Hierarchical classification using binary data

Abstract

In classification problems, especially those that categorize data into a large number of classes, the classes often naturally follow a hierarchical structure. That is, some classes are likely to share similar structures and features. Those characteristics can be captured by considering a hierarchical relationship among the class labels. Motivated by a recent simple classification approach on binary data, we propose a variant that is tailored to efficient classification of hierarchical data. In certain settings, specifically, when some classes are significantly easier to identify than others, we showcase computational and accuracy advantages.