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Learning in Precense of Concept Drift and Hidden Contexts
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12 views33 pagesLearning in Precense of Concept Drift and Hidden Contexts
Learning in Precense of Concept Drift and Hidden Contexts
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"Machine Learing, 23, 69-101 (198)
© 1996 Khuwor Aeadenue Publishers, Boston. Manufactured in The Netherlands
Learning in the Presence of Concept Drift and
Hidden Contexts
cenuann wipwen shank ives at
Department of Meseal Cybarnetics sat Al Uniscioiy uf Mme Manian Besarch Ensue for Are
Inueligence, Schoieneasse 3.1030 Verna Austin
MIROSLAV KURAT. kuti st
Deparomen of Computer Science, University of Ota, 150 Loats Pasian; Onan. Ontria KIN NS. Canada
lor: Douglas Fisher
Abstract. On-line feaming in domains where ihe tet concept depends on Some hen context poses serous
problems. A changing context can uve cages inthe tage conscps,predusing What known 38 concept
‘Gait We dbscibe a amy of Jeu algontiny that Hesbly wat to Concept de and can (ae avant
of sfuations were contents reappear ‘The general approach uruksying all test algonts consists of (1)
hesping only a window of comely tsi examples and hypotteses; 2) toning cone descrigtions snr
using them when a previous context ce-appear: and (3) contig hath of these lunetone by a heuntie tat
2 he) andl (er > pt 1 extremely stable *1
then L 1 reduce winiow by 1 *)
ese CES ota and ah 2 Paula este
then Ls! 1 keep window fixed *F
else. P grow window by 1 *1
Table 2, Window Aci
eusstic (WAH): how many so forged, hep)
stale of learning. Roth of these variables ean only be determined dynasnically, during
learning. Moroover, the eecarrence of a eoncept change can only be guessed at A
good neunshc Tor dynamic window adjustment should snrink ine window Gand Forget
‘ld instances) when a concept dri seems to occur, and Keep the window size fixed when
tho concept seems stable, Otherwise the window should gradually grow ust stable
concept description can pe tormea
In uying to guess when a concept change occurs, FLORA? uses two heuristic indica
tors: the system's predictive performance Ace (monitored over a fixed number of past
‘lassiMcations) and SYNLACtle propertes OF the eVOIVINE hypoitleses, HE Ins
tion #6 thar serious drops in Acc ur an explosion of the nuinber of description items in
ADES niay signal a possible concept doit. As both of these indicators depend heay ity v0
characte
sassunp=
kes O1 the learning 1ask, ree parameters are useu w custunze dae Hc
to the application domain:
4 (= shreshold Ine low coverage oF ADES):
the (= threshold for high coverage of ADES); and
p (= threshold for acceptable predictive accuracy)
By the coverage of a description set we mean the ratio of the number of instances
covered by itents in the set and the size (in terms of the rota! number of Literals viver all
Aeseriptions) of the set This ilfinition af caverage trades off the number af examples
covered and the “cost” (syaitetic complexity) of desenption items,
‘Table 2 shows the Window Adjustment Heuristic (WAAN) that is used in FLORA2 The
WAH decease the windaw sire hy 70% if a concept drift is suspected. In contrast
the window size is decreased by 1 (after the addition of « new example, the two oldest
examples are deleted) if the hypothesis seems to be extremely stable: this 18 to avoid
large ena
‘af evamples Tf the enrcent hynnthesis seems, 8 . WIDMER AND M. KUBAT
sufficiently stable, the window size is simply Teft unchanged. If none of these conditions
is satisficc, the program assumes that mote information is needed and st does not forget
the oldest example, thus incrementally mcreasing the window size by |
‘The particular parameter settings cumently used in FLORA2 we r= 1.2, he - 40
and p = 70%. ‘The parameters were. set after some preliminary experiments with the
“STAGGER concepts’ (see below) and were left unchanged in all the other experiments
to be reported?
Given that the heuristic is (necessarily) very syntactically oriented and is thus very
sensitive to the description language used, it seems hopeless (or at least difficult) to
make ic completely free of parameter.
