Hybrid clustering strategies for effective oversampling and undersampling in multiclass classification

Abstract

Abstract Multiclass imbalance is a challenging problem in real-world datasets, where certain classes may have a low number of samples because they correspond to rare occurrences. To address the challenge of multiclass imbalance, this paper introduces a novel hybrid cluster-based oversampling and undersampling (HCBOU) technique. By clustering and separating classes into majority and minority categories, this algorithm retains the most information during undersampling while generating efficient data in the minority class. The classification is carried out using one-vs-one and one-vs-all decomposition schemes. Extensive experimentation was carried out on 30 datasets to evaluate the proposed algorithm's performance. The results were subsequently compared with those of several state-of-the-art algorithms. Based on the results, the proposed algorithm outperforms the competing algorithms under different scenarios. Finally, The HCBOU algorithm demonstrated robust performance across varying class imbalance levels, highlighting its effectiveness in handling imbalanced datasets.