Explorations of an Incremental, Bayesian Algorithm for Categorization

Abstract

An incremental categorization algorithm is described which, at each step, assigns the next instance to the most probable category. Probabilities are estimated by a Bayesian inference scheme which assumes that instances are partitioned into categories and that within categories features are displayed independently and probabilistically. This algorithm can be shown to be an optimization of an ideal Bayesian algorithm in which predictive accuracy is traded for computational efficiency. The algorithm can deliver predictions about any dimension of a category and does not treat specially the prediction of category labels. The algorithm has successfully modeled much of the empirical literature on human categorization. This paper describes its application to a number of data sets from the machine learning literature. The algorithm performs reasonably well, having its only serious difficulty because the assumption of independent features is not always satisfied. Bayesian extensions to deal with nonindependent features are described and evaluated. © 1992, Kluwer Academic Publishers. All rights reserved.