/* This is an example illustrating the use of the rank_features() function from the dlib C++ Library. This example creates a simple set of data and then shows you how to use the rank_features() function to find a good set of features (where "good" means the feature set will probably work well with a classification algorithm). The data used in this example will be 4 dimensional data and will come from a distribution where points with a distance less than 10 from the origin are labeled +1 and all other points are labeled as -1. Note that this data is conceptually 2 dimensional but we will add two extra features for the purpose of showing what the rank_features() function does. */ #include #include "dlib/svm.h" #include "dlib/rand.h" #include using namespace std; using namespace dlib; int main() { // This first typedef declares a matrix with 4 rows and 1 column. It will be the // object that contains each of our 4 dimensional samples. typedef matrix sample_type; // Now lets make some vector objects that can hold our samples std::vector samples; std::vector labels; dlib::rand::float_1a rnd; for (int x = -20; x <= 20; ++x) { for (int y = -20; y <= 20; ++y) { sample_type samp; // the first two features are just the (x,y) position of our points and so // we expect them to be good features since our two classes here are points // close to the origin and points far away from the origin. samp(0) = x; samp(1) = y; // This is a worthless feature since it is just random noise. It should // be indicated as worthless by the rank_features() function below. samp(2) = rnd.get_random_double(); // This is a version of the y feature that is corrupted by random noise. It // should be ranked as less useful than features 0, and 1, but more useful // than the above feature. samp(3) = y - rnd.get_random_double()*10; // add this sample into our vector of samples. samples.push_back(samp); // if this point is less than 10 from the origin then label it as a +1 class point. // otherwise it is a -1 class point if (sqrt((double)x*x + y*y) <= 10) labels.push_back(+1); else labels.push_back(-1); } } // Here we normalize all the samples by subtracting their mean and dividing by their standard deviation. // This is generally a good idea since it often heads off numerical stability problems and also // prevents one large feature from smothering others. const sample_type m(mean(vector_to_matrix(samples))); // compute a mean vector const sample_type sd(reciprocal(sqrt(variance(vector_to_matrix(samples))))); // compute a standard deviation vector // now normalize each sample for (unsigned long i = 0; i < samples.size(); ++i) samples[i] = pointwise_multiply(samples[i] - m, sd); // This is another thing that is often good to do from a numerical stability point of view. // However, in our case it doesn't really matter. randomize_samples(samples,labels); // This is a typedef for the type of kernel we are going to use in this example. // In this case I have selected the radial basis kernel that can operate on our // 4D sample_type objects. In general, I would suggest using the same kernel for // classification and feature ranking. typedef radial_basis_kernel kernel_type; // This line here declares the kcentroid object we want to use for feature ranking. Note that there // are two numbers in it. The first is the argument to the kernel. The second is a tolerance argument // for the kcentroid object. This tolerance is basically a control on the number of support vectors it // will use, with a smaller tolerance giving better accuracy but longer running times. Generally // something in the range 0.01 to 0.001 is a good choice. kcentroid kc(kernel_type(0.05), 0.001); // And finally we get to the feature ranking. Here we call rank_features() with the kcentroid we just made, // the samples and labels we made above, and the number of features we want it to rank. cout << rank_features(kc, samples, labels, 4) << endl; // The output is: /* 0 0.452251 1 0.259739 3 0.28801 2 -0.0347664 */ // The first column is a list of the features in order of decreasing goodness. So the rank_features() function // is telling us that the samples[i](0) and samples[i](1) (i.e. the x and y) features are the best two. Then // after that the next best feature is the samples[i](3) (i.e. the y corrupted by noise) and finally the worst // feature is the one that is just random noise. So in this case rank_features did exactly what we would // intuitively expect. // The second column of the matrix is a number that indicates how much that feature contributes to the // separation of the two classes. So a bigger number is better and smaller is worse. What we see above is that // the first 3 features all help separate the data and the last one actually hurts us in terms of this metric. // So to break it down a little more. // 0 0.452251 <-- class separation of feature 0 all by itself // 1 0.259739 <-- Additional separation gained from feature 1 if classification is done with features 1 and 0 // 3 0.28801 <-- Additional separation gained from feature 3 if classification is done with features 3, 0, and 1 // 2 -0.0347664 <-- Additional separation gained from feature 2 if classification is done with features 2, 3, 0, and 1 }