Using Entropy as a Measure of Acceptance for Multi-label Classification

Multi-label classifiers allow us to predict the state of a set of responses using a single model. A multi-label model is able to make use of the correlation between the labels to potentially increase the accuracy of its prediction. Critical applications of multi-label classifiers (such as medical diagnoses) require that the system’s confidence in prediction also be provided with the multi-label prediction. The specialist then uses the measure of confidence to assess whether to accept the system’s prediction. Probabilistic multi-label classification provides a categorical distribution over the set of responses, allowing us to observe the distribution, select the most probable response, and obtain an indication of confidence by the shape of the distribution. In this article, we examine if normalised entropy, a parameter of the probabilistic multi-label response distribution, correlates with the accuracy of the prediction and therefore can be used to gauge confidence in the system’s prediction. We found that for all three methods examined on each data set, the accuracy increases for the majority of the observations where the normalised entropy threshold decreases, showing that we can use normalised entropy to gauge a systems confidence, and hence use it as a measure of acceptance.