Enhancing data analysis: uncertainty-resistance method for handling incomplete data

• Published in: Applied intelligence (Dordrecht, Netherlands) Vol. 50; no. 1; pp. 74 - 86
• Main Authors: Hamidzadeh, Javad, Moradi, Mona
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.01.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Science; Data analysis; Machines; Manufacturing; Mechanical Engineering; Noise; Processes; Uncertainty analysis; Incomplete data; Mapped data; Belief function theory; Missing values; Classification
• ISSN: 0924-669X; 1573-7497
• DOI: 10.1007/s10489-019-01514-4

In data analysis, incomplete data commonly occurs and can have significant effects on the conclusions that can be drawn from the data. Incomplete data cause another problem, so-called uncertainty which leads to producing unreliable results. Hence, developing effective techniques to impute these missing values is crucial. Missing or incomplete data and noise are two common sources of uncertainty. In this paper, an effective method for imputing missing values is introduced which is robust to uncertainties that are arising from incompleteness and noise. A kernel-based method for removing the noise is designed. Using the belief function theory, the class of incomplete data is determined. Finally, every missing dimension is imputed considering the mean value of the same dimension of the members belonging to the determined class. The performance has been evaluated on real-world data sets from UCI repository. The results of the experiments have been compared with state-of-the-art methods, which show the superiority of the proposed method regarding classification accuracy.