On exploiting hierarchical label structure with pairwise classifiers

The goal of this work was to test whether the performance of a regular pairwise classifier can be improved when additional information about the hierarchical class structure is added to the training sets. Somewhat surprisingly, the additional information seems to hurt the performance. We explain this with the fact that the structure of the class hierarchy is not reflected in the distribution of the instances.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: SIGKDD
• Authors: Johannes Fürnkranz, Jan Frederik Sima
• Keywords: Additional Information, Hierarchical Class Structure, Information Technology, Regular Pairwise Classifier, SIGKDD 2010