Attribute reduction with fuzzy divergence-based weighted neighborhood rough sets

Abstract

Neighborhood rough sets are well-known as an interesting approach for attribute reduction in numerical/continuous data tables. Nevertheless, in most existing neighborhood rough set models, all attributes are assigned the same weights. This may undermine the capacity to select important attributes, especially for high-dimensional datasets. To establish attribute weights, in this study, we will utilize fuzzy divergence to evaluate the distinction between each attribute with the whole attributes in classifying the objects to the decision classes. Then, we construct a new model of fuzzy divergence-based weighted neighborhood rough sets, as well as propose an efficient attribute reduction algorithm. In our method, reducts are considered under the scenario of the α-certainty region, which is introduced as an extension of the positive region. Several related properties will show that attribute reduction based on the α-certainty region can significantly enhance the ability to identify optimal attributes due to reducing the influence of noisy information. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, we conduct experiments on 12 benchmark datasets. The results demonstrate that our algorithm not only significantly reduces the number of attributes compared to the original data but also enhances classification accuracy. In comparison to some other state-of-the-art algorithms, the proposed algorithm also outperforms in terms of classification accuracy for almost all of datasets, while also maintaining a highly competitive reduct size and computation time.