Majority or Minority: Data Imbalance Learning Method for Named Entity Recognition

Data imbalance presents a significant challenge in various machine learning (ML) tasks, particularly named entity recognition (NER) within natural language processing (NLP). NER exhibits a data imbalance with a long-tail distribution, featuring numerous minority classes (i.e., entity classes) and a...

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Main Authors: Sota Nemoto, Shunsuke Kitada, Hitoshi Iyatomi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10816423/
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author Sota Nemoto
Shunsuke Kitada
Hitoshi Iyatomi
author_facet Sota Nemoto
Shunsuke Kitada
Hitoshi Iyatomi
author_sort Sota Nemoto
collection DOAJ
description Data imbalance presents a significant challenge in various machine learning (ML) tasks, particularly named entity recognition (NER) within natural language processing (NLP). NER exhibits a data imbalance with a long-tail distribution, featuring numerous minority classes (i.e., entity classes) and a single majority class (i.e., <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {O}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-class). This imbalance leads to misclassifications of the entity classes as the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {O}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-class. To tackle this issue, we propose a simple and effective learning method named majority or minority (MoM) learning. MoM learning incorporates the loss computed only for samples whose ground truth is the majority class into the loss of the conventional ML model. Evaluation experiments on four NER datasets (Japanese and English) showed that MoM learning improves the prediction performance of the minority classes without sacrificing the performance of the majority class and is more effective than widely known and state-of-the-art methods. We also evaluated MoM learning using frameworks such as sequential labeling and machine reading comprehension, which are commonly used in NER. Furthermore, MoM learning has achieved consistent performance improvements regardless of language, model, framework, or data size.
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issn 2169-3536
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spelling doaj-art-b38b92b043744a7e95b8b361317d41692025-01-21T00:01:46ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-01139902990910.1109/ACCESS.2024.352297210816423Majority or Minority: Data Imbalance Learning Method for Named Entity RecognitionSota Nemoto0https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0305-7127Shunsuke Kitada1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3330-8779Hitoshi Iyatomi2https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4108-4178Department of Applied Informatics, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Hosei University, Tokyo, JapanDepartment of Applied Informatics, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Hosei University, Tokyo, JapanDepartment of Applied Informatics, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Hosei University, Tokyo, JapanData imbalance presents a significant challenge in various machine learning (ML) tasks, particularly named entity recognition (NER) within natural language processing (NLP). NER exhibits a data imbalance with a long-tail distribution, featuring numerous minority classes (i.e., entity classes) and a single majority class (i.e., <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {O}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-class). This imbalance leads to misclassifications of the entity classes as the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {O}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-class. To tackle this issue, we propose a simple and effective learning method named majority or minority (MoM) learning. MoM learning incorporates the loss computed only for samples whose ground truth is the majority class into the loss of the conventional ML model. Evaluation experiments on four NER datasets (Japanese and English) showed that MoM learning improves the prediction performance of the minority classes without sacrificing the performance of the majority class and is more effective than widely known and state-of-the-art methods. We also evaluated MoM learning using frameworks such as sequential labeling and machine reading comprehension, which are commonly used in NER. Furthermore, MoM learning has achieved consistent performance improvements regardless of language, model, framework, or data size.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10816423/Natural language processingnamed entity recognitiondata imbalancecost-sensitive learning
spellingShingle Sota Nemoto
Shunsuke Kitada
Hitoshi Iyatomi
Majority or Minority: Data Imbalance Learning Method for Named Entity Recognition
IEEE Access
Natural language processing
named entity recognition
data imbalance
cost-sensitive learning
title Majority or Minority: Data Imbalance Learning Method for Named Entity Recognition
title_full Majority or Minority: Data Imbalance Learning Method for Named Entity Recognition
title_fullStr Majority or Minority: Data Imbalance Learning Method for Named Entity Recognition
title_full_unstemmed Majority or Minority: Data Imbalance Learning Method for Named Entity Recognition
title_short Majority or Minority: Data Imbalance Learning Method for Named Entity Recognition
title_sort majority or minority data imbalance learning method for named entity recognition
topic Natural language processing
named entity recognition
data imbalance
cost-sensitive learning
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10816423/
work_keys_str_mv AT sotanemoto majorityorminoritydataimbalancelearningmethodfornamedentityrecognition
AT shunsukekitada majorityorminoritydataimbalancelearningmethodfornamedentityrecognition
AT hitoshiiyatomi majorityorminoritydataimbalancelearningmethodfornamedentityrecognition