Increasing the effectiveness of associative classification in terms of class imbalance by using a novel pruning algorithm

Having received considerable interest in recent years, associative classification has focused on developing a class classifier, with lesser attention paid to the probability classifier used in direct marketing. While contributing to this integrated framework, this work attempts to increase the prediction accuracy of associative classification on class imbalance by adapting the scoring based on associations (SBA) algorithm. The SBA algorithm is modified by coupling it with the pruning strategy of association rules in the probabilistic classification based on associations (PCBA) algorithm, which is adjusted from the CBA for use in the structure of the probability classifier. PCBA is adjusted from CBA by increasing the confidence through under-sampling, setting different minimum supports (minsups) and minimum confidences (minconfs) for rules of different classes based on each distribution, and removing the pruning rules of the lowest error rate. Experimental results based on benchmark datasets and real-life application datasets indicate that the proposed method performs better than C5.0 and the original SBA do, and the number of rules required for scoring is significantly reduced. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.