An evidential classifier based on feature selection and two-step classification strategy

In this paper, we investigate ways to learn efficiently from uncertain data using belief functions. In order to extract more knowledge from imperfect and insufficient information and to improve classification accuracy, we propose a supervised learning method composed of a feature selection procedure and a two-step classification strategy. Using training information, the proposed feature selection procedure automatically determines the most informative feature subset by minimizing an objective function. The proposed two-step classification strategy further improves the decision-making accuracy by using complementary information obtained during the classification process. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated on various synthetic and real datasets. A comparison with other classification methods is also presented. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.