This Website contains complementary material to the paper:

J. Derrac, S. García and F.Herrera, Fuzzy Nearest Neighbor Algorithms: Taxonomy, Experimental analysis and Prospects. Information Sciences 260 (2014) 98-119, doi: 10.1016/j.ins.2013.10.038

The web is organized according to the following summary:

1. Abstract
2. Survey of Fuzzy Nearest Neighbor Methods
3. Experimental Framework
4. Experimental Study

Abstract

J. Derrac, S. García and F.Herrera, Fuzzy Nearest Neighbor Algorithms: Taxonomy, Experimental analysis and Prospects.

In recent years, many nearest neighbor algorithms based on fuzzy sets theory have been developed. These methods form a field, coined as fuzzy nearest neighbor classification, which is the source of many proposals for the enhancement of the $k$ nearest neighbor classifier. Fuzzy sets theory and several extensions, including fuzzy rough sets, intuitionistic fuzzy sets, type-2 fuzzy sets and possibilistic theory are the foundations of these hybrid techniques, designed to tackle some of the drawbacks of the nearest neighbor rule.

In this paper the most relevant approaches in fuzzy nearest neighbor classification are reviewed, including also applications and theoretical works. Several descriptive properties are defined to build a full taxonomy, which should be useful as a future reference for new developments. An experimental framework, including implementations of the methods, datasets, and a suggestion of a statistical methodology for results assessment is provided. A case of study is included, featuring a comparison of the best techniques with several state of the art crisp nearest neighbor classifiers. The work is concluded with the suggestion of some open challenges and ways of improvement of fuzzy nearest neighbor classification as a machine learning technique.