Which is a better method? libsvm or svmclassify?

Question

I have been recently trying to use svm for feature classification. While i was doing so, a question came to my mind.

Which would be a better method to use, LIBSVM or svmclassify? What I mean by svmclassify is to use in-built functions in MATLAB such as svmtrain and svmclassify. In that sense, I was interested to know which method would be more accurate and which would be easier to use.

Since MATLAB has already the Bioinformatics toolbox already, why would you use LIBSVM? Aren't the functions like svmtrain and svmclassify already built in.. what additional benefits does LIBSVM bring about?

I would like to hear some of your opinions. Please Pardon me if the question is stupid..

Jaella

Answer 1

I expect you would get very similar result using each library.

They are both very easy to use. The only big difference is that one comes with the MATLAB Bioinformatics toolbox and the other one you need to obtain from the authors web site and install by hand. If to you this is an issue I would recommend you stick to what is already installed in your computer. If not consider using LIBSVM, as it is a very well tested and well regarded library.

Zamia

thanks for replying... Since MATLAB has already the Bioinformatics toolbox already, why would you use LIBSVM? Aren't the functions like svmtrain and svmclassify already built in.. what benefits does LIBSVM bring about? – Jaella

Answer 2

Also, from personal experience on playing with both, libSVM is much faster than MATLAB svm routines for obvious reasons. Last but not the least, libSVM has MATLAB plugins which can be called from MATLAB if you are more comfortable within a MATLAB environment.

Disunity

Any specific examples? Any details on the 'obvious' reasons? – Library

Answer 3

I have also the same question, but I think that Libsvm is very useful and very easy in the case of multi-classes classification , but the matlab toolbox is designed for only two classes classification.

Mccrea

Answer 4

In my experience the libsvm performed giving cross validaion results as 45% where matlab code did 90%. So I looked up the explanation of matlab function for svm where they had such options related with perceptrones, I wonder if they are using pure svm or not but will write again in my case matlab was much better. (multiclass svm)

Guardado