On Robust Trimming of Bayesian Network Classifiers

On Robust Trimming of Bayesian Network Classifiers

YooJung Choi, Guy Van den Broeck

Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main track. Pages 5002-5009. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2018/694

This paper considers the problem of removing costly features from a Bayesian network classifier. We want the classifier to be robust to these changes, and maintain its classification behavior. To this end, we propose a closeness metric between Bayesian classifiers, called the expected classification agreement (ECA). Our corresponding trimming algorithm finds an optimal subset of features and a new classification threshold that maximize the expected agreement, subject to a budgetary constraint. It utilizes new theoretical insights to perform branch-and-bound search in the space of feature sets, while computing bounds on the ECA. Our experiments investigate both the runtime cost of trimming and its effect on the robustness and accuracy of the final classifier.
Keywords:
Uncertainty in AI: Bayesian Networks
Uncertainty in AI: Exact Probabilistic Inference
Machine Learning: Feature Selection ; Learning Sparse Models
Heuristic Search and Game Playing: Combinatorial Search and Optimisation