scholarly journals Predicting United States Policy Outcomes with Random Forests

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Shawn K. McGuire ◽  
Charles B. Delahunt
Keyword(s):  
Feature Selection ◽  
General Population ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
High Income ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Selection Methods ◽  
Policy Area ◽  
Test Sets ◽  
Powerful Interest ◽  
The U.S

Two decades of U.S. government legislative outcomes, as well as the policy preferences of high-income people, the general population, and diverse interest groups, were captured in a detailed dataset curated and analyzed by Gilens, Page et al. (2014). They found that the preferences of high-income earners correlated strongly with policy outcomes, while the preferences of the general population did not, except via a linkage with the preferences of high earners. Their analysis applied the tools of classical statistical inference, in particular logistic regression. In this paper we analyze the Gilens dataset using the complementary tools of Random Forest classifiers (RFs), from Machine Learning. We present two primary findings, concerning respectively prediction and inference: (i) Holdout test sets can be predicted with approximately 70% balanced accuracy by models that consult only the preferences of those in the 90th income percentile and a small number of powerful interest groups, as well as policy area labels. These results include retrodiction, where models trained on pre-1997 cases predicted “future” (post-1997) cases. The 20% gain in accuracy over baseline (chance), in this detailed but noisy dataset, indicates the high importance of a few distinct players in U.S. policy outcomes, and aligns with a body of research indicating that the U.S. government has significant plutocratic tendencies. (ii) The feature selection methods of RF models identify especially salient subsets of interest groups (economic players). These can be used to further investigate the dynamics of governmental policy making, and also offer an example of the potential value of RF feature selection methods for inference on datasets such as this one.

The Effectiveness of the Fused Weighted Filter Feature Selection Method to Improve Software Fault Prediction

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Alighardashi ◽  
Mohammad Ali Zare Chahooki
Keyword(s):  
Feature Selection ◽  
Feature Selection Method ◽  
Selection Method ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Fault Prediction ◽  
Filter Method ◽  
Selection Methods ◽  
Software Projects ◽  
Software Fault Prediction ◽  
Software Fault

Improving the software product quality before releasing by periodic tests is one of the most expensive activities in software projects. Due to limited resources to modules test in software projects, it is important to identify fault-prone modules and use the test sources for fault prediction in these modules. Software fault predictors based on machine learning algorithms, are effective tools for identifying fault-prone modules. Extensive studies are being done in this field to find the connection between features of software modules, and their fault-prone. Some of features in predictive algorithms are ineffective and reduce the accuracy of prediction process. So, feature selection methods to increase performance of prediction models in fault-prone modules are widely used. In this study, we proposed a feature selection method for effective selection of features, by using combination of filter feature selection methods. In the proposed filter method, the combination of several filter feature selection methods presented as fused weighed filter method. Then, the proposed method caused convergence rate of feature selection as well as the accuracy improvement. The obtained results on NASA and PROMISE with ten datasets, indicates the effectiveness of proposed method in improvement of accuracy and convergence of software fault prediction.

scholarly journals A Unified View of Causal and Non-causal Feature Selection

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Kui Yu ◽  
Lin Liu ◽  
Jiuyong Li
Keyword(s):  
Feature Selection ◽  
Bayesian Network ◽  
Synthetic Data ◽  
Selection Methods ◽  
Bayesian Network Model ◽  
Real World Data ◽  
Feature Sets ◽  
Unified View ◽  
Optimal Feature ◽  
Different Levels

In this article, we aim to develop a unified view of causal and non-causal feature selection methods. The unified view will fill in the gap in the research of the relation between the two types of methods. Based on the Bayesian network framework and information theory, we first show that causal and non-causal feature selection methods share the same objective. That is to find the Markov blanket of a class attribute, the theoretically optimal feature set for classification. We then examine the assumptions made by causal and non-causal feature selection methods when searching for the optimal feature set, and unify the assumptions by mapping them to the restrictions on the structure of the Bayesian network model of the studied problem. We further analyze in detail how the structural assumptions lead to the different levels of approximations employed by the methods in their search, which then result in the approximations in the feature sets found by the methods with respect to the optimal feature set. With the unified view, we can interpret the output of non-causal methods from a causal perspective and derive the error bounds of both types of methods. Finally, we present practical understanding of the relation between causal and non-causal methods using extensive experiments with synthetic data and various types of real-world data.

