Learning from imbalanced data sets with a Min-Max modular support vector machine

Imbalanced data sets have significantly unequal distributions between classes. This between-class imbalance causes conventional classification methods to favor majority classes, resulting in very low or even no detection of minority classes. A Min-Max modular support vector machine (M-SVM) approaches this problem by decomposing the training input sets of the majority classes into subsets of similar size and pairing them into balanced two-class classification subproblems. This approach has the merits of using general classifiers, incorporating prior knowledge into task decomposition and parallel learning. Experiments on two real-world pattern classification problems, international patent classification and protein subcellar localization, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.