=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1703/paper14
|storemode=property
|title=New Taxonomy of Classification Methods Based on Formal Concepts Analysis
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1703/paper14.pdf
|volume=Vol-1703
|authors=Marwa Trabelsi,Nida Meddouri,Mondher Maddouri
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ecai/TrabelsiMM16
}}
==New Taxonomy of Classification Methods Based on Formal Concepts Analysis ==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1703/paper14.pdf
New taxonomy of classification methods based
on Formal Concepts Analysis
Marwa Trabelsi1 , Nida Meddouri1 and Mondher Maddouri2
1
Laboratory of computing, Programming, Algorithmic and Heuristic - LIPAH,
Faculty of Science of Tunis - FST, El Manar University, Tunis, Tunisie
trabelsimarou@live.com nida.meddouri@gmail.com
2
Management college, Jeddah university, Kingdom of Saoudi Arabia
maddourimondher@yahoo.fr
Abstract Data mining is an essential step in knowledge extraction from
data. Various approaches have been proposed in supervised classification
of data, among them approaches based on Formal Concept Analysis. In
this paper we present a new taxonomy of classification methods based on
Formal Concept Analysis.
Keywords: Data Mining, Supervised Classification, Formal Concept Analysis
1 Introduction
The volume of data stored in the web has undergone a significant and a continuous
evolution. Several efforts focused therefore on knowledge retrieval (extraction)
from data. In [4], the knowledge extraction from data is defined as an acquisition
of new knowledge, which is potentially useful, from the hidden facts within great
amounts of data. One of the main processes of the knowledge extraction is based
on data mining. This operation collects several tasks such as prediction, clustering
and supervised classification. The latter can be performed by methods based on
neural networks, decision trees, nearest neighbor, support vector machines or
Formal Concept Analysis (FCA). Several reasons lead to use the classification
method based on FCA, among them the ability of formal concepts to process a
significant quantities of data and to simplify the prediction of classes [17].
Supervised classification based on FCA consists in building functions or
models called classifiers from data to predict classes for future data. It aims at
extracting the classification rules based on the concepts generated previously
from data [19,21].
The whole process is performed in two main steps: a training step where a
classifier is built to describe a predetermined set of object classes from a training
set. A classification step where trained classifiers are used to assign a class to
each new object. In this paper, we focus only on supervised classification based on
FCA. Particularly, we propose a new taxonomy of classification methods based
on FCA. The paper is organized as follows : we present basic notions related
to FCA in Sect. 2. Sect. 3 describes new taxonomy of supervised classification
methods. In Sect. 4, we make a comparative study of such methods.
2 Formal Concept Analysis
Originally, FCA is conceived by R.Wille as a "restructuring" of abstract lattice
theory, i.e., making it closer to the needs of other branches of science. FCA
represents a theoretical background for many applications in computer science.
It covers various fields such as linguistics, information retrieval, text mining,
knowledge representation and more recently knowledge extraction.
A formal context is represented as a triplet K = (G, M, I) witch relies a
finite set of objects G to a finite set of attributes M using binary relation I (I⊆
G × M ) [7]. A formal context can be illustrated by a two-dimensional table
where objects are presented by lines and attributes are presented by columns.
All possible formal concepts are extracted from a formal context K = (G, M, I).
In fact, a formal concept is represented by a pair (A, B) such that A ⊆ G and
B ⊆ M , A′ = B and B ′ = A where A′ = {m ∈ M | (g,m) ∈ I ∀ g ∈ A}, i.e.
the set of attributes common to all objects in A, and B ′ = {g ∈ G | (g,m) ∈
I ∀ m ∈ B}, i.e. the set of objects which have all attributes in B. A and B
are called, respectively, extent and intent of the concept (A, B) [7]. The set of
all concepts can be organized as a complete lattice of formal concepts, called
Concept Lattice [7].
3 Supervised classification based on Formal Concept
Analysis
Classification methods based on FCA uses either what we call exhaustive or
combinatory approaches. In this section, we describe in detail the approaches
and we give an overview of existing methods for each approach.
