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Article
Majority Voting by Independent Classifiers Can Increase Error Rates
The American Statistician
  • Stephen B. Vardeman, Iowa State University
  • Max Morris, Iowa State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Accepted Manuscript
Publication Date
1-1-2013
DOI
10.1080/00031305.2013.778788
Abstract

The technique of “majority voting” of classifiers is used in machine learning with the aim of constructing a new combined classification rule that has better characteristics than any of a given set of rules. The “Condorcet Jury Theorem” is often cited, incorrectly, as support for a claim that this practice leads to an improved classifier (i.e., one with smaller error probabilities) when the given classifiers are sufficiently good and are uncorrelated. We specifically address the case of two-category classification, and argue that a correct claim can be made for independent (not just uncorrelated) classification errors (not the classifiers themselves), and offer an example demonstrating that the common claim is false. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Comments

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The American Statistician on March 25, 2013 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00031305.2013.778788

Copyright Owner
American Statistical Association
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Stephen B. Vardeman and Max Morris. "Majority Voting by Independent Classifiers Can Increase Error Rates" The American Statistician Vol. 67 Iss. 2 (2013) p. 94 - 96
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/stephen_vardeman/16/