Hybrid binary Sine Cosine Algorithm and Ant Lion Optimization (SCALO) approaches for feature selection problem

Abstract

These days, a massive quantity of data is produced online and is incorporated into a variety of datasets in the form of features, however there are lot of features in these datasets that may not be relevant to the problem. In this perspective, feature selection aids to improve the classification accuracy with lesser number of features, which can be well thought-out as an optimization problem. In this paper, Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA) hybridized with Ant Lion Optimizer (ALO) to form a hybrid Sine Cosine Ant Lion Optimizer (SCALO) is proposed. The proposed algorithm is mapped to its binary versions by using the concept of transfer functions, with the objective to eliminate the inappropriate features and to enhance the accuracy of the classification algorithm (or in any case remains the same). For the purpose of experimentation, this research considers 18 diverse datasets and moreover, the performance of the binary versions of SCALO is compared with some of the latest metaheuristic algorithms, on the basis of various criterions. It can be observed that the binary versions of SCALO perform better than the other algorithms on various evaluation criterions for solving feature selection problem.