3.1 Exhaustive classification approach
Exhaustive methods are characterized commonly by the use of one single classifier.
However, they vary between them according to the criteria used on concepts
selection and the size of lattices outlining formal concepts. We distinguish overall
methods based on complete lattices and others based on sublattices [21].
Among the works that have focused on the classification using a complete lat-
tice as research space, we can cite GRAND [20], RULEARNER [22], GALOIS
[2], CBALattice [8], NAVIGALA [24], HMCS-FCA-SC [5] and SPFC [9].
These methods carried out the validation of the characteristics associated
to each concepts in the lattices level by level. The navigation in the lattice of
concepts starts from the minimal concept where all the concepts of the lattice
are considered as candidates without having an idea on their validity.
GRAND3 and GALOIS are the first methods which use complete lattices of
formal concepts. They build a complete lattice using an incremental algorithm and
it updates the lattices by adding new nodes and removing redundant connections.
Then, GRAND chooses the more specific rules to be applied for each object [20].
3
Graph-based induction
GALOIS also builds a complete lattice in an incremental and ascending way.
In the classification step, the system computes the similarity between new object
and each concept. The similarity between an object and a concept is the number
of common attributes verified by the object [2].
Other classification systems based on FCA are developed following GRAND
such as RULEARNER and NAVIGALA. NAVIGALA4 uses an object context
described by numerical vectors of fixed size. These vectors are stored in a discrete
table which then becomes binary [24]. RULEARNER, in a similar setting, uses
a complete concept lattice as a research space in classification rules. During the
classification, it uses majority voting to determine the classes of new objects [22].
CBALattice builds a complete lattice and applies association rules to extract
classification rules. The method is incremental and progressive. Every increase in
the number of objects, attributes, and classes can be handled efficiently [8].
HMCS-FCA-SC5 also uses a complete lattice and existing information in
formal concepts. However, unlike CBALattice, it aims to create a model of
hierarchical classification. In addition of that, HMCS-FCA-SC employs a cosine
measure 6 between new example and the selected concepts for classification [5].
After the construction of the lattice, SPFC7 assigns to each concept a score
which indicates the relevance degree of the concepts. Then it looks for neighbors
of relevant concepts. The unknown objects will be classified in the classes of their
neighbors [9].
The limit of the methods based on complete lattice consists in the exponential
complexity of their training algorithms in terms of time and memory resources.
In order to overcome this problem, other efforts such as LEGAL [15], CIBLE
[19], CLNN & CLNB [25], IPR [16], CLANN [23] and CITREC [3], MCSD-
FCA-PS [1] use sublattices instead of complete lattice as search space. A sub-
lattice of concepts is a mathematical structure which represents a part of the
concept lattice in a selective way [7]. LEGAL8 is a method which relies on several
training parameters to build a sublattice. During the learning step, it builds an
ordered set of concepts based on the class of each instance. The positive and
negative instances are the instances labeled by a positive or negative class in the
formal context. During classification Legal applies the majority vote [15].
CIBLE9 operates in two succeeding steps: it starts with the construction
of a sublattice from a binary context then it uses a similarity measure for the
classification of new objects [19].
CLNN & CLNB10 methods build a sublattice in a decreasing way. They
incorporate then respectively a Naive Bayes classifier and a Nearest Neighbors
4
Navigation into Galois Lattice
5
Hierarchical Multi-label Classifier System - FCA with Similarity Cosine
6
the similarity between two vectors with n dimensions by determining the cosine of
the angle between them
7
Classification by Selecting Plausible Formal Concepts in a Concept Lattice
8
Learning with Galois Lattice
9
Concept Induction Based Learning
10
Concept Lattices Nearest Neighbors and Concept Lattices Naive Bayes
classifier in each node of the sublattice built. CLNN & CLNB use the same
technique of vote (majority vote) in the classification step [25].
Another classification system CITREC which uses sublattices is proposed in
[3]. CITREC builds the lattice starting from a reduced context containing only
a representative object of each class [3]. In the classification step CITREC uses
the majority vote in the same way as the methods CLNN & CLNB.
