Select two best classifier using F1-score,Recall and precision

Question

I have three classifiers that classify same dataset with these results:

classifier A:
              precision    recall   f1-score 
  micro avg       0.36      0.36      0.36      
  macro avg       0.38      0.43      0.36       
  weighted avg    0.36      0.36      0.32    

classifier B:
              precision    recall   f1-score 
   micro avg       0.55      0.55      0.55      
   macro avg       0.60      0.60      0.56       
   weighted avg    0.61      0.55      0.53       

classifier C:
               precision    recall   f1-score 
   micro avg       0.34      0.34      0.34       
   macro avg       0.36      0.38      0.32      
   weighted avg    0.39      0.34      0.32       

I want two select two best of them, and I know F1-score is a parameter for compare the classifiers because of its harmony between precision and recall. So, at first I select classifier B for its best F1-score. for next, both A and C have a same F1-measure, I want to ask how can I select between them?

Answer 1

f1-score combines precision and recall in a single figure. As both are pretty similar in A and C cases, f1-score is similar too.

Your choice depends on what it is less harmful in your categorization: false positives or false negatives.

I do recommend you to read the 3rd chapter of "DEEP LEARNING:From Basics to Practice" volume 1 by Andrew Glassner. There you have the three concepts (precision, recall and f1-score) described in a very illustrative way.

Answer 2

It depends on your application. Assume that you design a classifier model to predict whether a person has cancer. If you wanna say confidently that a person has cancer, you probably prefer a classifier with high precision. On the other hand, if you want to make sure all people with cancer will be caught, you probably prefer a classifier with high recall.