One-against-all-based Hellinger distance decision tree for multiclass imbalanced learning

Abstract

Since traditional machine learning methods are sensitive to skewed distribution and do not consider the characteristics in multiclass imbalance problems, the skewed distribution of multiclass data poses a major challenge to machine learning algorithms. To tackle such issues, we propose a new splitting criterion of the decision tree based on the one-against-all-based Hellinger distance (OAHD). Two crucial elements are included in OAHD. First, the one-against-all scheme is integrated into the process of computing the Hellinger distance in OAHD, thereby extending the Hellinger distance decision tree to cope with the multiclass imbalance problem. Second, for the multiclass imbalance problem, the distribution and the number of distinct classes are taken into account, and a modified Gini index is designed. Moreover, we give theoretical proofs for the properties of OAHD, including skew insensitivity and the ability to seek a purer node in the decision tree. Finally, we collect 20 public real-world imbalanced data sets from the Knowledge Extraction based on Evolutionary Learning (KEEL) repository and the University of California, Irvine (UCI) repository. Experimental and statistical results show that OAHD significantly improves the performance compared with the five other well-known decision trees in terms of Precision, F-measure, and multiclass area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (MAUC). Moreover, through statistical analysis, the Friedman and Nemenyi tests are used to prove the advantage of OAHD over the five other decision trees.

Keywords

Decision trees / Multiclass imbalanced learning / Node splitting criterion / Hellinger distance / One-against-all scheme

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2022 Zhejiang University Press