5
$\begingroup$

I'm experimenting with $\chi^2$ feature selection for some text classification tasks. I understand that $\chi^2$ test checks the dependencies B/T two categorical variables, so if we perform $\chi^2$ feature selection for a binary text classification problem with binary BOW vector representation, each $\chi^2$ test on each (feature, class) pair would be a very straightforward $\chi^2$ test with 1 degree of freedom.

Quoting from the documentation: http://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.feature_selection.chi2.html#sklearn.feature_selection.chi2,

This score can be used to select the n_features features with the highest values for the χ² (chi-square) statistic from X, which must contain booleans or frequencies (e.g., term counts in document classification), relative to the classes.

It seems to me that we we can also perform $\chi^2$ feature selection on DF (word counts) vector presentation.

My 1st question is: How does sklearn discretize the integer-valued feature into categorical?

My second question is similar to the first. From the demo codes here: http://scikit-learn.sourceforge.net/dev/auto_examples/document_classification_20newsgroups.html

It seems to me that we can also perform $\chi^2$ feature selection on a TF*IDF vector representation.

My 2nd question is: How does sklearn perform $\chi^2$ feature selection on real-valued features?

$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ I have no experience with scikit-learn, hence just a hint on the base of rapidminer-experience: 1. Integer values can be treated as categorical or real-valued. 2. Chi2-Feature-Selection on real-valued features most likely requires a discretization beforehand, hence if the integer is treated as real-valued, a discretization is also performed here. I suggest to look into the source code. $\endgroup$
    – steffen
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 8:54
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you @steffen for your suggestion. This has been answered by one of the developers of sklearn here: stackoverflow.com/questions/14573030/…. It becomes quite clear if one thinks of the NULL hypothesis as "document class has no influence over feature frequency". $\endgroup$
    – Moses Xu
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 13:15

1 Answer 1

0
$\begingroup$

Found the answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14573030/perform-chi-2-feature-selection-on-tf-and-tfidf-vectors

Think of the NULL hypothesis as "document class has no influence over feature frequency".

$\endgroup$

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.