42. A simple experiment: The STAGGER concepts
or 8 quick comparnson wath one of the tst concept ditt trackers, S7AGGEK (Sebhununer
& Granger, 1986), FLORA? was tested on the same atiticial learning problem as used
by Schiimmer and Granger The instance space of a simple blocks world i defined
by the three attributes size & {small, mediurn, large}, color & {red, green, Wuey
and shape © {square, eireular, triangular}. There: is a sequence: of three target
concepts (1) size = small A-color = red, (2) color — green ¥ shape = circular
and (3) size — (median v large). 120 training mstances are generated randomly,
labeled avcovling tothe hidden concept, and after processing cach instance. the predictive
aveuraey is tested on an independent test set of 100 instances, also generated randomly
The unkerlying concept ts mnade to change after every 40 training examples.” the resus
are averaged over 10 runs. Figuee 3 shows FLORA2’s predictive accuracy on the test
set affer processing each training example, ‘The dotted vertical lines indicate where the
underlying concept changes.
1 .
“0
cay
«0
29
Se eet eee
» 20 0 oo 30 Loo 120
Instances emncessod
igure 5 Adjusting W dll prodbsive accuse. CONCEPT DRIET AND MMDDEX CONTEXTS 9
40 80 100 0
Instances processed
Figure 4. Adusing © dit: dysamic window sir,
li-can be seem that the dramatic concept shifts lead 10 a sharp decrease of the predictive
accuracy, but FLORA2 adjusts very quickly «and soon approaches the (00% mark again.
Figure 1 indicatos that this te duo to the workings
the Window Adjautneent Hearn
Figure 4 plots the development of the window size in a typical (single) run, ‘The WAH
Dochaves ss expected: a change in the definition of the underlying concept fist leads to
Ss chort inorrave in tho vise oF tho window, Bofors the 23
to the comoops shih
by narrowing the window and forgetting old, now inrelevant o contradictory instances.
A comparison of these curves with the respective figures in (Schlimmer & Granger,
1980) suggests that PLOKAZ Is comparable W) SEAUGER in cers oF conser sence ant
re-adjustment speed on this basic task. In a second experiment, Schlimmer and Granger
showed that STAGGER is sensitive © overtraining. The longer it has boca tained on
AC stable concep, ue Slower IL WHIL DE In ReLUN gO and Changing ss nypouesis when
the underlying context changes. When the same experiment (making cach of the three
concept periods 150 instances long) is performed with FLORAZ, there 1s no such effect
nich is, OF course, due 10 We RL URL FLORAL stops ue Window growin one
hypotheses are stable. We will return to this point in Section 8
In any case, FLORA2's explicit drift detection mechanism (the WAL bas addtional
advantages, ax will be seen in the following section, where we introduce an aleorichm
for explicit context handling
Dealing with Recurring Contexts: FLORAS
There are many natural domains where there is at finite number of hidden contexts that
may reappear, either cyclically or in an unordered fashion, For instance, taere are four
Seasons lat Tollow each olher m a cycle Order and cause regular changes sm ruaNy Maral 80 G.WIDNER AND XC KUBAT
phenomena, Biological and economic systems tend to go through eycles af development
with recurring patterns,
In domains where coments and associated CONLEpL YEIsionD teappeat, HC oeoulUl GL a
waste of effort to relearn an old concept from scratch for each recurrence. Instead,
concepts or hypotheses should be saved so that they can be reexamined wt some later time,
when there are ingications oF a context change. The eect shu Le fasuer Yonvergence UF
the concept (or a similar one) has already occurred. This section introduces an extension
of FLORA? that includes a mectanism for context storage and recall. The mechanism
Js tightly coupled vith the window adjustment algorithm,
dul. Deseripion of FLUKAS
‘The top level of FLORAS is similar 1 FLORA2. The system first wies to classify the
new incoming example, updates ils on-line classification accuracy, then learns from the
instance by incorporating it into the window and updating the description sets,
after calling the WAH 40 decide whether and how t adjust the window size, “forgets
the appropriate number of old instances. However, after each learning cycle, FLORAS
inspects the current state af learning in order to decide whether it should reconsider
concept descriptions that were useful in some old context,
‘The idea is that when 9 context change seems to occur, the system should consult
its store of old concept descriptions to see whether some old concept might better de
scribe the examples currently in the window, Conversely, when a stable concept hy
pothesis has been reached, it might be worthwhile to store the current hypothesis for
