A Multi-Gene Genetic Programming Application for Predicting Students Failure at School

Several efforts to predict student failure rate (SFR) at school accurately still remains a core problem area faced by many in the educational sector. The procedure for forecasting SFR are rigid and most often times require data scaling or conversion into binary form such as is the case of the logistic model which may lead to lose of information and effect size attenuation. Also, the high number of factors, incomplete and unbalanced dataset, and black boxing issues as in Artificial Neural Networks and Fuzzy logic systems exposes the need for more efficient tools. Currently the application of Genetic Programming (GP) holds great promises and has produced tremendous positive results in different sectors. In this regard, this study developed GPSFARPS, a software application to provide a robust solution to the prediction of SFR using an evolutionary algorithm known as multi-gene genetic programming. The approach is validated by feeding a testing data set to the evolved GP models. Result obtained from GPSFARPS simulations show its unique ability to evolve a suitable failure rate expression with a fast convergence at 30 generations from a maximum specified generation of 500. The multi-gene system was also able to minimize the evolved model expression and accurately predict student failure rate using a subset of the original expressionComment: 14 pages, 9 figures, Journal paper. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1403.0623 by other author

Intelligent Financial Fraud Detection Practices: An Investigation

Financial fraud is an issue with far reaching consequences in the finance industry, government, corporate sectors, and for ordinary consumers. Increasing dependence on new technologies such as cloud and mobile computing in recent years has compounded the problem. Traditional methods of detection involve extensive use of auditing, where a trained individual manually observes reports or transactions in an attempt to discover fraudulent behaviour. This method is not only time consuming, expensive and inaccurate, but in the age of big data it is also impractical. Not surprisingly, financial institutions have turned to automated processes using statistical and computational methods. This paper presents a comprehensive investigation on financial fraud detection practices using such data mining methods, with a particular focus on computational intelligence-based techniques. Classification of the practices based on key aspects such as detection algorithm used, fraud type investigated, and success rate have been covered. Issues and challenges associated with the current practices and potential future direction of research have also been identified.Comment: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm 2014

Convex Hull-Based Multi-objective Genetic Programming for Maximizing ROC Performance

ROC is usually used to analyze the performance of classifiers in data mining. ROC convex hull (ROCCH) is the least convex major-ant (LCM) of the empirical ROC curve, and covers potential optima for the given set of classifiers. Generally, ROC performance maximization could be considered to maximize the ROCCH, which also means to maximize the true positive rate (tpr) and minimize the false positive rate (fpr) for each classifier in the ROC space. However, tpr and fpr are conflicting with each other in the ROCCH optimization process. Though ROCCH maximization problem seems like a multi-objective optimization problem (MOP), the special characters make it different from traditional MOP. In this work, we will discuss the difference between them and propose convex hull-based multi-objective genetic programming (CH-MOGP) to solve ROCCH maximization problems. Convex hull-based sort is an indicator based selection scheme that aims to maximize the area under convex hull, which serves as a unary indicator for the performance of a set of points. A selection procedure is described that can be efficiently implemented and follows similar design principles than classical hyper-volume based optimization algorithms. It is hypothesized that by using a tailored indicator-based selection scheme CH-MOGP gets more efficient for ROC convex hull approximation than algorithms which compute all Pareto optimal points. To test our hypothesis we compare the new CH-MOGP to MOGP with classical selection schemes, including NSGA-II, MOEA/D) and SMS-EMOA. Meanwhile, CH-MOGP is also compared with traditional machine learning algorithms such as C4.5, Naive Bayes and Prie. Experimental results based on 22 well-known UCI data sets show that CH-MOGP outperforms significantly traditional EMOAs

Meta-heuristic algorithms in car engine design: a literature survey

Meta-heuristic algorithms are often inspired by natural phenomena, including the evolution of species in Darwinian natural selection theory, ant behaviors in biology, flock behaviors of some birds, and annealing in metallurgy. Due to their great potential in solving difficult optimization problems, meta-heuristic algorithms have found their way into automobile engine design. There are different optimization problems arising in different areas of car engine management including calibration, control system, fault diagnosis, and modeling. In this paper we review the state-of-the-art applications of different meta-heuristic algorithms in engine management systems. The review covers a wide range of research, including the application of meta-heuristic algorithms in engine calibration, optimizing engine control systems, engine fault diagnosis, and optimizing different parts of engines and modeling. The meta-heuristic algorithms reviewed in this paper include evolutionary algorithms, evolution strategy, evolutionary programming, genetic programming, differential evolution, estimation of distribution algorithm, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, memetic algorithms, and artificial immune system