Title: An evolutionary algorithm for global induction of regression and model trees
Authors: Marcin Czajkowski; Marek Kretowski
Addresses: Faculty of Computer Science, Bialystok University of Technology, Wiejska 45a, 15-351 Bialystok, Poland ' Faculty of Computer Science, Bialystok University of Technology, Wiejska 45a, 15-351 Bialystok, Poland
Abstract: Most tree-based algorithms are typical top-down approaches that search only for locally optimal decisions at each node and does not guarantee the globally optimal solution. In this paper, we would like to propose a new evolutionary algorithm for global induction of univariate regression trees and model trees that associate leaves with simple linear regression models. The general structure of our solution follows a typical framework of evolutionary algorithms with an unstructured population and a generational selection. We propose specialised genetic operators to mutate and cross-over individuals (trees), fitness function that base on the Bayesian information criterion and smoothing process that improves the prediction accuracy of the model tree. Performed experiments on 15 real-life datasets show that proposed solution can be significantly less complex with at least comparable performance to the classical top-down counterparts.
Keywords: evolutionary algorithms; regression trees; model trees; SLR; linear regression; Bayesian information criterion; BIC; regression modelling.
DOI: 10.1504/IJDMMM.2013.055865
International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling and Management, 2013 Vol.5 No.3, pp.261 - 276
Published online: 29 Jul 2014 *
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