Predictive and comprehensible rule discovery using a multi-objective genetic algorithm

We present a multi-objective genetic algorithm for mining highly predictive and comprehensible classification rules from large databases. We emphasize predictive accuracy and comprehensibility of the rules. However, accuracy and comprehensibility of the rules often conflict with each other. This makes it an optimization problem that is very difficult to solve efficiently. We have proposed a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm called improved niched Pareto genetic algorithm (INPGA) for this purpose. We have compared the rule generation by INPGA with that by simple genetic algorithm (SGA) and basic niched Pareto genetic algorithm (NPGA). The experimental result confirms that our rule generation has a clear edge over SGA and NPGA. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.