Optimized neural incremental attribute learning for classification based on statistical discriminability

Feature ordering is a significant data preprocessing method in incremental attribute learning (IAL), where features are gradually trained according to a given order. Previous research showed feature ordering is crucial to the IAL performance. It is relevant to each feature's discrimination ability, which can be calculated by single discriminability (SD). However, when feature dimensions increase, feature discrimination ability should also be calculated incrementally, because discrimination ability in lower dimensional spaces is different from that in higher spaces. Thus based on SD, accumulative discriminability (AD), a new statistical metric for incremental feature discrimination ability estimation, is designed. Moreover, a criterion that summarizes all the produced values of AD is employed to obtain the optimum feature ordering for classification problems based on neural networks by means of IAL. In addition, in order to reduce the time consumption, an effective feature ordering approach is developed. Compared with the feature ordering obtained by other approaches, the method outlined in this paper obtained good final classification results, which indicates that, firstly, feature discrimination ability should be incrementally estimated in IAL; and secondly, feature ordering derived by AD and its corresponding approaches are applicable with IAL.