A fuzzy gaussian rank aggregation ensemble feature selection method for microarray data

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-301
Author(s):  
B. Venkatesh ◽  
J. Anuradha
Keyword(s):  
Feature Selection ◽  
Microarray Data ◽  
Classification Accuracy ◽  
Performance Metrics ◽  
Feature Selection Method ◽  
Selection Method ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Svm Classifier ◽  
Binary Particle Swarm Optimization ◽  
Selection Methods

In Microarray Data, it is complicated to achieve more classification accuracy due to the presence of high dimensions, irrelevant and noisy data. And also It had more gene expression data and fewer samples. To increase the classification accuracy and the processing speed of the model, an optimal number of features need to extract, this can be achieved by applying the feature selection method. In this paper, we propose a hybrid ensemble feature selection method. The proposed method has two phases, filter and wrapper phase in filter phase ensemble technique is used for aggregating the feature ranks of the Relief, minimum redundancy Maximum Relevance (mRMR), and Feature Correlation (FC) filter feature selection methods. This paper uses the Fuzzy Gaussian membership function ordering for aggregating the ranks. In wrapper phase, Improved Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (IBPSO) is used for selecting the optimal features, and the RBF Kernel-based Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier is used as an evaluator. The performance of the proposed model are compared with state of art feature selection methods using five benchmark datasets. For evaluation various performance metrics such as Accuracy, Recall, Precision, and F1-Score are used. Furthermore, the experimental results show that the performance of the proposed method outperforms the other feature selection methods.

scholarly journals Lung adenocarcinoma and lung squamous cell carcinoma cancer classification, biomarker identification, and gene expression analysis using overlapping feature selection methods

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe W. Chen ◽  
Joseph Dhahbi
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Feature Selection ◽  
Expression Analysis ◽  
Gene Expression Analysis ◽  
Biomarker Discovery ◽  
Lung Squamous Cell Carcinoma ◽  
Cancer Classification ◽  
Selection Methods ◽  
Biomarker Identification ◽  
Overlapping Method

AbstractLung cancer is one of the deadliest cancers in the world. Two of the most common subtypes, lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC), have drastically different biological signatures, yet they are often treated similarly and classified together as non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). LUAD and LUSC biomarkers are scarce, and their distinct biological mechanisms have yet to be elucidated. To detect biologically relevant markers, many studies have attempted to improve traditional machine learning algorithms or develop novel algorithms for biomarker discovery. However, few have used overlapping machine learning or feature selection methods for cancer classification, biomarker identification, or gene expression analysis. This study proposes to use overlapping traditional feature selection or feature reduction techniques for cancer classification and biomarker discovery. The genes selected by the overlapping method were then verified using random forest. The classification statistics of the overlapping method were compared to those of the traditional feature selection methods. The identified biomarkers were validated in an external dataset using AUC and ROC analysis. Gene expression analysis was then performed to further investigate biological differences between LUAD and LUSC. Overall, our method achieved classification results comparable to, if not better than, the traditional algorithms. It also identified multiple known biomarkers, and five potentially novel biomarkers with high discriminating values between LUAD and LUSC. Many of the biomarkers also exhibit significant prognostic potential, particularly in LUAD. Our study also unraveled distinct biological pathways between LUAD and LUSC.

An evaluation of feature selection methods for environmental data

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 101224
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Effrosynidis ◽  
Avi Arampatzis
Keyword(s):  
Feature Selection ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Selection Methods

scholarly journals Beijing's Policies for Managing Han and Ethnic-Minority Chinese Communities Abroad

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 183-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
James To
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Cooperative Groups ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Vast Network ◽  
Powerful Interest

The overseas Chinese (OC) form a vast network of powerful interest groups and important political actors capable of shaping the future of China from abroad by transmitting values back to their ancestral homeland (Tu 1991). While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) welcomes and actively seeks to foster relations with the OC in order to advance China's national interests, some cohorts may be hostile to the regime. In accordance with their distinct demographic and ethnic profiles, the CCP's qiaowu ([Formula: see text], OC affairs) infrastructure serves to entice, co-opt, or isolate various OC groupings. This article summarises the policies for managing different subsets of OC over the past three decades, and argues that through qiaowu, the CCP has successfully unified cooperative groups for China's benefit, while preventing discordant ones from eroding its grip on power.

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