Statistical recognition of a set of patterns using novel probability neural network

Abstract

Since the works by Specht, the probabilistic neural networks (PNNs) have attracted researchers due to their ability to increase training speed and their equivalence to the optimal Bayesian decision of classification task. However, it is known that the PNN's conventional implementation is not optimal in statistical recognition of a set of patterns. In this article we present the novel modification of the PNN and prove that it is optimal in this task with general assumptions of the Bayes classifier. The modification is based on a reduction of recognition task to homogeneity testing problem. In the experiment we examine a problem of authorship attribution of Russian texts. Our results support the statement that the proposed network provides better accuracy and is much more resistant to change the smoothing parameter of Gaussian kernel function in comparison with the original PNN. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.