  CFS (Correlation-Based Feature Selection) is an FS algorithm that has been
successfully applied to classification problems in many domains. We describe
Distributed CFS (DiCFS) as a completely redesigned, scalable, parallel and
distributed version of the CFS algorithm, capable of dealing with the large
volumes of data typical of big data applications. Two versions of the algorithm
were implemented and compared using the Apache Spark cluster computing model,
currently gaining popularity due to its much faster processing times than
Hadoop's MapReduce model. We tested our algorithms on four publicly available
datasets, each consisting of a large number of instances and two also
consisting of a large number of features. The results show that our algorithms
were superior in terms of both time-efficiency and scalability. In leveraging a
computer cluster, they were able to handle larger datasets than the
non-distributed WEKA version while maintaining the quality of the results,
i.e., exactly the same features were returned by our algorithms when compared
to the original algorithm available in WEKA.
