Alessandro Antonucci, Marco Cattaneo, Giorgio Corani

---

Likelihood-Based Naive Credal Classifier

Abstract

The naive credal classifier extends the classical naive Bayes classifier to imprecise probabilities, substituting the imprecise Dirichlet model for the uniform prior. As an alternative to the naive credal classifier, we present a likelihood-based approach, which extends in a novel way the naive Bayes towards imprecise probabilities, by considering any possible quantification (each one defining a naive Bayes classifier) apart from those assigning to the available data a probability below a given threshold level. Besides the available supervised data, in the likelihood evaluation we also consider the instance to be classified, for which the value of the class variable is assumed missing-at-random. We obtain a closed formula to compute the dominance according to the maximality criterion for any threshold level. As there are currently no well-established metrics for comparing credal classifiers which have considerably different determinacy, we compare the two classifiers when they have comparable determinacy, finding that in those cases they generate almost equivalent classifications.

Keywords

Classification, naive credal classifier, naive Bayes classifier, likelihood-based learning.

---

Download area

The paper is available in the following formats:

• Gzipped pdf file
• pdf file

Plenary talk: file

Poster: file

---

Authors’ addresses

Alessandro Antonucci
c/o IDSIA
Galleria 2
CH-6928 Manno (Lugano)

Marco Cattaneo
Institut fuer Statistik
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen
Ludwigstrasse 33
80539 Muenchen

Giorgio Corani
IDSIA
CH-6928 Manno
Lugano
Switzerland

E-mail addresses

Alessandro Antonucci		alessandro@idsia.ch
Marco Cattaneo		cattaneo@stat.uni-muenchen.de
Giorgio Corani		giorgio@idsia.ch