A Geometric Approach to Textual Augmented Data Filtering

Abstract

Data augmentation is necessary if the amount of training data is insufficient for supervised learning. For natural language processing tasks, obtaining good quality augmented data is not easy. This paper introduces GATFilter, a novel method for filtering out inappropriate augmented textual data for text classification (TC). Utilizing geometric concepts, more specifically the principle component and convex hull analyses, this method adeptly preserves the semantic integrity of words within augmented texts. GATFilter is versatile and applicable across various types of textual augmentation methods. Experiments using several datasets and augmentation strategies showed that classifiers trained with GATFilter-filtered augmented data sets showed improvements in key performance metrics, including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score. The method’s efficacy is notably influenced by the quality of the underlying augmentation techniques, indicating its potential to complement and refine various text augmentation strategies. Furthermore, our analysis showed that GATFilter is particularly able to amplify the effectiveness of methods that generate good quality augmented data. GATFilter is openly available online on Github¹, and as a Python package².