A Comparison of BBN, ADTree and MLP in separating Quasars from Large Survey Catalogues
Yanxia Zhang, Yongheng Zhao · 天文和天体物理学研究：英文版 · 2007
We compare the performance of Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN), Multilayer Perception (MLP) networks and Alternating Decision Trees (ADtree) on separating quasars from stars with the database from the 2MASS and FIRST survey catalogs. Having a training sample of sources of known object types, the classifiers are trained to separate quasars from stars. By the statistical properties of the sample, the features important for classification are selected. We compare the classification results with and without feature selection. Experiments show that the results with feature selection are better than those without feature selection. From the high accuracy found, it is concluded that these automated methods are robust and effective for classifying point sources. They may all be applied to large survey projects (e.g. selecting input catalogs) and for other astronomical issues, such as the parameter measurement of stars and the redshift estimation of galaxies and quasars.