Discretization of Continuous Attributes in Rough Set Theory and Its Application

Abstract

Existing discretization methods cannot process continuous intervalvalued attributes in rough set theory. This paper extended the existing definition of discretization based on cut-splitting and gave the definition of generalized discretization using class-separability criterion function firstly. Then, a new approach was proposed to discretize continuous interval-valued attributes. The introduced approach emphasized on the class-separability in the process of discretization of continuous attributes, so the approach helped to simplify the classifier design and to enhance accurate recognition rate in pattern recognition and machine learning. In the simulation experiment, the decision table was composed of 8 features and 10 radar emitter signals, and the results obtained from discretization of continuous interval-valued attributes, reduction of attributes and automatic recognition of 10 radar emitter signals show that the reduced attribute set achieves higher accurate recognition rate than the original attribute set, which verifies that the introduced approach is valid and feasible. © Springer-Verlag 2004.