Classification with label distribution learning

Abstract

Label Distribution Learning (LDL) is a novel learning paradigm, aim of which is to minimize the distance between the model output and the ground-truth label distribution. We notice that, in real-word applications, the learned label distribution model is generally treated as a classification model, with the label corresponding to the highest model output as the predicted label, which unfortunately prompts an inconsistency between the training phrase and the test phrase. To solve the inconsistency, we propose in this paper a new Label Distribution Learning algorithm for Classification (LDL4C). Firstly, instead of KL-divergence, absolute loss is applied as the measure for LDL4C. Secondly, samples are re-weighted with information entropy. Thirdly, large margin classifier is adapted to boost discrimination precision. We then reveal that theoretically LDL4C seeks a balance between generalization and discrimination. Finally, we compare LDL4C with existing LDL algorithms on 17 real-word datasets, and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of LDL4C in classification.