We propose a general formulation of a univariate estimation-of-distribution algorithm (EDA). It naturally incorporates the three classic univariate EDAs \emph{compact genetic algorithm}, \emph{univariate marginal distribution algorithm} and \emph{population-based incremental learning} as well as the \emph{max-min ant system} with iteration-best update. Our unified description of the existing algorithms allows a unified analysis of these; we demonstrate this by providing an analysis of genetic drift that immediately gives the existing results proven separately for the four algorithms named above. Our general model also includes EDAs that are more efficient than the existing ones and these may not be difficult to find as we demonstrate for the OneMax and LeadingOnes benchmarks.

Autonomous agents that act with each other on behalf of humans are becoming more common in many social domains, such as customer service, transportation, and health care. In such social situations greedy strategies can reduce the positive outcome for all agents, such as leading to stop-and-go traffic on highways, or causing a denial of service on a communications channel. Instead, we desire autonomous decision-making for efficient performance while also considering equitability of the group to avoid these pitfalls. Unfortunately, in complex situations it is far easier to design machine learning objectives for selfish strategies than for equitable behaviors. Here we present a simple way to reward groups of agents in both evolution and reinforcement learning domains by the performance of their weakest member. We show how this yields ``fairer'' more equitable behavior, while also maximizing individual outcomes, and we show the relationship to biological selection mechanisms of group-level selection and inclusive fitness theory.

Portfolio optimization has been an area of research that has attracted a lot of attention from researchers and financial analysts. Designing an optimum portfolio is a complex task since it not only involves accurate forecasting of future stock returns and risks but also needs to optimize them. This paper presents a systematic approach to portfolio optimization using two approaches, the hierarchical risk parity algorithm and the Eigen portfolio on seven sectors of the Indian stock market. The portfolios are built following the two approaches to historical stock prices from Jan 1, 2016, to Dec 31, 2020. The portfolio performances are evaluated on the test data from Jan 1, 2021, to Nov 1, 2021. The backtesting results of the portfolios indicate that the performance of the HRP portfolio is superior to that of its Eigen counterpart on both training and test data for the majority of the sectors studied.

The selection of most informative and discriminative features from high-dimensional data has been noticed as an important topic in machine learning and data engineering. Using matrix factorization-based techniques such as nonnegative matrix factorization for feature selection has emerged as a hot topic in feature selection. The main goal of feature selection using matrix factorization is to extract a subspace which approximates the original space but in a lower dimension. In this study, rank revealing QR (RRQR) factorization, which is computationally cheaper than singular value decomposition (SVD), is leveraged in obtaining the most informative features as a novel unsupervised feature selection technique. This technique uses the permutation matrix of QR for feature selection which is a unique property to this factorization method. Moreover, QR factorization is embedded into non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) objective function as a new unsupervised feature selection method. Lastly, a hybrid feature selection algorithm is proposed by coupling RRQR, as a filter-based technique, and a Genetic algorithm as a wrapper-based technique. In this method, redundant features are removed using RRQR factorization and the most discriminative subset of features are selected using the Genetic algorithm. The proposed algorithm shows to be dependable and robust when compared against state-of-the-art feature selection algorithms in supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised settings. All methods are tested on seven available microarray datasets using KNN, SVM and C4.5 classifiers. In terms of evaluation metrics, the experimental results shows that the proposed method is comparable with the state-of-the-art feature selection.

When solving a real-world optimization problem we often have no information about the analytic form of the objective function. Evaluation of such black-box functions is frequently expensive in terms of time and money (Baerns and Holeňa, 2009; Lee et al., 2016; Zaefferer et al., 2016), which has been for two decades the driving force of research into surrogate modeling of black-box objective functions (Büche et al., 2005; Forrester and Keane, 2009; Jin, 2011). Given a set of observations, a surrogate model can be fitted to approximate the landscape of the black-box function. The Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) by Hansen (2006), which we consider the state-of-the-art evolutionary black-box optimizer, has been frequently combined with surrogate models.