later reuse. It is the Window Adjustment Heuristic (WAG, as embodied in the function
how many.to forget in Table 2, that ties 49 determine the relevant conditions (the oe-
currence of a context change and the stability of the learning situation). So in FLORA3,
storage and «examination of old Lypotheses are Lightly linked to changes in the window
The comesponding function choose.contert, whieh i called atthe end of each learning
loop, is sketched in Table 3. When the current hypothesis is viable acconding to the
WAIL tha system saves it for later reuse. unless there #8 already a stored concent with
the same set of ADES descriptions. On the other hand, if there is reason to believe that
context change is taking place (1c, when the WAH enforces narrowing of the window
fhe eget nvamines if sine of old concept descriptions in an tem 1 find one that
fits the current situation Tt one is found that seems make appropeate than the curren:
hypothesis. 1s installed as the new hypothesis
Note that shen a consept dorcriptinn portaining: ts an ald camtayt ig rotrinvea, i will
usually not agroe L00% wil the examples in the current window. Therefore, all examples
in the current window must be regeneralized, The counters associated with the items of
the retrieved hypoth
2280, and thon the regular FORA lnvening algorithm
(Table 1) 4s invoked for each example in the window. All description items thar have
counters equal to zero after re-generalization are removed as irrelevant. ‘The algorithin
for weasseasing old voncept prosose
throw stop (coe Vable 2) CONCEPT DRIFY AND HIDDEN CONTEXTS 81
denotations
‘Stable. boolean variable; rue ifthe current hypothesis is table
scouramg 10 tne WALT
Drift-suspected ..- boolean variable: true iF the WAR suspects
ccuncept drift and has narcewsed the window
functions
Store-currens . soe eurtent description sets
Jind best.candidate ... nd hest matching old context
regeneralive old description segoneralize according to current window
place if pphicable .. reinsall old bypothesis if beter than current
algorinm
if Suble
then store cureent
elseif Drift suspected then
oe id. best candidate
regeneralize old aescription| Bes
replace sf applicable(
end.
Table 3, Function choose contest
1. Find the best candidate among the stored concepts: an old hypothesis becomes a
‘candidare if is consistent with the current example All the candidates are evaluated
with respect Io the ratio of the numbers of positive and negative instances thoy match
(rom the cusrent window):
Update the best candidate w.1t the current data by setting all the counters in the
Uoycription sets to O and then reprocessing all the examples in the window
3. Compare the updated hest candidate C', 10 the current concept description Ci use
some ‘measure of fi to decide whether C, is better than C; if so, replace C with
Co. In the current version of FLORA. the measure of fit is simply the relative
complexity of the description: a concept description is considered better if its ADES.
sel is mnore concise. (Remember that by construction, the ADES sets of both C nd
Cs. cover all the positive anit no negative instances from the window)
‘The algorithm tries to maintain efficiency by limiting the numnber of expensive repro
ing opicodes. Old concept: arw not reconridersd aftse every new training instance
they are only retrieved when the window adjustment heuristic suspects a concept drift
In addition. the expensive part of reconsidering an old concept — the regeneralization of
all the instance: in the window — Ladone only for one of them the best candidate, The
best candidate ts determined through a simple heuristic measure, which, of course, can
sometimes lead to an ingppropriste candidate being chosen. Thus, efficiency is achieved
ft the possible expense oF quality 82 6 WIPMEN AND A KURA.
It seems worth emphasizing that the role of the retrieved old concept/hypothesis is £0
act as a model or bias for regeneralizing the current examples. The retrieved candidate
provides a Hist of generalizations tnat Were UseTUL iN he past and MAL MEHL, at Leads in
part also he useful in the now context. Thal reflects the insight that when an old context
returns, the target concepts will tend to be similar, but not necessarily identical to how
they appeared an the old context
5.2. An Experinent with recurring contexts
“To measure the effectivencss of the context tacking (store/recall) mechanism, we ereated
a stiuanion of ieeuiting cumicass My tepeaKing die tlnee STAGGER exept thice times, is
the cyclic order 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-2. ‘Training and test instances were generated according
to the same procedure as above. Again, results are averages over 10 runs.
