Attribute reduction is viewed as an important preprocessing step for pattern recognition and data mining. Most of researches are focused on attribute reduction by using rough sets. Recently, Tsang et al. discussed attribute reduction with covering rough sets in the paper (Tsang et al., 2008), where an approach based on discernibility matrix was presented to compute all attribute reducts. In this paper, we provide a new method for constructing simpler discernibility matrix with covering based rough sets, and improve some characterizations of attribute reduction provided by Tsang et al. It is proved that the improved discernibility matrix is equivalent to the old one, but the computational complexity of discernibility matrix is relatively reduced. Then we further study attribute reduction in decision tables based on a different strategy of identifying objects. Finally, the proposed reduction method is compared with some existing feature selection methods by numerical experiments and the experimental results show that the proposed reduction method is efficient and effective. 
An improved attribute reduction scheme with covering based rough sets