A Comparative Study on Statistical Machine Learning Algorithms and Thresholding Strategies for Automatic Text categorization

Two main research areas in statistical text categorization are similarity- based learning algorithms and associated thresholding strategies. The combination of these techniques significantly influences the overall performance of text categorization. After investigating two similarity-based classifiers (k-NN and Rocchio) and three common thresholding techniques (RCut, PCut, and SCut), we describe a new learning algorithm known as the keyword association network (KAN) and a new thresholding strategy (RinSCut) to improve performance over existing techniques. Extensive experiments have been conducted on the Reuters-21578 and 20-Newsgroups data sets. The experimental results show that our new approaches give better results for both micro-averaged F1 and macro-averaged F1 scores.