Figure 9 compares FLORA, (SUI line) w FLORA Weskied fine) ww diy task, Storing
and reusing old concepts leads to « noticeable improvement over the simpler system
when contexts actually reappear: starting from the fourth period (Ihe first reoccurrence
D1 context 1) the SOG tine snows faster readjusuiMEM w Hagler acutasy Hevsts it fue
out of six eases (the differences in the last two periods are tow small to be significant)
Am interesting phenomenon appears in the thi period of the plot — the first occurrence
Of contexT 4. Hore, MLURAZ Gia ewer than FLORAI. Thaw tay yocun ald a aoe aight
as there is no context recurrence at this point, so ideally, both systems should behave the
same. But the concept retrieval and adaptation algorithm is driven by heuristies and can
Somelunes Kad the system (¢ reinstall ah UIA CoNCEp exTOMEUUDLy.” The coutest Hacking
‘mechanism thus adds anotinee degree of freedom (and source of potential errors) 10 the
leaming process. However, when old contexts actually do reappear, the advantages of
the context icacking approacs nee
the following phases in the experiment
imilar results were achicved in experiments with a more complex world (see Widmer
& Kubal, 1995). However, incre It also wurMed oul that very slow vonmcps dale seal
especilly noise an the training data destabilized FLORA3’s (and equally FLORA?) pet
formance more than seemed stictly necessary. That observation led to the development
oF FLUKA
( GuLWeighr tte disadvantages, a9 Caw Te sete fen
DHE ¥5. Noise PLORAY
to react quickly (© the first signs of concept drift may be misled into overreacting to
noise. This results im unstable behavior and low predictive accuracy. On the other
hang. an incremental earner at Is kesigued pray
noise runs the risk of not wcognizing real changes in the target concepts and may adjust
to changing conditions very slowly, or only when the concepts change radically. An
ideal learner should combine sanity and robustness wit Deaible and cituAtive mene
Iy tu highly sobwst ia the face of CONCEPT DRUCY ASD HIDDEN CONTENTS 83
oO FF 8 HF a BO: ww
(Gen Ure Pe reo
oo mo 20 20 20 20 360
Instances pracesed
Figure 5. Leaming in domain with rcureiag contexts: FLORA (solid) vs. FLORA2 (dashed,
racking Capabliues. On tne race OF, tne 1wWo Fequiteinents seem arAMetTICally Opposed.
Nonetheless, we can at least try to achieve a compromise between them,
A simple analysis of FLORA2 and FLORA3 reveals that their britleness in the face
OF noise 1s a eSUIL Of the set consistency condition thal 1S used 0 decide which
generalizations keep in ADS. As hypotheses in ADES (and NDES) must be strictly
consistent with the examples (e.g, an expression in ADES must not cover any negative
instances), one negative example «6 Sutficient to wnvalate a descryplion tem and cause
to be moved from ADES to PDES, even if it covers a large number of positive examples,
‘That can feacl fo somewhat unstable behavior even in aoise-frec domains, especially when
aa concept cange 1s taking place. bul it 1s palticularly problematic when tne mmput data
are noisy, ie., when some of the {raining examples may be mislabeled
6.1. Deseription of FLORA
10 counter this problem, FLOKA¢ drops the strict consistency condition and replaces it
Wwith a ‘softer’ notion of reliability oF predictive power of generalizations. The idea ts
to continuously monitor the predictive accuracy of euch generalization in the description
sels and {0 statstivally evaluate the confidence of these accuracy estimates: FLORA4, like
its predecessors, uses its current hypothesis (ADES) to classify each incoming exainple
before learning from it, Now the cenual idea is to keep a classification record for each
individual description item {conjunction} and to construct statistical confidence intervals
around these measures. Decisions as to when to move an item from one set t6 another oF
when to drop it aliogether ave based on the relation between these confidence intervals and
the observed class frequencies: a hypoihesis ts kept in ADES as long as its predicuve 84 G.WIDMER AND ML. KUBAT
accuracy is higher (with high confidence) than the observed frequency of the class it
predicts,
Mute precisely, tet js meter), assume dat ea de
scription item is associated with two numbers, cy ado, that represent the lower and
upper endpoints, respectively, of the statistical confidence interval (with confidence»)
around ine Hens classicaLioN accUrACy, CoMMpUIEA OEE the AnsATERS tn he CUTE wi
dow. Tet 7 and ~% be the lower andl upper endpoints, respectively, of the confidence
interval (with confidence j:) around the relative frequency of the positive class observed
so far (Le., he percemase of processed icaining instances that we positive exan
the tanget concept.”
FLORA then uses the following criteria to maintain its description sets (Compare this
to Tapie 1)
required confluence fevel (p
es ol
© adoscription item X is kept in ADI
val is prvater
¢ if the lower endpoint ofits accuracy confidence
thaw dn vlasy faegucery
alls upper endpoint (ay > ju)
similarly, any X in PDES hat satisties this condition is moved to ADES — we say
that X is (temporarily) accepted as 4 predictor:
© a description item X in ADES whose accuracy interval overlaps with the class fre:
quency interval (04. > ~1) 18 moved to PDES — X is a medivere predictor (it does
not da significantly better than guessing expressions in PDES are not used fot
classification;
‘# a description item X is dropped completely if the upper endpoint of ity accuracy
interval is lower than the class frequeney interval’s lower endpoint (<3) — X
is rejected
= dkyuuiption uns in DES awe kept as long a they are acceptable predictors af
negative instances (4) > ~, computed over the negative examples in the window}
In contrast to FLORA2 and FLORAS, there is no migration of generalizations between
NDES anit PDES, Unaxsepralie hyputluses is NDES ate simply deopped
‘The goneral approach to deciding which hypotheses to trast has been adopted from
ng mathod IRE (Aina ot ly HOO), which avon
sures 10 distinguish between reliable and unreliable predictors (exemplars in 13), The
terms accepied, mediocre, and rejected are used hore to highlight this similarity. In all
pe NOU, war used.
