Summary: A novel method to simplify decision functions of support vector machines (SVMs) is proposed in this paper. In our method, a decision function is determined first in a usual way by using all training samples. Next those support vectors which contribute less to the decision function are excluded from the training samples. Finally a new decision function is obtained by using the remaining samples. Experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively simplify decision functions of SVMs without reducing the generalization capability.