ROC graphs with instance-varying costs

Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) graphs are a useful technique for organizing classifiers and visualizing their performance. ROC graphs have been used in cost-sensitive learning because of the ease with which class skew and error cost information can be applied to them to yield cost-sensitive decisions. However, they have been criticized because of their inability to handle instance-varying costs; that is, domains in which error costs vary from one instance to another. This paper presents and investigates a technique for adapting ROC graphs for use with domains in which misclassification costs vary within the instance population.