Error-Correcting Output Codes for Local Learners

Abstract

Error-correcting output codes (ECOCs) represent classes with a set of output bits, where each bit encodes a binary classification task corresponding to a unique partition of the classes. Algorithms that use ECOCs learn the function corresponding to each bit, and combine them to generate class predictions. ECOCs can reduce both variance and bias errors for multiclass classification tasks when the errors made at the output bits are not correlated. They work well with algorithms that eagerly induce global classifiers (e.g., C4.5) but do not assist simple local classifiers (e.g., nearest neighbor), which yield correlated predictions across the output bits. We show that the output bit predictions of local learners can be decorrelated by selecting different features for each bit. We present promising empirical results for this combination of ECOCs, nearest neighbor, and feature selection.