  In practical applications, machine learning algorithms are often needed to
learn classifiers that optimize domain specific performance measures.
Previously, the research has focused on learning the needed classifier in
isolation, yet learning nonlinear classifier for nonlinear and nonsmooth
performance measures is still hard. In this paper, rather than learning the
needed classifier by optimizing specific performance measure directly, we
circumvent this problem by proposing a novel two-step approach called as CAPO,
namely to first train nonlinear auxiliary classifiers with existing learning
methods, and then to adapt auxiliary classifiers for specific performance
measures. In the first step, auxiliary classifiers can be obtained efficiently
by taking off-the-shelf learning algorithms. For the second step, we show that
the classifier adaptation problem can be reduced to a quadratic program
problem, which is similar to linear SVMperf and can be efficiently solved. By
exploiting nonlinear auxiliary classifiers, CAPO can generate nonlinear
classifier which optimizes a large variety of performance measures including
all the performance measure based on the contingency table and AUC, whilst
keeping high computational efficiency. Empirical studies show that CAPO is
effective and of high computational efficiency, and even it is more efficient
than linear SVMperf.
