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Extending AdaBoost:Varying the Base Learners and Modifying the Weight Calculation

AdaBoost has been considered one of the best classifiers ever
developed, but two important problems have not yet been addressed. The
first is the dependency on the ``weak" learner, and the second is the
failure to maintain the performance of learners with small error rates
(i.e. ``strong" learners). To solve the first problem, this work
proposes using a different learner in each iteration - known as AdaBoost
Dynamic (AD) - thereby ensuring that the performance of the algorithm
is almost equal to that of the best ``weak" learner executed with AdaBoost.M1. The work
then further modifies the procedure to vary the learner in each
iteration, in order to locate the learner with the smallest error rate
in its training data. This is done using the same weight calculation
as in the original AdaBoost; this version is known as AdaBoost Dynamic
with Exponential Loss (AB-EL). The results were poor, because AdaBoost
does not perform well with strong learners, so, in this sense, the work
confirmed previous works' results. To determine how to improve the
performance, the weight calculation is modified to use the sigmoid function
with algorithm output being the derivative of the same sigmoid function,
rather than the logistic
regression weight calculation originally used by AdaBoost; this
version is known as AdaBoost Dynamic with Logistic Loss (AB-DL). This
work presents the convergence proof that binomial weight calculation
works, and that this approach improves the results for the strong
learner, both theoretically and empirically. AB-DL also has some
disadvantages, like the search for the ``best" classifier and that
this search reduces the diversity among the classifiers. In order
to attack these issues, another algorithm is proposed that combines
AD ``weak" leaner execution policy with a small modification of AB-DL's
weight calculation, called AdaBoost Dynamic with Added Cost (AD-AC).
AD-AC also has a theoretical upper bound error, and the algorithm
offers a small accuracy improvement when compared with AB-DL, and traditional
AdaBoost approaches. Lastly, this work also adapts AD-AC's weight calculation
approach to deal with data stream problem, where classifiers must deal with
very large data sets (in the order of millions of instances), and limited
memory availability.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:OOU.#10393/31146
Date27 May 2014
CreatorsNeves de Souza, Erico
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThèse / Thesis

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