Application of elitist multi-objective genetic algorithm for classification rule generation

We present an elitist multi-objective genetic algorithm (EMOGA) for mining classification rules from large databases. We emphasize on predictive accuracy, comprehensibility and interestingness of the rules. However, predictive accuracy, comprehensibility and interestingness of the rules often conflict with each other. This makes it a multi-objective optimization problem that is very difficult to solve efficiently. We have proposed a multi-objective genetic algorithm with a hybrid crossover operator for optimizing these objectives simultaneously. We have compared our rule discovery procedure with simple genetic algorithm with a weighted sum of all these objectives. The experimental result confirms that our rule discovery algorithm has a clear edge over simple genetic algorithm. # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.