Feature Selection Method Based on Differential Correlation Information Entropy

Feature selection is one of the major aspects of pattern classification systems. In previous studies, Ding and Peng recognized the importance of feature selection and proposed a minimum redundancy feature selection method to minimize redundant features for sequential selection in microarray gene expression data. However, since the minimum redundancy feature selection method is used mainly to measure the dependency between random variables of mutual information, the results cannot be optimal without consideration of global feature selection. Therefore, based on the framework of minimum redundancy-maximum correlation, this paper introduces entropy to measure global feature selection and proposes a new feature subset evaluation method, differential correlation information entropy. In our function, different bivariate correlation metrics are selected. Then, the feature selection is completed through sequence forward search. Two different classification models are used on eleven standard data sets of the UCI machine learning knowledge base to compare various comparison algorithms, such as mRMR, reliefF and feature selection method with joint maximal information entropy, with our method. The experimental results show that feature selection based on our proposed method is obviously superior to that of other models.