the instance haved lowes
experiments with FLORA, « vondones lov
“The main offoct of the strategy is that generalivations in ADES and NDES may be
permitted to cover some nogative or positive instances, respectively, and still 1 remain
in ADES or NDES if theie worl prodiotive
alternative generalizations that aré recognized as unreliable at the moment, either because
they cover loo many negative examples, or because the absolute number of instances,
they vover is atfl ax stall (and thus the eunlidence intervals ate large), ‘Tho west oft
FLORA3 strategy, including the generalization operator and the context reuse mechanisin,
remains unchanged. After every learning step the window adjustment heuristic ts invoked
and ay ecide A yr GL sluiah dhe window Predictive aacusaey of hypotheses as
jency warrant it, PDES is 4 reservoir of CONCEPY DRIPE AND IIDDEN CONTEXS 85
always computed with respect 10 the current window, In this way, FLORA combines.
the advantages of the windowing approach with a less britle strategy for maintai
gonoraivations
6.2. Two preliminary experiments
‘The following two experiments briefly compare FLORA to its predecessors and (0 its
‘cousin’ 183, from which its statistical hypothesis evaluation strategy was adopted. They
are again based on the STAGGER concepts. More thorough experiments are described
i Section 7,
62.1 Basic drift racking
igure © compares FLUKAS (0 FLOKAZ and FLURAS on the basic norse-tree drift
tracking task. The characteristic effect that can be seen in this plot (at least in the
second petiod) and that appears even more clearly in the experiments in the next section,
1s that FLORA 1s small a bit slower an reacting to the change m the target concept,
but then soon picks up and eventually regains high accuracy faster than both FLORA2
and FLORA3,
| toy 7
w ee
y
* now
6 2 O ob 30 100 120)
Instances processex
Figure 6 FLORA# vs. FLORAD and P2ORAS on STAGGER concep
icon ts fi
The exp Wl in PIORAS statistionl snnlidenre messin FLORA
reacts more reluctantly initially because several contradicting examples are necessary
f invalidate a hitherto Stable hypothesis in ADES, while FLORA2 and FLORAS will
ing instance apprare The came
Hn a description item ae enon a6 the fest rote
observation also explains why FLORA later reaches higt accuracy faster: a consequence
of FLORA2's stnct consistency condition is that one old negative instance (pertaining to
th
Gl] in the window may prevent a gad generalization 86 G. WIDMER AND M, KUBAT
from being included in ADES. FLORA4, with its ‘softer’ consistency condition, is less
disturbed by remnants of the old context still in the window and thus teadjusts Faster (©
the new context.
6.2.2, FLORAS a IRE
Figure 7 compares FLORA4 to the publicly available version of [83 (Aha et al., 1991)
13 was eodibied so that it used different test sets arconting 10 the eurent Ponte (whic
changed after every 40 instances). ‘The improvement of FLORA over IBS 1s evident
Generally, our experience from various experiments with [4 is that 1B5 requites sig
nificantly more onamplee to converge to a
is slower in recovering from changes in the target concept. The first effect is due 10,
the general instance-based learning method. The later difference is clearly attributable
to the combination im FEORA7 of 123°. statiotical os iy
reactive window-based forgetting strategy, which permits the system to get rid of ou
dated information much faster. AS a side note, one could slso point out that a symbolic
like FLORA has certain advantages over an instance haced sence im Rares
jah level of predictive ar
once
waren with
general
of the comprehensibilily of the cesults of learning
woo b aa r eer
ane \ al
xu { /
Wy yuakd
a TN
40 :
i) @ 3
Ip EET IEE LECCE EU
o 2» 0 o 80 100 120
Fuguie 7. FLORAG ys, 1B.
Aystemath, Eaperiaenls
‘Phe following experiments study the behavior of the FLORA systems in some more
lucia, by systematically varying aiFeene aspects oF Be bea
anificial domains, as they make i easy to control the learning situation.
