Hierarchical Classification using Binary Data

Abstract

In classification problems, especially those that categorize data into a large number of classes, the classes often naturally follow a hierarchical structure. That is, some classes are likely to share similar structures and features. Those characteristics can be captured by considering a hierarchical relationship among the class labels. Here, we extend a recent simple classification approach on binary data in order to efficiently classify hierarchical data. In certain settings, specifically, when some classes are significantly easier to identify than others, we showcase computational and accuracy advantages.