Support Vector Machine for Interval Regression

Support vector machine (SVM) has been very successful in pattern recognition and function estimation problems for crisp data. This paper proposes a new method to evaluate interval linear and nonlinear regression models combining the possibility and necessity estimation formulation with the principle of SVM. For data sets with crisp inputs and interval outputs, the possibility and necessity models have been recently utilized, which are based on quadratic programming approach giving more diverse spread coefficients than a linear programming one. SVM also uses quadratic programming approach whose another advantage in interval regression analysis is to be able to integrate both the property of central tendency in least squares and the possibilistic property in fuzzy regression. However this is not a computationally expensive way. SVM allows us to perform interval nonlinear regression analysis by constructing an interval linear regression function in a high dimensional feature space. In particular, SVM is a very attractive approach to model nonlinear interval data. The proposed algorithm here is model-free method in the sense that we do not have to assume the underlying model function for interval nonlinear regression model with crisp inputs and interval output. Experimental results are then presented which indicate the performance of this algorithm.