A modified Chi2 algorithm for discretization

Abstract

Since the ChiMerge algorithm was first proposed by Kerber in 1992, it has become a widely used and discussed discretization method. The Chi2 algorithm is a modification to the ChiMerge method. It automates the discretization process by introducing an inconsistency rate as the stopping criterion and it automatically selects the significance value. In addition, it adds a finer phase aimed at feature selection to broaden the applications of the ChiMerge algorithm. However, the Chi2 algorithm does not consider the inaccuracy inherent in ChiMerge's merging criterion. The user-defined inconsistency rate also brings about inaccuracy to the discretization process. These two drawbacks are first discussed in this paper and modifications to overcome them are then proposed. By comparison, results with original Chi2 algorithm using C4.5, the modified Chi2 algorithm, performs better than the original Chi2 algorithm. It becomes a completely automatic discretization method.