On the other side, CLANN11 starts by building a sublattice in the training
step and processes data which have only two classes. It uses then straightforward
sublattice to build a neural networks which makes the classification [23].
MCSD-FCA-PS12 has the distinction of processing sequential data. Complex
sequential data are mapped onto pattern structures whose projections are used
to build a pattern concept lattice. In fact, pattern structures are a generalization
of formal concept analysis designed to deal with complex objects descriptions
when an object is not associated to a set of attributes. MCSD-FCA-PS select
relevant patterns that can be used for the classification step [1,13,12].
IPR13 is a method which introduces the coverage of concepts. It selects from
the lattice all the relevant concepts which can help to better classification. The
choice of relevant concepts is based on greedy algorithm [16]. Then to classify
each new object, IPR searches rules with a premise that coincides with the object
attribute. The applied rules are the most weighted rules for the involved object.
The classification methods based on sublattices proceeds in the same way as
methods based on complete lattices. However, using sublattices can reduce the
substantial number of generated rules and keep the most relevant among them.
Such proceeding leads to reduce significantly the training time, however it causes
a loss of information.
Several drawbacks are observed in exhaustive methods described above. In
fact, besides to the high complexity, using one single weak classifier may not be
the best solution for classification. The use of many classifiers can give better
results. Subsequently, the researchers move towards the integration and the use
of combinatory classification methods which are based on the ensemble methods
in order to improve other operations of a low single classifier (a single learner).
3.2 Combinatory classification approach
Unlike exhaustive methods which use one classifier, combinatory methods employs
many classifiers which are then combined by the techniques of votes.
In this context, various methods have been proposed among them there are
methods based on sequential training like BFC [18], BNC [17] and methods
based on parallel training such as DNC [17], FPS-FCA [14] and RMCS [10].
The sequential training consists in generating classifiers sequentially. In other
words, a classifier is generated only after the generation of its predecessor.
11
Concept Lattice-based Artificial Neural Network
12
Mining Complex Sequential Data by means of FCA and Pattern Structures
13
Induction of Production Rules
For example, BFC14 builds from a formal context a cover formed only by
relevant concepts. The latter is based on boosting which is an adaptive approach
based on the use of several classifiers of the same model [11]. These classifiers
use voting techniques in order to classify correctly the objects wrongly classified.
The idea of BFC consists in assigning, initially, equal weights for the training
examples among them subset is selected randomly. At this point, a relevant
concept is extracted from a subset by selecting the attribute which minimizes
Shannon entropy15 . BFC generates then a classification rule deducted from the
relevant concept (extracted from subset) and updates the weights of training
examples. This process is rebuilt recursively to produce the final classifier [18].
The method BNC16 proceeds similarly to BFC method in generating clas-
sifiers and processing training data. However, unlike BFC which makes the
processing of binary data, BNC handle nominal data in order to avoid the loss
of information following the binary data representation [17].
The parallel training is based on Dagging [11], it consists in dividing data
set into many groups. Classifiers are generated from the groups. DNC17 method
handles nominal data. DNC algorithm proceeds as follow: a random data is
run in order to create a disjoint groups containing stratified data. A classifier of
nominal concept [17] is then created for each group. Finally, the method defines
as output a combination of classifiers made by a vote technique [17].
FPS-FCA18 is a symbolic classification method based on Pattern structures
and FCA, witch deal with complex input objects like logical formulas, graphs,
strings and tuples of numerical. In presence of large data sets, it offers natural
approximation tools (projections) and achieves classification in a parallel way by
dividing the initial data set [14,13,6,12].
RMCS19 generates a set of classifiers parallely. It allows to create a classifier
based on its neighbors. The classifier realizes correctly the object classification
when it is classified correctly within its neighbors. RMCS starts with the con-
struction of a classification table from a formal context. In this table, RMCS
matches a set of classifiers to the objects set existing in the context. Then, RMCS
looks for the neighbors of the test set of objects using a metric of similarity
and selects classifiers that have the maximum number of neighbors found. The
selected classifiers are then recommended for classification [10].
