Explicit Forgetting Algorithms for Memory Based Learning
Marcos Salganicoff · Scholarly Commons (University of Pennsylvania) · 1993
Memory-based learning algorithms lack a mechanism for tracking time-varying associative mappings. To widen their applicability, they must incorporate explicit forgetting algorithms to selectively delete observations. We describe TimeWeighted, Locally-Weighted and Performance-Error Weighted forgetting algorithms. These were evaluated with a Nearest-Neighbor Learner in a simple classification task. Locally-Weighted Forgetting outperformed Time-Weighted Forgetting under time-varying sampling distributions and mappings, and did equally well when only the mapping varied. Performance- Error forgetting tracked about as well as the other algorithms, but was superior since it permitted the Nearest-Neighbor learner to approach the Bayes' misclassification rate when the input/output mapping became stationary. Why Explicitly Forget? Memory-based learning (MBL) algorithms are those that require that all presented input/output pairs be explicitly stored and available during the learning process. ...