Accelerated Particle Swarm Optimization and Support Vector Machine for Business Optimization and Applications

Business optimization is becoming increasingly important because all business activities aim to maximize the profit and performance of products and services, under limited resources and appropriate constraints. Recent developments in support vector machine and metaheuristics show many advantages of these techniques. In particular, particle swarm optimization is now widely used in solving tough optimization problems. In this paper, we use a combination of a recently developed Accelerated PSO and a nonlinear support vector machine to form a framework for solving business optimization problems. We first apply the proposed APSO-SVM to production optimization, and then use it for income prediction and project scheduling. We also carry out some parametric studies and discuss the advantages of the proposed metaheuristic SVM.Comment: 12 page

A Multi Hidden Recurrent Neural Network with a Modified Grey Wolf Optimizer

Identifying university students' weaknesses results in better learning and can function as an early warning system to enable students to improve. However, the satisfaction level of existing systems is not promising. New and dynamic hybrid systems are needed to imitate this mechanism. A hybrid system (a modified Recurrent Neural Network with an adapted Grey Wolf Optimizer) is used to forecast students' outcomes. This proposed system would improve instruction by the faculty and enhance the students' learning experiences. The results show that a modified recurrent neural network with an adapted Grey Wolf Optimizer has the best accuracy when compared with other models.Comment: 34 pages, published in PLoS ON

Metaheuristic design of feedforward neural networks: a review of two decades of research

Over the past two decades, the feedforward neural network (FNN) optimization has been a key interest among the researchers and practitioners of multiple disciplines. The FNN optimization is often viewed from the various perspectives: the optimization of weights, network architecture, activation nodes, learning parameters, learning environment, etc. Researchers adopted such different viewpoints mainly to improve the FNN's generalization ability. The gradient-descent algorithm such as backpropagation has been widely applied to optimize the FNNs. Its success is evident from the FNN's application to numerous real-world problems. However, due to the limitations of the gradient-based optimization methods, the metaheuristic algorithms including the evolutionary algorithms, swarm intelligence, etc., are still being widely explored by the researchers aiming to obtain generalized FNN for a given problem. This article attempts to summarize a broad spectrum of FNN optimization methodologies including conventional and metaheuristic approaches. This article also tries to connect various research directions emerged out of the FNN optimization practices, such as evolving neural network (NN), cooperative coevolution NN, complex-valued NN, deep learning, extreme learning machine, quantum NN, etc. Additionally, it provides interesting research challenges for future research to cope-up with the present information processing era

Modeling, forecasting and trading the EUR exchange rates with hybrid rolling genetic algorithms: support vector regression forecast combinations

The motivation of this paper is to introduce a hybrid Rolling Genetic Algorithm-Support Vector Regression (RG-SVR) model for optimal parameter selection and feature subset combination. The algorithm is applied to the task of forecasting and trading the EUR/USD, EUR/GBP and EUR/JPY exchange rates. The proposed methodology genetically searches over a feature space (pool of individual forecasts) and then combines the optimal feature subsets (SVR forecast combinations) for each exchange rate. This is achieved by applying a fitness function specialized for financial purposes and adopting a sliding window approach. The individual forecasts are derived from several linear and non-linear models. RG-SVR is benchmarked against genetically and non-genetically optimized SVRs and SVMs models that are dominating the relevant literature, along with the robust ARBF-PSO neural network. The statistical and trading performance of all models is investigated during the period of 1999–2012. As it turns out, RG-SVR presents the best performance in terms of statistical accuracy and trading efficiency for all the exchange rates under study. This superiority confirms the success of the implemented fitness function and training procedure, while it validates the benefits of the proposed algorithm

Prediction of progression in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis using CT scans atbaseline: A quantum particle swarm optimization - Random forest approach

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a fatal lung disease characterized by an unpredictable progressive declinein lung function. Natural history of IPF is unknown and the prediction of disease progression at the time ofdiagnosis is notoriously difficult. High resolution computed tomography (HRCT) has been used for the diagnosisof IPF, but not generally for monitoring purpose. The objective of this work is to develop a novel predictivemodel for the radiological progression pattern at voxel-wise level using only baseline HRCT scans. Mainly, thereare two challenges: (a) obtaining a data set of features for region of interest (ROI) on baseline HRCT scans andtheir follow-up status; and (b) simultaneously selecting important features from high-dimensional space, andoptimizing the prediction performance. We resolved the first challenge by implementing a study design andhaving an expert radiologist contour ROIs at baseline scans, depending on its progression status in follow-upvisits. For the second challenge, we integrated the feature selection with prediction by developing an algorithmusing a wrapper method that combines quantum particle swarm optimization to select a small number of featureswith random forest to classify early patterns of progression. We applied our proposed algorithm to analyzeanonymized HRCT images from 50 IPF subjects from a multi-center clinical trial. We showed that it yields aparsimonious model with 81.8% sensitivity, 82.2% specificity and an overall accuracy rate of 82.1% at the ROIlevel. These results are superior to other popular feature selections and classification methods, in that ourmethod produces higher accuracy in prediction of progression and more balanced sensitivity and specificity witha smaller number of selected features. Our work is the first approach to show that it is possible to use onlybaseline HRCT scans to predict progressive ROIs at 6 months to 1year follow-ups using artificial intelligence

Optimizing complexity weight parameter of use case points estimation using particle swarm optimization

Among algorithmic-based frameworks for software development effort estimation, Use Case Points I s one of the most used. Use Case Points is a well-known estimation framework designed mainly for object-oriented projects. Use Case Points uses the use case complexity weight as its essential parameter. The parameter is calculated with the number of actors and transactions of the use case. Nevertheless, use case complexity weight is discontinuous, which can sometimes result in inaccurate measurements and abrupt classification of the use case. The objective of this work is to investigate the potential of integrating particle swarm optimization (PSO) with the Use Case Points framework. The optimizer algorithm is utilized to optimize the modified use case complexity weight parameter. We designed and conducted an experiment based on real-life data set from three software houses. The proposed model’s accuracy and performance evaluation metric is compared with other published results, which are standardized accuracy, effect size, mean balanced residual error, mean inverted balanced residual error, and mean absolute error. Moreover, the existing models as the benchmark are polynomial regression, multiple linear regression, weighted case-based reasoning with (PSO), fuzzy use case points, and standard Use Case Points. Experimental results show that the proposed model generates the best value of standardized accuracy of 99.27% and an effect size of 1.15 over the benchmark models. The results of our study are promising for researchers and practitioners because the proposed model is actually estimating, not guessing, and generating meaningful estimation with statistically and practically significant