The effect of missing data on classification quality

Abstract

The field of data quality management has long recognized the negative impact of data quality defects on decision quality. In many decision scenarios, this negative impact can be largely attributed to the mediating role played by decision-support models - with defected data, the estimation of such a model becomes less reliable and, as a result, the likelihood of flawed decisions increases. Drawing on that argument, this study presents a methodology for assessing the impact of quality defects on the likelihood of flawed decisions. The methodology is first presented at a high level, and then extended for analyzing the impact of missing values on binary Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) classifiers. To conclude, we discuss possible directions for extensions and future directions.