Index of balanced accuracy: A performance measure for skewed class distributions

Abstract

This paper introduces a new metric, named Index of Balanced Accuracy, for evaluating learning processes in two-class imbalanced domains. The method combines an unbiased index of its overall accuracy and a measure about how dominant is the class with the highest individual accuracy rate. Some theoretical examples are conducted to illustrate the benefits of the new metric over other well-known performance measures. Finally, a number of experiments demonstrate the consistency and validity of the evaluation method here proposed. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.