Genetic Programming for Automatically Constructing Data Mining Algorithms

At present there is a wide range of data mining algorithms available to researchers and practitioners (Witten & Frank, 2005; Tan et al., 2006). Despite the great diversity of these algorithms, virtually all of them share one feature: they have been manually designed. As a result, current data mining algorithms in general incorporate human biases and preconceptions in their designs. This article proposes an alternative approach to the design of data mining algorithms, namely the automatic creation of data mining algorithms by means of Genetic Programming (GP) (Pappa & Freitas, 2006). In essence, GP is a type of Evolutionary Algorithm – i.e., a search algorithm inspired by the Darwinian process of natural selection – that evolves computer programs or executable structures. This approach opens new avenues for research, providing the means to design novel data mining algorithms that are less limited by human biases and preconceptions, and so offer the potential to discover new kinds of patterns (or knowledge) to the user. It also offers an interesting opportunity for the automatic creation of data mining algorithms tailored to the data being mined.