You don't have to write data to a file, you can instead use the Matlab interface to LIBSVM. This interface consists of two functions, svmtrain and svmpredict. Each function prints a help text if called without arguments:
Usage: model = svmtrain(training_label_vector, training_instance_matrix, 'libsvm_options');
libsvm_options:
-s svm_type : set type of SVM (default 0)
0 -- C-SVC
1 -- nu-SVC
2 -- one-class SVM
3 -- epsilon-SVR
4 -- nu-SVR
-t kernel_type : set type of kernel function (default 2)
0 -- linear: u'*v
1 -- polynomial: (gamma*u'*v + coef0)^degree
2 -- radial basis function: exp(-gamma*|u-v|^2)
3 -- sigmoid: tanh(gamma*u'*v + coef0)
4 -- precomputed kernel (kernel values in training_instance_matrix)
-d degree : set degree in kernel function (default 3)
-g gamma : set gamma in kernel function (default 1/num_features)
-r coef0 : set coef0 in kernel function (default 0)
-c cost : set the parameter C of C-SVC, epsilon-SVR, and nu-SVR (default 1)
-n nu : set the parameter nu of nu-SVC, one-class SVM, and nu-SVR (default 0.5)
-p epsilon : set the epsilon in loss function of epsilon-SVR (default 0.1)
-m cachesize : set cache memory size in MB (default 100)
-e epsilon : set tolerance of termination criterion (default 0.001)
-h shrinking : whether to use the shrinking heuristics, 0 or 1 (default 1)
-b probability_estimates : whether to train a SVC or SVR model for probability estimates, 0 or 1 (default 0)
-wi weight : set the parameter C of class i to weight*C, for C-SVC (default 1)
-v n : n-fold cross validation mode
-q : quiet mode (no outputs)
and
Usage: [predicted_label, accuracy, decision_values/prob_estimates] = svmpredict(testing_label_vector, testing_instance_matrix, model, 'libsvm_options')
Parameters:
model: SVM model structure from svmtrain.
libsvm_options:
-b probability_estimates: whether to predict probability estimates, 0 or 1 (default 0); one-class SVM not supported yet
Returns:
predicted_label: SVM prediction output vector.
accuracy: a vector with accuracy, mean squared error, squared correlation coefficient.
prob_estimates: If selected, probability estimate vector.
Example code for training a linear SVM on a data set of four points with three features:
training_label_vector = [1 ; 1 ; -1 ; -1];
training_instance_matrix = [1 2 3 ; 3 4 5 ; 5 6 7; 7 8 9];
model = svmtrain(training_label_vector, training_instance_matrix, '-t 0');
Applying the resulting model to test data
testing_instance_matrix = [9 5 1; 2 9 5];
predicted_label = svmpredict(nan(2, 1), testing_instance_matrix, model)
results in
predicted_label =
-1
-1
You can also pass the true testing_label_vector to svmpredict so that it directly computes the accuracy; I here replaced the true labels by NaNs.
Please note that there is also a function svmtrain in Matlab's Statistics Toolbox which is incompatible with the one from LIBSVM – make sure you call the correct one.
