Binary and multiclass classification
The first classifier we saw, the threshold classifier, was a simple binary classifier (the result is either one class or the other as a point is either above the threshold or it is not). The second classifier we used, the nearest neighbor classifier, was a naturally multiclass classifier (the output can be one of several classes).
It is often simpler to define a simple binary method than one that works on multiclass problems. However, we can reduce the multiclass problem to a series of binary decisions. This is what we did earlier in the Iris dataset in a haphazard way; we observed that it was easy to separate one of the initial classes and focused on the other two, reducing the problem to two binary decisions:
Is it an Iris Setosa (yes or no)?
If no, check whether it is an Iris Virginica (yes or no).
Of course, we want to leave this sort of reasoning to the computer. As usual, there are several solutions to this multiclass reduction.
The simplest is to use...
