A spam filtering mult-iobjective optimization study covering parsimony maximization and three-way classification

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Classifier performance optimization in machine learning can be stated as a multi-objective optimization problem. In this context, recent works have shown the utility of simple evolutionary multi-objective algorithms (NSGA-II, SPEA2) to conveniently optimize the global performance of different anti-spam filters. The present work extends existing contributions in the spam filtering domain by using three novel indicator-based (SMS-EMOA, CH-EMOA) and decomposition-based (MOEA/D) evolutionary multi-objective algorithms. The proposed approaches are used to optimize the performance of a heterogeneous ensemble of classifiers into two different but complementary scenarios: parsimony maximization and e-mail classification under low confidence level. Experimental results using a publicly available standard corpus allowed us to identify interesting conclusions regarding both the utility of rule-based classification filters and the appropriateness of a three-way classification system in the spam filtering domain