Multistage modeling for the classification of numerical and categorical datasets

Logistic regression and Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models are sequentially trained with categorical and numerical data in an ensemble-based multistage scheme. In the first stage, a logistic regression model is used to transform the binary feature space into a numerical feature that is used to train a second stage of models consisting of an ensemble of two Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models. In the ensemble, one model is trained in the space of numerical features and first stage prediction values. The other model is trained only with samples that were classified with a low degree of confidence by the first stage model, in the space of numerical variables. The final output is given by the average of the ensemble predictions at second stage. This scheme was devised under the hypothesis that separating binary from numerical features in the modeling process would increase the performance of a single model using both types of features together. The proposed multistage approach is used to solve a clinical classification problem in a Portuguese hospital. The problem consists of predicting comanagement signalling based on patient clinical data, including diagnosis, procedures, comorbidities and numerical scores, collected before surgery. The multistage performed better in the comanagement dataset, and in 2 out of 5 benchmark datasets.