stab.fs {genefu} | R Documentation

## Function to quantify stability of feature selection

### Description

This function computes several indexes to quantify feature selection stability. This is usually estimated through perturbation of the original dataset by generating multiple sets of selected features.

### Usage

    stab.fs(fsets, N, method = c("kuncheva", "davis"), ...)

### Arguments

`fsets` | list of sets of selected features, each set of selected features may have different size.
`N` | total number of features on which feature selection is performed.
`method` | stability index (see details section).
`...` | additional parameters passed to stability index (penalty that is a numeric for Davis' stability index, see details section).

### Details

Stability indices may use different parameters. In this version only the Davis index requires an additional parameter that is penalty, a numeric value used as penalty term. Kuncheva index (kuncheva) lays in [-1, 1], An index of -1 means no intersection between sets of selected features, +1 means that all the same features are always selected and 0 is the expected stability of a random feature selection. Davis index (davis) lays in [0,1], With a penalty term equal to 0, an index of 0 means no intersection between sets of selected features and +1 means that all the same features are always selected. A penalty of 1 is usually used so that a feature selection performed with no or all features has a Davis stability index equals to 0. None estimate of the expected Davis stability index of a random feature selection was published.

### Value

A numeric that is the stability index.

### References

Davis CA, Gerick F, Hintermair V, Friedel CC, Fundel K, Kuffner R, Zimmer R (2006) "Reliable gene signatures for microarray classification: assessment of stability and performance", Bioinformatics, 22(19):356-2363. Kuncheva LI (2007) "A stability index for feature selection", AIAP'07: Proceedings of the 25th conference on Proceedings of the 25th IASTED International Multi-Conference, pages 390-395.

### See Also

stab.fs.ranking

### Examples

    set.seed(54321)
    # 100 random selection of 50 features from a set of 10,000 features
    fsets <- lapply(as.list(1:100), function(x, size=50, N=10000) {
      return(sample(1:N, size, replace=FALSE))} )
    names(fsets) <- paste("fsel", 1:length(fsets), sep=".")

    # Kuncheva index
    stab.fs(fsets=fsets, N=10000, method="kuncheva")
    # close to 0 as expected for a random feature selection

    # Davis index
    stab.fs(fsets=fsets, N=10000, method="davis", penalty=1)

[Package genefu version 2.26.0 Index]