Support vector machines for classification in nonstandard situations

The majority of classification algorithms are developed for the standard situation in which it is assumed that the examples in the training set come from the same distribution as that of the target population, and that the cost of misclassification into different classes are the same. However, these assumptions are often violated in real world settings. For some classification methods, this can often be taken care of simply with a change of threshold; for others, additional effort is required. In this paper, we explain why the standard support vector machine is not suitable for the nonstandard situation, and introduce a simple procedure for adapting the support vector machine methodology to the nonstandard situation. Theoretical justification for the procedure is provided. Simulation study illustrates that the modified support vector machine significantly improves upon the standard support vector machine in the nonstandard situation. The computational load of the proposed procedure is the same as that of the standard support vector machine. The procedure reduces to the standard support vector machine in the standard situation.