importance of attribute subset are identified by taking into account the discernibility relation and the missing rate of labels. The sum of their importance, which is determined by the label missing rates of two DISs, is calculated by weighting each of them and adding them together. These four importance may be seen as four UMs. In addition, numerical simulations and statistical analyses are carried out to showcase the effectiveness of four UMs. In the end, as its application for UM, the UM with optimal performance is used to attribute selection for partially labeled data and the corresponding algorithm is proposed. The experimental outcomes demonstrate the excellence of the proposed algorithm.