A comparison of the post selection error rate behaviour of the normal linear and quadratic discriminant rules

The normal linear discriminant rule (NLDR) and the normal quadratic discriminant rule (NQDR) are popular classifiers when working with normal populations. Several papers in the literature have been devoted to a comparison of these rules with respect to classification performance. An aspect which has, however, not received any attention is the effect of an initial variable selection step on the relative performance of these classification rules. Cross model validation variabie selection has been found to perform well in the linear case, and can be extended to the quadratic case. We report the results of a simulation study comparing the NLDR and the NQDR with respect to the post variable selection classification performance. It is of interest that the NQDR generally benefits from an initial variable selection step. We also comment briefly on the problem of estimating the post selection error rates of the two rules.