Discriminative Power of Input Features in a Fuzzy Model

In many modern data analysis scenarios the first and most urgent task consists of reducing the redundancy in high dimensional input spaces. A method is presented that quantifies the discriminative power of the input features in a fuzzy model. A possibilistic information measure of the model is defined on the basis of the available fuzzy rules and the resulting possibilistic information gain, associated with the use of a given input dimension, characterizes the input feature’s discriminative power. Due to the low computational expenses derived from the use of a fuzzy model, the proposed possibilistic information gain generates a simple and efficient algorithm for the reduction of the input dimensionality, even for high dimensional cases. As real-world example, the most informative electrocardiographic measures are detected for an arrhythmia classification problem.