Improving nearest neighbor classification using Ensembles of Evolutionary Generated Prototype Subsets

Graphical abstractDisplay Omitted HighlightsEvolutionary prototype selection methods generate many subsets, but only 1 is used.We develop a classification framework that uses multiple prototype subsets.The framework uses different subsets for test instances in different neighborhoods.Our framework improves the performance of the traditional setting significantly.Less evaluations of the evolutionary algorithm are needed for better results. One of the most accurate types of prototype selection algorithms, preprocessing techniques that select a subset of instances from the data before applying nearest neighbor classification to it, are evolutionary approaches. These algorithms result in very high accuracy and reduction rates, but unfortunately come at a substantial computational cost. In this paper, we introduce a framework that allows to efficiently use the intermediary results of the prototype selection algorithms to further increase their accuracy performance. Instead of only using the fittest prototype subset generated by the evolutionary algorithm, we use multiple prototype subsets in an ensemble setting. Secondly, in order to classify a test instance, we only use prototype subsets that accurately classify training instances in the neighborhood of that test instance. In an experimental evaluation, we apply our new framework to four state-of-the-art prototype selection algorithms and show that, by using our framework, more accurate results are obtained after less evaluations of the prototype selection method. We also present a case study with a prototype generation algorithm, showing that our framework is easily extended to other preprocessing paradigms as well.