Skip to main content

Combined Classification of Handwritten Digits Using the ‘Virtual Test Sample Method’

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Multiple Classifier Systems (MCS 2001)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2096))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

In this paper, we present a combined classification approach called the ‘virtual test sample method’. Contrary to classifier combination, where the outputs of a number of classifiers are used to come to a combined decision for a given observation, we use multiple instances generated from the original observation and a single classifier to compute a combined decision. In our experiments, the virtual test sample method is used to improve the performance of a statistical classifier based on Gaussian mixture densities. We show that this approach has some desirable theoretical properties and performs very well, especially when combined with the use of invariant distance measures. In the experiments conducted throughout this work, we obtained an excellent error rate of 2.2% on the original US Postal Service task.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Breiman, L.: Bagging Predictors. Technical Report 421, Department of Statistics, University of California at Berkeley, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Dahmen, J., Keysers, D., Ney, H., Güld, M.: Statistical Image Object Recognition using Mixture Densities. Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision, Vol. 14,No. 3, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 285–296, May 2001.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Dempster A., Laird, N., Rubin, D.: Maximum Likelihood from Incomplete Data via the EM Algorithm. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 39(B), pp. 1–38, 1977.

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. Drucker, H., Schapire, R., Simard, P.: Boosting Performance in Neural Networks. Int. Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 7,No. 4, pp. 705–719, 1993.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Duda, R., Hart, P.: Pattern Classification and Scene Analysis. John Wiley & Sons, 1973.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Freund, Y., Schapire, R.: Experiments with a New Boosting Algorithm. 13th Int. Conference on Machine Learning, Bari, Italy, pp. 148–156, July 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Keysers, D., Dahmen, J., Ney, H.: A Probabilistic View on Tangent Distance. 22nd Symposium German Association for Pattern Recognition (DAGM), Kiel, Germany, pp. 107–114, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Keysers, D., Dahmen, J., Theiner, T., Ney, H.: Experiments with an Extended Tangent Distance. 15th Int. Conference on Pattern Recognition, Barcelona, Spain, Vol. 2, pp. 38–42, September 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Kittler, J.: On Combining Classifiers. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 20,No. 3, pp. 226–239, March 1998.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Ney, H.: On the Probabilistic Interpretation of Neural Network Classifiers and Discriminative Training Criteria, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 17,No. 2, pp. 107–119, February 1995.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Schölkopf, B.: Support Vector Learning. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, 1997.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Schölkopf, B., Simard, P., Smola, A., Vapnik, V.: Prior Knowledge in Support Vector Kernels. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 10, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 640–646, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Schapire, R., Freund, Y., Bartlett, P., Lee, W.: Boosting the Margin: A New Explanation for the Effectiveness of Voting Methods. The Annals of Statistics, Vol. 26,No. 5, pp. 1651–1686, 1998.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  14. Simard, P., Le Cun, Y., Denker, J.: Efficient Pattern Recognition using a New Transformation Distance. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 5, Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo CA, pp. 50–58, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Simard, P., Le Cun, Y., Denker, J., Victorri, B.: Transformation Invariance in Pattern Recognition–Tangent Distance and Tangent Propagation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1524, Springer, pp. 239–274, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Vapnik, V.: The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory, Springer, New York, pp. 142–143, 1995.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Dahmen, J., Keysers, D., Ney, H. (2001). Combined Classification of Handwritten Digits Using the ‘Virtual Test Sample Method’. In: Kittler, J., Roli, F. (eds) Multiple Classifier Systems. MCS 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2096. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48219-9_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48219-9_11

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42284-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48219-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics