Construction of a nonlinear discrimination function based on the MDL criterion

Although a nonlinear discrimination function may be superior to linear or q uadratic classifiers, it is difficult to construct such a function. In this paper, we propose a method to construct a nonlinear discrimination functio n using Legendre polynomials. The selection of an optimal set of Legendre p olynomials is determined by the MDL (Minimum Description Length) criterion. Results using many real data show the effectiveness of this method.