Pruning and Learning Fuzzy Rule-Based Classifier

This paper presents new pruning and learning methods for the fuzzy rule-based classifier. The structure of the proposed classifier is framed from the fuzzy sets in the premise part of the rule and the Bayesian classifier in the consequent part. For the simplicity of the model structure, the unnecessary features for each fuzzy rule are eliminated through the iterative pruning algorithm. The quality of the feature is measured by the proposed correctness method, which is defined as the ratio of the fuzzy values for a set of the feature values on the decision region to one for all feature values. For the improvement of the classification performance, the parameters of the proposed classifier are finely adjusted by using the gradient descent method so that the misclassified feature vectors are correctly re-categorized. The cost function is determined as the squared-error between the classifier output for the correct class and the sum of the maximum output for the rest and a positive scalar. Then, the learning rules are derived from forming the gradient. Finally, the fuzzy rule-based classifier is tested on two data sets and is found to demonstrate an excellent performance.