ML-kNN-H: A Multi-Label Classification Model based on Hoeffding’s Inequality

Multi-label data stream classification plays a crucial role in various applications, including recommendation systems, real-time monitoring systems, smart cities, social media analysis, and healthcare. Its ability to classify constantly generated, potentially unbounded data at a high rate is of utmost importance. Besides accommodating multiple labels, data streams may evolve due to concept drift and bias toward particular classes due to class imbalance. This research introduces the multi-label classification model based on Hoeffding inequality (ML-kNN-H). The proposed model aims to process multi-label data streams, handle concept drift, and class imbalance. ML-kNN-H removes instances introducing errors based on a dynamic value computed from the Hoeffding inequality instead of a fixed value, thereby enhancing the model's efficiency and applicability to different types of data streams. Several experiments have been conducted to assess the model's performance in the presence of concept drift (abrupt and gradual drift) and class imbalance. Particularly, it has been evaluated against six kNN multi-label classifiers on ten datasets: synthetic and real world. The results indicate that ML-kNN-H outperformed the other classifiers on benchmark datasets in terms of Subset Accuracy, Accuracy, Hamming Score, and F-score, except in running time. Statistical analysis has also been utilized to measure the significance of the ML-kNN-H compared to the state-of-the-art classifiers.