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Main Authors: Cech, Tim, Wegen, Ole, Atzberger, Daniel, Richter, Rico, Scheibel, Willy, Döllner, Jürgen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.13552
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author Cech, Tim
Wegen, Ole
Atzberger, Daniel
Richter, Rico
Scheibel, Willy
Döllner, Jürgen
author_facet Cech, Tim
Wegen, Ole
Atzberger, Daniel
Richter, Rico
Scheibel, Willy
Döllner, Jürgen
contents Standard datasets are frequently used to train and evaluate Machine Learning models. However, the assumed standardness of these datasets leads to a lack of in-depth discussion on how their labels match the derived categories for the respective use case, which we demonstrate by reviewing recent literature that employs standard datasets. We find that the standardness of the datasets seems to cloud their actual coherency and applicability, thus impeding the trust in Machine Learning models trained on these datasets. Therefore, we argue against the uncritical use of standard datasets and advocate for their critical examination instead. For this, we suggest to use Grounded Theory in combination with Hypotheses Testing through Visualization as methods to evaluate the match between use case, derived categories, and labels. We exemplify this approach by applying it to the 20 Newsgroups dataset and the MNIST dataset, both considered standard datasets in their respective domain. The results show that the labels of the 20 Newsgroups dataset are imprecise, which implies that neither a Machine Learning model can learn a meaningful abstraction of derived categories nor one can draw conclusions from achieving high accuracy on this dataset. For the MNIST dataset, we demonstrate that the labels can be confirmed to be defined well. We conclude that also for datasets that are considered to be standard, quality and suitability have to be assessed in order to learn meaningful abstractions and, thus, improve trust in Machine Learning models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_13552
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Standardness Clouds Meaning: A Position Regarding the Informed Usage of Standard Datasets
Cech, Tim
Wegen, Ole
Atzberger, Daniel
Richter, Rico
Scheibel, Willy
Döllner, Jürgen
Machine Learning
Human-Computer Interaction
Standard datasets are frequently used to train and evaluate Machine Learning models. However, the assumed standardness of these datasets leads to a lack of in-depth discussion on how their labels match the derived categories for the respective use case, which we demonstrate by reviewing recent literature that employs standard datasets. We find that the standardness of the datasets seems to cloud their actual coherency and applicability, thus impeding the trust in Machine Learning models trained on these datasets. Therefore, we argue against the uncritical use of standard datasets and advocate for their critical examination instead. For this, we suggest to use Grounded Theory in combination with Hypotheses Testing through Visualization as methods to evaluate the match between use case, derived categories, and labels. We exemplify this approach by applying it to the 20 Newsgroups dataset and the MNIST dataset, both considered standard datasets in their respective domain. The results show that the labels of the 20 Newsgroups dataset are imprecise, which implies that neither a Machine Learning model can learn a meaningful abstraction of derived categories nor one can draw conclusions from achieving high accuracy on this dataset. For the MNIST dataset, we demonstrate that the labels can be confirmed to be defined well. We conclude that also for datasets that are considered to be standard, quality and suitability have to be assessed in order to learn meaningful abstractions and, thus, improve trust in Machine Learning models.
title Standardness Clouds Meaning: A Position Regarding the Informed Usage of Standard Datasets
topic Machine Learning
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.13552