EFFECTIVE MULTI-CLASS SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE CLASSIFICATION

An improved method of classifying examples into multiple categories using a binary support vector machine (SVM) algorithm. In one preferred embodiment, the method includes the following steps: storing a plurality of user-defined categories in a memory of a computer, analyzing a plurality of training examples for each category so as to identify one or more features associated with each category; calculating at least one feature vector for each of the examples; transforming each of the at least one feature vectors so as reflect information about all of the training examples; and building a SVM classifier for each one of the plurality of categories, wherein the process of building a SVM classifier further includes: assigning each of the examples in a first category to a first class and all other examples belonging to other categories to a second class, wherein if anyone of the examples belongs to another category as well as the first category, such examples are assigned to the first class only, optimizing at least one tunable parameter of a SVM classifier for the first category, wherein the SVM classifier is trained using the first and second classes; and optimizing a function that converts the output of the binary SVM classifier into a probability of category membership.