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Classification is one of the foremost machine learning tasks in this modern era. Neural Network (NN) is one of the powerful classification techniques. NN can achieve high classification accuracy on highly imbalanced and complex datasets, but lacks in explanation of its reasoning process which limits its applicability in various domains which require transparent decision along with good accuracy. There are some techniques which extract rules from NN and make it transparent; however, attribute pruning, rule pruning and class overlap algorithms are not sufficiently effective. Therefore, this paper proposes a rule extraction algorithm, called Transparent Rule Extraction using Neural Network (TRENN) to convert NN into white box with greater emphasis on attribute pruning and rule pruning. The proposed TRENN is a pedagogical approach and an extension of one of the existing algorithms named Rule Extraction from Neural Network using Classified and Misclassified data (RxNCM). The proposed TRENN extends the RxNCM with sequential floating backward search for feature and rule selection to improve the comprehensibility of the generated rules. Besides, the proposed TRENN uses probabilistic approach for the treatment of class overlapping problem in the rule updating phase instead of reclassification used in RxNCM where the overlap may persist. Experiments are conducted with eight real datasets collected from the UCI repository. Performance of the TRENN is measured with Precision, Recall, FP-Rate, F-measure, and local and global comprehensibility. It is observed from the experimental results that TRENN performs better than Re-RX, RxNCM and RxREN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The qualities of new data used in the sequential learning phase of the online sequential extreme learning machine algorithm (OS-ELM) have a significant impact on the performance of OS-ELM. This paper proposes a novel data filter mechanism for OS-ELM from the perspective of fuzziness and a fuzziness-based online sequential extreme learning machine algorithm (FOS-ELM). In FOS-ELM, when new data arrive, a fuzzy classifier first picks out the meaningful data according to the fuzziness of each sample. Specifically, the new samples with high-output fuzziness are selected and then used in sequential learning. The experimental results on eight binary classification problems and three multiclass classification problems have shown that FOS-ELM updated by the new samples with high-output fuzziness has better generalization performance than OS-ELM. Since the unimportant data are discarded before sequential learning, FOS-ELM can save more memory and have higher computational efficiency. In addition, FOS-ELM can handle data one-by-one or chunk-by-chunk with fixed or varying sizes. The relationship between the fuzziness of new samples and the model performance is also studied in this paper, which is expected to provide some useful guidelines for improving the generalization ability of online sequential learning algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feature selection is one of the hottest machine learning topics in recent years. The main purposes of it are to simplify the original model, improve the readability of the model, and prevent over-fitting by searching for a suitable subset of features. There are many methods for this problem, including evolutionary algorithms and particle swarm optimization. Among them, the competitive swarm optimizer is a new optimization algorithm proposed in recent years, which is based on particle swarm optimization algorithm, and has achieved good results in high-dimensional feature selection problems, but it also has the problems of high computation time cost and easily being premature. Aiming at these problems, this paper proposes to add the crossover operator and mutation operator in the genetic algorithm to the competitive swarm optimization, so as to improve the generation speed of new individuals in the algorithm and prevent premature population. After testing on UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository, the new algorithm not only improves the computational efficiency, but also avoids the problem that the competitive swarm optimization algorithm is easy to fall into the local optimum, which greatly improves the calculation effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]