Select Features for Naive Bayes Clasification in R - r

Question

i want to use naive Bayes classifier to make some predictions.
So far i can make the prediction with the following (sample) code in R
library(klaR)
library(caret)
Faktor<-x <- sample( LETTERS[1:4], 10000, replace=TRUE, prob=c(0.1, 0.2, 0.65, 0.05) )
alter<-abs(rnorm(10000,30,5))
HF<-abs(rnorm(10000,1000,200))
Diffalq<-rnorm(10000)
Geschlecht<-sample(c("Mann","Frau", "Firma"),10000,replace=TRUE)
data<-data.frame(Faktor,alter,HF,Diffalq,Geschlecht)
set.seed(5678)
flds<-createFolds(data$Faktor, 10)
train<-data[-flds$Fold01 ,]
test<-data[flds$Fold01 ,]
features <- c("HF","alter","Diffalq", "Geschlecht")
formel<-as.formula(paste("Faktor ~ ", paste(features, collapse= "+")))
nb<-NaiveBayes(formel, train, usekernel=TRUE)
pred<-predict(nb,test)
test$Prognose<-as.factor(pred$class)
Now i want to improve this model by feature selection. My real data is about 100 features big.
So my question is , what woould be the best way to select the most important features for naive Bayes classification?
Is there any paper dor reference?
I tried the following line of code, bit this did not work unfortunately
rfe(train[, 2:5],train[, 1], sizes=1:4,rfeControl = rfeControl(functions = ldaFuncs, method = "cv"))
EDIT: It gives me the following error message
Fehler in { : task 1 failed - "nicht-numerisches Argument für binären Operator"
Calls: rfe ... rfe.default -> nominalRfeWorkflow -> %op% -> <Anonymous>
Because this is in german you may please reproduce this on your machine
How can i adjust the rfe() call to get a recursive feature elimination?

Answer 1

This error appears to be due to the ldaFuncs. Apparently they do not like factors when using matrix input. The main problem can be re-created with your test data using
mm <- ldaFuncs$fit(train[2:5], train[,1])
ldaFuncs$pred(mm,train[2:5])
# Error in FUN(x, aperm(array(STATS, dims[perm]), order(perm)), ...) :
# non-numeric argument to binary operator
And this only seems to happens if you include the factor variable. For example
mm <- ldaFuncs$fit(train[2:4], train[,1])
ldaFuncs$pred(mm,train[2:4])
does not return the same error (and appears to work correctly). Again, this only appears to be a problem when you use the matrix syntax. If you use the formula/data syntax, you don't have the same problem. For example
mm <- ldaFuncs$fit(Faktor ~ alter + HF + Diffalq + Geschlecht, train)
ldaFuncs$pred(mm,train[2:5])
appears to work as expected. This means you have a few different options. Either you can use the rfe() formula syntax like
rfe(Faktor ~ alter + HF + Diffalq + Geschlecht, train, sizes=1:4,
rfeControl = rfeControl(functions = ldaFuncs, method = "cv"))
Or you could expand the dummy variables yourself with something like
train.ex <- cbind(train[,1], model.matrix(~.-Faktor, train)[,-1])
rfe(train.ex[, 2:6],train.ex[, 1], ...)
But this doesn't remember which variables are paired in the same factor so it's not ideal.