In particular, we study the foflowing dimensions; (1) the level of classification naxse
In ane rragntng data anal iy OF pauicatas amMeIest to FLORA, while we claimed is CONCEPY DRIED AND MINDEN CONTEXTS 87
‘more robust ia the fave of noise than is predecessors; (2) the speed of (a gradual) drift,
which is the time it takes for a new context to completely take over, this seems (0 us a
fore watuval dinasioive Fos yactical sccinarios tuay ie wotion ol dist eure,
of the two main parameters in theoretical investigations (see Section 3); (3) the extent of
Urift, 1e, the degree of dissimilarity of successive concepts, quantified in terms of the
telative eHUF becween te CuMLepts, andl Gy Me effec UF aukdiionat, Urefevane aurtouies
om the effectiveness of the learning process
‘As none of the following experiments involves recurring contexts, PLORAS'S concept
Store/revall mechanism was disabled in FLORA ‘That is, FLORA resembles FLORA2,
with the exception of the statistical hypothesis maintenance criterion, This was done 10
hholp separate the effects af coneept reuse (as performed by FLORAS) and accuracy-based
fhypotesis maumtenance. AL tne results in the following Sections are averages Over
7.1. Varying the amount of noise
‘The conjecuue mvuivading de Ast expetlinent 1s Ih PLORA Should have Signuteant
advantages in noisy environments due to its eombined st the statistical confidence
‘measures provide a certain robusiness against noise, especially tn relatively stable situa.
1d he window aUustIMEN! HeUTISHIE Stud recognize persistent mIscassiNeATiONS
as indicators of a concept change and should lead to eff
window in such situations. The targets in this experiment a
ve adjustment by shrinking the
jain the three STAGGER
ace ate COMUNE WHI yarlous eves OF crANSINEAON
Lunvepis, bus awe die
noise
10
0 1
© ;
40 ue FLORAG =
HLORAY
il FLORA?
wo ® a
oe wt
Instances processed
Fieare § FLORAZ, BLOBAS FLORA at 10% se:
Figures § through 10 compare the performance of the three FLORA algorithens a noise
levels in the teaiming data of 10, 2
i, 6 ans 88.
WIDMER AND M6. KUBAT
100
0
oo
49 FLORAG ~
FLORAS
HLORAD
20
a
of w 100 De
Instances processed
iw 9 FLORS2, FLORALS, FLORAG at 205% noise
noise means uta WH proDaPAILy / 1H, INE Et¥SS LANE! OF AN IMSTANCE WHILE ass
randomly. Thus, completely random data will be generated when 7 ~ 400.)
Again, we see that PLORA is usually a bil slower in its initial reaction to the concept
‘niange, Dut then soon OUIpeHTONMS FLURAZ and ALUKA. Ine autTerence 1s markedly
greater than in the noise-free case, ALORA2 and! FLORAS have obvious problems. while
FLORAA's accuracy quickly rises 0 a mark that corresponds roughly © the piven level
Oo classineation nowse {remember that 'V7% noise means .¥/7 muselassatied instances
on average in a two-class learning task).
sa
so
oo
0 FLORAL
FLORAS
wo Q °
fp Ue Sce Eee Eee er een aee See
a 0 a a 80 “ ba
Instances processed
A comparison of the average window sizes in the experiment with 40%
11) wont
noise (Figure
sue oxpostations: in thy FLORAS curva, the charsstoritic shape (growing CONCEPT DRIET AND HIDDEN CONTENTS 89.
Ba te
ELoRAs —]
TLORAS
7 FLORAZ
w
10
° 20 10 wo 0 i 0
Instances processed
Figure 1. Average window sivas at ANSE noise
the window to a reasonable size during phases of concept stability, shrinking it in reaction
to a perceived context change) is still clearly recognizable, whereas the behavior of the
‘other oo systems is less predictable. ‘They apparently misinterpret noisy examples
as indicators of concept drift, as evidenced by the constant growing and shrinking of
the window, which in many cases prevents them from reaching a window size that is
ssuflicient for stable concept identification. In FLORA this kind of ealic behavior is
largely prevented by the robusiness of the generalizer's statistical criteria
AS 4 side note, we also notice that there is almost no difference between FLORA2
and FLORA3. One might exncct FLORAS to exhibit even less stable behavior than
FLORA2, as erroncous reactions 10 perceived drift would lead it (@ constantly reexam
ine and Sometimes reinstall previously stored hypotheses. However, the fact is that in
this noisy environment. FLORAS hardly ever reaches a situation that it considers stahle
enough to store its current hypothesis Lor possible future use, s0 there siimply are no old
concepts that could be reinstalled by mistake
Cehlimmoe and Crangar (O86) hows muted that SPACER aes
dom (examples of both classes affected) and systematic nvise (only positive or only
negative instances corrupted), fo our expenments, we could not detect 2 similar ten.