4 Discussion
As mentioned previously, methods based on FCA are gathered in two main
categories: exhaustive methods and combinatory ones. Methods of each cate-
gory vary from each other in several aspects and share some others. Exhaustive
14
Boosting Formal Concepts
15
The information quantity contained or supplied by a source of information
16
Boosting Nominal Concepts
17
Dagging Nominal Concepts
18
Fitting Pattern Structures to Knowledge Discovery in Big Data
19
Recommender based Multiple Classifier System
methods generate only one ordinary classifier for the classification of the objects.
Table 1 presents exhaustive methods cited previously. In tables 1 and 2, n denote
the number of objects and m the number of attributes. In order to identify
characteristics of each method, we chose six criteria that seem to be the most
distinctive.
System GRAND CIBLE IPR CITREC CLANN MCSD-FCA-PS
Structure Complete lat- Sub-lattice Coverage Sub- Sub-lattice Sub-lattice
concepts tice lattice
Data Binary Numerical Binary Binary Binary Sequential data
Selection Coherence Function Entropy Support Algorithms Pattern
concepts maximal selection Shannon heuristical structures
Combination No No No No No No
Classification Majority vote K-PPV Weighted rules Vote Neural net- Projections
work
Theoretical O(2k · k4 ) O(|L| · m3 ) O(n2 · m2 · nm) O(2m · n) O(2min(m,n) ) O(|L|·|A|·m3 ·n)
complexity k = min(m, n) |L|=sublattice m=maximium
sequence size
A=alphabet of
sequence letters
Table 1. Theoretical comparison of exhaustive methods
As shown in Table 1, exhaustive methods have exponential complexity. It is
mainly due to a navigation in the totality of the research space.
On the other side, combinatory methods share the classification process in
different classifiers a combination method. The problem is thus divided into many
sub-problems. Similarly, to Table 1, Table 2 provides a description of combinatory
methods. We used the same criteria in two tables for comparative reasons.
Tables 1 and 2 show that GRAND, IPR, CITREC, CLANN, BFC and
RMCS handle binary data, BNC and DNC manipulate nominal data while
CIBLE handle numerical data. However FPS-FCA and MCSD-FCA-PS differ
from the previous methods by their capacity to handle complex data like graphs
and sequential data. BNC and DNC use the informational gain to select concepts,
while IPR and BFC use Shannon entropy. Concerning CLANN, it utilizes
heuristic algorithms for the selection.
In classification process, GRAND, CITREC and DNC use the majority
voting. The weighted voting is applied in IPR, BFC and BNC. However, CLANN
differ from other methods by the use of neural networks.
The combining technique (cf. section 3.2) contributed strongly in optimizing
the complexity. In fact, combinatory methods generate classifiers sequentially
and have a polynomial logarithmic complexity. Similarly, methods generating
parallel classifiers reach a comparable complexity in the order of nmlog(n) for
RMCS method, nm/k for FPS-FCA method and n for DNC.
System BFC BNC DNC RMCS FPS-FCA
Concepts Sub-lattice Sub-lattice Sub-lattice Complete lattice Sub-lattice
structure
Data Binary Nominal Nominal BinaryGraphs, formu-
las, strings
Concepts Shannon Gain Gain Distance Relevant
selection entropy informational informational euclidean patterns
combination Boosting Boosting Dagging Dagging Dagging
Classification Weighted vote Weighted vote Majority vote Maximum num- Hypotheses
ber of neighbors
Theoretical O(nlog(n)+nm) O(nlog(n)+nm) O(n′ ) n′ =size of O(nmlog(n)) O(nm/k)
complexity m=nominal stratified samples k=number
attribute of processors
Table 2. Theoretical comparison of combinatory methods
5 Conclusion
In this paper, we focused on supervised classification of data based on FCA.
We presented firstly exhaustive classification methods which are divided into
methods based on complete lattices and methods based on sublattices. Secondly,
we described combinatory classification methods which are themselves divided
into methods based on sequential training and others based on parallel training.
Our future work will be based on the complexity and move towards combina-
tory methods that offer reasonable complexity, especially methods that generate
parallel classifiers.
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