María José del Jesús

A proposal on reasoning methods in fuzzy rule-based classification systems

Fuzzy Rule-Based Systems have been succesfully applied to pattern classification problems. In this type of classification systems, the classical Fuzzy Reasoning Method (FRM) classifies a new example with the consequent of the rule with the greatest degree of association. By using this reasoning method, we lose the information provided by the other rules with different linguistic labels which also represent this value in the pattern attribute, although probably to a lesser degree. The aim of this paper is to present new FRMs which allow us to improve the system performance, maintaining its interpretability. The common aspect of the proposals is the participation, in the classification of the new pattern, of the rules that have been fired by such pattern. We formally describe the behaviour of a general reasoning method, analyze six proposals for this general model, and present a method to learn the parameters of these FRMs by means of Genetic Algorithms, adapting the inference mechanism to the set of rules. Finally, to show the increase of the system generalization capability provided by the proposed FRMs, we point out some results obtained by their integration in a fuzzy rule generation process.

An overview on subgroup discovery: foundations and applications

Subgroup discovery is a data mining technique which extracts interesting rules with respect to a target variable. An important characteristic of this task is the combination of predictive and descriptive induction. An overview related to the task of subgroup discovery is presented. This review focuses on the foundations, algorithms, and advanced studies together with the applications of subgroup discovery presented throughout the specialised bibliography.

Analysing the classification of imbalanced data-sets with multiple classes: Binarization techniques and ad-hoc approaches

The imbalanced class problem is related to the real-world application of classification in engineering. It is characterised by a very different distribution of examples among the classes. The condition of multiple imbalanced classes is more restrictive when the aim of the final system is to obtain the most accurate precision for each of the concepts of the problem. The goal of this work is to provide a thorough experimental analysis that will allow us to determine the behaviour of the different approaches proposed in the specialised literature. First, we will make use of binarization schemes, i.e., one versus one and one versus all, in order to apply the standard approaches to solving binary class imbalanced problems. Second, we will apply several ad hoc procedures which have been designed for the scenario of imbalanced data-sets with multiple classes. This experimental study will include several well-known algorithms from the literature such as decision trees, support vector machines and instance-based learning, with the intention of obtaining global conclusions from different classification paradigms. The extracted findings will be supported by a statistical comparative analysis using more than 20 data-sets from the KEEL repository.

Genetic Learning of Fuzzy Rule-Based Classification Systems Cooperating with Fuzzy Reasoning Methods

In this paper, we present a multistage genetic learning process for obtaining linguistic fuzzy rule‐based classification systems that integrates fuzzy reasoning methods cooperating with the fuzzy rule base and learns the best set of linguistic hedges for the linguistic variable terms. We show the application of the genetic learning process to two well known sample bases, and compare the results with those obtained from different learning algorithms. The results show the good behavior of the proposed method, which maintains the linguistic description of the fuzzy rules.

Hierarchical fuzzy rule based classification systems with genetic rule selection for imbalanced data-sets

In many real application areas, the data used are highly skewed and the number of instances for some classes are much higher than that of the other classes. Solving a classification task using such an imbalanced data-set is difficult due to the bias of the training towards the majority classes. The aim of this paper is to improve the performance of fuzzy rule based classification systems on imbalanced domains, increasing the granularity of the fuzzy partitions on the boundary areas between the classes, in order to obtain a better separability. We propose the use of a hierarchical fuzzy rule based classification system, which is based on the refinement of a simple linguistic fuzzy model by means of the extension of the structure of the knowledge base in a hierarchical way and the use of a genetic rule selection process in order to get a compact and accurate model. The good performance of this approach is shown through an extensive experimental study carried out over a large collection of imbalanced data-sets.

