Discernibility matrix based incremental feature selection on fused decision tables

Abstract In rough set philosophy, each set of data can be seen as a fuzzy decision table. Since a decision table dynamically increases with time and space, these decision tables are integrated into a new one called fused decision table. In this paper, we focus on designing an incremental feature selection method on fused decision table by optimizing the space constraint of storing discernibility matrix. Here discernibility matrix is a known way of discernibility information measure in rough set theory. This paper applies the quasi/pseudo value of discernibility matrix rather than the true value of discernibility matrix to design an incremental mechanism. Unlike those discernibility matrix based non-incremental algorithms, the improved algorithm needs not save the whole discernibility matrix in main memory, which is desirable for the large data sets. More importantly, with the increment of decision tables, the discernibility matrix-based feature selection algorithm could constrain the computational cost by applying efficient information updating techniques—quasi/pseudo approximation operators. Finally, our experiments reveal that the proposed algorithm needs less computational cost, especially less occupied space, on the condition that the accuracy is limitedly lost.