Janey in BURSA “That sone vnssemuhle, a6 thave ana nes companen
comparable (0 STAGGER’s LS and EN measures, which ase sensitive to one-sided var
ations. We conjecture that STAGGER may be more robust than FLORA4 in situations
with extromsly high, but aslo
i oe vate
7.2. Varying the speod af drift
‘Tho following experiment is concerned with what might be called the speed of concept
Ue. Suites LoNceps will Cailge Unily gradually, Leal, | period OF HLILaiany 90, WIDMER AND ML KUBAT
between stable sates. ‘The new concept only gradually takes over, and some examples
ray stil be classified according to the okd concept. An example is the behavior of &
device beginnung lo malfunction — il MIS Fans (clases mh 3 Hew WAY) Only SOMEUHNS,
nti the new faslure mae becomes dominant
Speed of drift can modelled hy a function a (see Figuse 12) that represents the degree
fof dominance of the old concept A aver the new concept 15 of, 1 ther words, the
probability that the curent concept still belongs to the ld context.” — I means that A
Js fully in effect, 0 means that # has completely taken over. The axis in Figure
12 represents the number of exanples processed so far assomning that instances arrive at
constant intervals this can also be regarded a8 a dimension of tie X's te pont where
the concept begins to drift. The slope of the function can then be characterized by
Az, the number of training instances until a reaches zero. Between Al and A! + As,
‘r+ 100% of the examples ure sil classified according t0 A, and B labs (1 a} + 100%
ot the cases
Figure 12 The
Tiny sinuations way seunklloa ia @ simple a
six boolean atributes (ay ...a3}. we defined a sequence of two (rather different) target
concepts A asec) Nay and B > (ay Nag) ¥ (ay Nay), where A would gradually change
ial domain. fa a universe epannod hy
Img tu yiusr er ensue that Ue teat act alse reflected the whan,
the sane set of 200 (esting examples was used throughout each un, but the instances
the set were relabeled alter cach training example was processed: the relabeling was
rovapanisie i ie 3
dotermined by the function a). The drift rates compared wore Ax - 90 {moderately fast
rift), Ar 100, and Ae = 200 (ery slow drt) XI (the point where the concept
pegins lo UMN MoM Aw By was aL LOO Ista
paper, the following results are averages over 16) runs.
Figures 13 through 1S compare our three leamers in each of the the
situahions. Mm aMluiton, Tor purposes oF Hi
figures indicate sianple hypothetical uppet and lower bounds on predictive accuracy im
this task. ‘The upper line plots the maximum accuracy thar could be achieved if a Yearcr
had pertect entormauon (Le. MF 1 KKEW Yoe wi
shat the target concepts are). In effect, the upper bound indicates the effect of the
awe created by the slow drift. The lower bound 1s simply the accuracy of guessing the
mayority class (whieh 1s always un oUF casey
ie way ap dn Labehins
caamplo (46. it war ale
| vthce expeeiments 3 this
ifferent ditt
tio, hme unted Lerircestal Ts
fhe Concept stants aur Changes and CONCEP DRIFT AND MIDDES CONTEXTS 91
rLoRAg
FLORAS
FLORA?
