Risk-sensitive learning via minimization of empirical conditional value-at-risk

We extend the framework of cost-sensitive classification to mitigate risks of huge costs occurring with low probabilities, and propose an algorithm that achieves this goal. Instead of minimizing the expected cost commonly used in cost-sensitive learning, our algorithm minimizes conditional value-at-risk, also known as expected shortfall, which is considered a good risk metric in the area of financial engineering. The proposed algorithm is a general meta-learning algorithm that can exploit existing example-dependent cost-sensitive learning algorithms, and is capable of dealing with not only alternative actions in ordinary classification tasks, but also allocative actions in resource-allocation type tasks. Experiments on tasks with example-dependent costs show promising results. Copyright © 2007 The Institute of Electronics.