Local means-based fuzzy k-nearest neighbor classifier with Minkowski distance and relevance-complementarity feature weighting

Abstract This paper introduces an enhanced fuzzy k -nearest neighbor (FKNN) approach called the feature-weighted Minkowski distance and local means-based fuzzy k -nearest neighbor (FWM-LMFKNN). This method improves classification accuracy by incorporating feature weights, Minkowski distance, and class representative local mean vectors. The feature weighting process is developed based on feature relevance and complementarity. We improve the distance calculations between instances by utilizing feature information-based weighting and Minkowski distance, resulting in a more precise set of nearest neighbors. Furthermore, the FWM-LMFKNN classifier considers the local structure of class subsets by using local mean vectors instead of individual neighbors, which improves its classification performance. Empirical results using twenty different real-world data sets demonstrate that the proposed method achieves statistically significantly higher classification performance than traditional KNN, FKNN, and six other related state-of-the-art methods.