0 0 1001502088
Fire 13. Postrace toe Ar ~ 50
oy
ui
FLoRas
i FLORAS
0 FLORA
0 5010015022808
Figure 14. Performance tor Ar = 108 92 WIDMER AND ML KUBAT
FLonas
FLORA
Instances processed
igure 23pm 200
50
40)
0
a Datiax = 30
DoktaX = 10
wo Delian = 200
o STIS
304K) 450500
Figure 16, Windows sie to deren sp of dt (FLORAS)
The m: ative behavior of the lesmare sane
be quite robust. As expected, the shape of the valley of deereased accuracy depends
‘on the slope of the drift function , All three algorithms usually start to recover and
heajust before the concept change is complote (1... hie thure itil} moive in the data)
FLORAG secuns (© do best overall, al Heast for Ae 50 and Ar ~~ 100. No significant
difierence can be found in the case with the longest period of uncertainty (Ar ~ 200),
Whict scons confuse all Uae leans ale
important Bending: is thet tho g CONCEPT DRIFT AND MDDEN CONTENTS 93
‘The robustness of the Window Adjustment Heuristic is also documented in Pigure
16, which plots FLORAd's window sizes (again averaged over the 10 runs) in the three
experiments. “Ihe characteristic shape (narrowing of window at beginning of drt, then
increase until stable concept is learned) is clearly eecoxnizable in all three curves. The
‘more sudden the drift, the easier itis ¢o detect, and the steeper is the window narrowing
curve Note also the stable range ol the window size over the entire experiment’ in none
‘of the three conditions did the window grow 10 an unreasonable size, nor did it collapse
except in Situations of concept drift oF noise
7.3. Varying the extent of drift
Another important dimension is the extent of drift, ie. the dissimitarity between two
successive concepts 4 and B. Computational learning theory quantities drift extent a the
retative le Lo cUmeepts, which 1s tne pronaouity that 1 wit MISCIASstTy
a randomly drawn example that is labeled according to 4 (and vice versa). We can view
this as the probability of drawing an example from the symmetric difference, AO B, ob
he wy concepts. “THeoretical KsMnRs HIKE those im Sectton S suggest that the smaler Me
letent, the casier it should be for a learer ¢0 track the drift
Again, we used our artificial domain defined by six boolean attributes (ay... ax} to
test this conjecture. We Gevised a starting concept and Tour dierent “successor
concepts B, with linearly increasing degrees of dissimilarity to A. ‘The concepts are
defined as follows
A apna
BL +5 lay Ate 4 (aa V an] Fla Aaa Aas Rag]
bah Re Aug] i
Bie lad
Bet Aas
Acsiuming oa
hay Aaa] fe aa A bus V aay
o probabi
difference are as follows ext(A, B1) = 8/64 ~ 0.125; ext(A, B2) — 16/64 = 02
ent|A. BB} ~ 2V64 = 0.375; and ext(A, B4) = 32/64 05
Ao the previents eaperinwnts have slaty FLORA int wnat stab, Mavens yea
We ran FLORA on the four concept sequences A> 1, A + B2, A + BB, and
A BA, The results (accuracy measured on test set of 200 instances, plots are averages
cimce 1 sun) ans awa i Pguns 17
AL first sight, the results seem rather surprising, ‘To he sure, the drops in accuracy
after the context change are as expected: the smaller the extent of change, the smaller
1 CoNcqUENLY OF appiyig UE OkL concep AU ANEW Lest
set that reflects the instance distribution of the new concept By an is ovextap with A
But contrary to what theory seems 40 tell us — namely. thatthe smaller the extent, the
‘quicker uns learners revuvery — we see th Hr REL Me LOMCEpL SequERCE WiEN IRE rarest
extent (0.5) le to the fastest readjustment!
ty distribution over the instance apace, the eateuts u
she hop. That is a ai
Closer examination of the results and learning protocols ceveals the reasons for the
apparent paradox: tcarning Meory 1s (OF COUFSE) FIM. HULL 1S NOL appicable Lo eur 94 GWIDMER AND M. KUBAT
Instances processed
scenario. ‘The theoretical models of Section 3 assume a window of fixed (large) size.
while FLORAS reduces its window very effectively once it comes to believe in a concept
change; this 1s effective enous 1 deal with arHTe of any extent.
For the FLORA systems, the efiectiveness of adjusting to dift depends on (1) whether
the cuuveyn dst ip pusevives al all — which enuy in fact be caver when the difference
between Concepts is Target — snd (2) what the new concept looks like. Its the complexity
af the concept descriptions that causes problems For the FLORA sysieas, in particular
Uinuugh the Wndin edjussinen: Hewrite. Whathce the window gros to an appeopriote
size depends on the syntactic complexity of the concepts description and the absolute
and eelative frequency with which incoming examples confirm a particular conjunct of
Ute typoesia. That ip abe nntivn uf the apuraity of the eomeept. fa var experiment,
the concept with the largest drift extent (B4) was also the simplest one. syntactically
speaking, and that is why it was leamed much more easily than the others. We can
esi
et Leiter resale fe {Uy wnslifying those parameters of the WAV?
that relaje to the complexity of a hypothesis vis-a-vis the number of examples. covered
(le-and he — soe Table 2), but shat is not the point of this exercise
COuranalysis points to 8 fundamental problem with all the FLORA systems the Window
Adjustment Heuristic — and, by implication, the entre hypothesis maintenance algorithm
is rathcr sensitive tthe form ond complonity of the target concupt For practical
applications, preliminary experiments with the aim of finding gous parameter settings
for the WAAT will be essential. From a theoretical point of view. the situation is not very
aatisfintiny, Init we have nut hoon abe to do
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