Big Data with Cloud Computing: an insight on the computing environment, MapReduce, and programming frameworks

The term ‘Big Data’ has spread rapidly in the framework of Data Mining and Business Intelligence. This new scenario can be defined by means of those problems that cannot be effectively or efficiently addressed using the standard computing resources that we currently have. We must emphasize that Big Data does not just imply large volumes of data but also the necessity for scalability, i.e., to ensure a response in an acceptable elapsed time. When the scalability term is considered, usually traditional parallel‐type solutions are contemplated, such as the Message Passing Interface or high performance and distributed Database Management Systems. Nowadays there is a new paradigm that has gained popularity over the latter due to the number of benefits it offers. This model is Cloud Computing, and among its main features we has to stress its elasticity in the use of computing resources and space, less management effort, and flexible costs. In this article, we provide an overview on the topic of Big Data, and how the current problem can be addressed from the perspective of Cloud Computing and its programming frameworks. In particular, we focus on those systems for large‐scale analytics based on the MapReduce scheme and Hadoop, its open‐source implementation. We identify several libraries and software projects that have been developed for aiding practitioners to address this new programming model. We also analyze the advantages and disadvantages of MapReduce, in contrast to the classical solutions in this field. Finally, we present a number of programming frameworks that have been proposed as an alternative to MapReduce, developed under the premise of solving the shortcomings of this model in certain scenarios and platforms. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2014, 4:380–409. doi: 10.1002/widm.1134

On the 2-tuples based genetic tuning performance for fuzzy rule based classification systems in imbalanced data-sets

When performing a classification task, we may find some data-sets with a different class distribution among their patterns. This problem is known as classification with imbalanced data-sets and it appears in many real application areas. For this reason, it has recently become a relevant topic in the area of Machine Learning. The aim of this work is to improve the behaviour of fuzzy rule based classification systems (FRBCSs) in the framework of imbalanced data-sets by means of a tuning step. Specifically, we adapt the 2-tuples based genetic tuning approach to classification problems showing the good synergy between this method and some FRBCSs. Our empirical results show that the 2-tuples based genetic tuning increases the performance of FRBCSs in all types of imbalanced data. Furthermore, when the initial Rule Base, built by a fuzzy rule learning methodology, obtains a good behaviour in terms of accuracy, we achieve a higher improvement in performance for the whole model when applying the genetic 2-tuples post-processing step. This enhancement is also obtained in the case of cooperation with a preprocessing stage, proving the necessity of rebalancing the training set before the learning phase when dealing with imbalanced data.

Evolutionary Fuzzy Rule Induction Process for Subgroup Discovery: A Case Study in Marketing

This paper presents a genetic fuzzy system for the data mining task of subgroup discovery, the subgroup discovery iterative genetic algorithm (SDIGA), which obtains fuzzy rules for subgroup discovery in disjunctive normal form. This kind of fuzzy rule allows us to represent knowledge about patterns of interest in an explanatory and understandable form that can be used by the expert. Experimental evaluation of the algorithm and a comparison with other subgroup discovery algorithms show the validity of the proposal. SDIGA is applied to a market problem studied in the University of Mondragon, Spain, in which it is necessary to extract automatically relevant and interesting information that helps to improve fair planning policies. The application of SDIGA to this problem allows us to obtain novel and valuable knowledge for experts.

On the influence of an adaptive inference system in fuzzy rule based classification systems for imbalanced data-sets

Classification with imbalanced data-sets supposes a new challenge for researches in the framework of data mining. This problem appears when the number of examples that represents one of the classes of the data-set (usually the concept of interest) is much lower than that of the other classes. In this manner, the learning model must be adapted to this situation, which is very common in real applications.In this paper, we will work with fuzzy rule based classification systems using a preprocessing step in order to deal with the class imbalance. Our aim is to analyze the behaviour of fuzzy rule based classification systems in the framework of imbalanced data-sets by means of the application of an adaptive inference system with parametric conjunction operators.Our results shows empirically that the use of the this parametric conjunction operators implies a higher performance for all data-sets with different imbalanced ratios.

Addressing imbalance in multilabel classification: Measures and random resampling algorithms

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the imbalanced learning task in the multilabel scenario, aiming to accomplish two different goals. The first one is to present specialized measures directed to assess the imbalance level in multilabel datasets (MLDs). Using these measures we will be able to conclude which MLDs are imbalanced, and therefore would need an appropriate treatment. The second objective is to propose several algorithms designed to reduce the imbalance in MLDs in a classifier-independent way, by means of resampling techniques. Two different approaches to divide the instances in minority and majority groups are studied. One of them considers each label combination as class identifier, whereas the other one performs an individual evaluation of each label imbalance level. A random undersampling and a random oversampling algorithm are proposed for each approach, giving as result four different algorithms. All of them are experimentally tested and their effectiveness is statistically evaluated. From the results obtained, a set of guidelines directed to show when these methods should be applied is also provided.