Using attribute construction to improve the predictability of a GP financial forecasting algorithm

Financial forecasting is an important area in computational finance. EDDIE 8 is an established Genetic Programming financial forecasting algorithm, which has successfully been applied to a number of international datasets. The purpose of this paper is to further increase the algorithm’s predictive performance, by improving its data space representation. In order to achieve this, we use attribute construction to create new (high-level) attributes from the original (low-level) attributes. To examine the effectiveness of the above method, we test the extended EDDIE’s predictive performance across 25 datasets and compare it to the performance of two previous EDDIE algorithms. Results show that the introduction of attribute construction benefits the algorithm, allowing EDDIE to explore the use of new attributes to improve its predictive accuracy

Performance assessment of infrastructure and housing contractors in Buffalo City

It is evident that contractors in Buffalo City Metro Municipality are not successfully executing the projects appropriately. The effects can be a result of factors contributing to poor performance. Expenditure trends tell a frightening story in relation to the performance of the contractors as the main spenders on capital and operating project budgets. The municipality is faced with projects that have time and cost overruns, poor project implementation and total abandonment. There is no proper performance measurement instrument in place; as a result, the council struggles to terminate poor performing contractors. This study focuses on key performance indicators that can be employed by the municipality to measure performance of contractors and evaluate progress. Also this study outlined the factors affecting contractor performance during construction so as to understand the effects of these factors on the performance. A questionnaire was utilised to collect information from construction stakeholders. In order for contractors to improve their overall performance, focus should be on construction time and cost. Clients must improve on speed of decision-making during construction