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) provide unique advantages for optimizing neural networks in complex search spaces. This paper introduces a new web platform, NeuroEvo (neuroevo.io), that allows users to interactively design and train neural network classifiers using evolutionary and particle swarm algorithms. The classification problem and training data are provided by the user and, upon completion of the training process, the best classifier is made available to download and implement in Python, Java, and JavaScript. NeuroEvo is a cloud-based application that leverages GPU parallelization to improve the speed with which the independent evolutionary steps, such as mutation, crossover, and fitness evaluation, are executed across the population. This paper outlines the training algorithms and opportunities for users to specify design decisions and hyperparameter settings. The algorithms described in this paper are also made available as a Python package, neuroevo (PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/neuroevo/).

Advanced AI technologies are serving humankind in a number of ways, from healthcare to manufacturing. Advanced automated machines are quite expensive, but the end output is supposed to be of the highest possible quality. Depending on the agility of requirements, these automation technologies can change dramatically. The likelihood of making changes to automation software is extremely high, so it must be updated regularly. If maintainability is not taken into account, it will have an impact on the entire system and increase maintenance costs. Many companies use different programming paradigms in developing advanced automated machines based on client requirements. Therefore, it is essential to estimate the maintainability of heterogeneous software. As a result of the lack of widespread consensus on software maintainability prediction (SPM) methodologies, individuals and businesses are left perplexed when it comes to determining the appropriate model for estimating the maintainability of software, which serves as the inspiration for this research. A structured methodology was designed, and the datasets were preprocessed and maintainability index (MI) range was also found for all the datasets expect for UIMS and QUES, the metric CHANGE is used for UIMS and QUES. To remove the uncertainty among the aforementioned techniques, a popular multiple criteria decision-making model, namely the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), is used in this work. TOPSIS revealed that GARF outperforms the other considered techniques in predicting the maintainability of heterogeneous automated software.

The Echo State Network (ESN) is a class of Recurrent Neural Network with a large number of hidden-hidden weights (in the so-called reservoir). Canonical ESN and its variations have recently received significant attention due to their remarkable success in the modeling of non-linear dynamical systems. The reservoir is randomly connected with fixed weights that don't change in the learning process. Only the weights from reservoir to output are trained. Since the reservoir is fixed during the training procedure, we may wonder if the computational power of the recurrent structure is fully harnessed. In this article, we propose a new computational model of the ESN type, that represents the reservoir weights in the Fourier space and performs a fine-tuning of these weights applying genetic algorithms in the frequency domain. The main interest is that this procedure will work in a much smaller space compared to the classical ESN, thus providing a dimensionality reduction transformation of the initial method. The proposed technique allows us to exploit the benefits of the large recurrent structure avoiding the training problems of gradient-based method. We provide a detailed experimental study that demonstrates the good performances of our approach with well-known chaotic systems and real-world data.

Observing the intricate ways that nature works can give us plenty of relevant ideas to develop solutions to combat our own problems. The reach of AI is far, and so too is its influencers, with nature helping to drive developments in the technology. Already, many algorithms mimic natural phenomena such as how animals organize their lives, how they use instincts to survive, how generations evolve, how the human brain works, and how we as humans learn. Computer scientists have even designed many AI algorithms by imitating human intelligence with machines. In this article, we will take a deep dive into several different AI algorithms that are inspired by nature.

At the point when we stall out throughout everyday life, we attempt to foster a few standards to help us. Essentially, when a model of data scientists doesn't work as expected, they search for this sort of harmonization (Fine-Tuning Process). In my experience with data science, random searches, grid searches, and cross-validation procedures have been demonstrated to be the most successful methods of fine-tuning hyperparameters when I was a new bee and had very little experience with them at the time. I had very few techniques to work with. But now that things have changed, we have a wide range of methods to modify your model using the current framework support, such as Hyperopt, Optuna, NNI, and DEAP, that Python has built-in, so we will see the key ideas from the book that help you to tune your model with modern approaches.