Holland classifier systems

Abstract

A Holland classifier system is an adaptive, general purpose machine learning system which is designed to operate in noisy environments with infrequent and often incomplete feedback. Examples of such environments are financial markets, stock management systems, or chemical processes. In financial markets, a Holland classifier system would develop trading strategies, in a stock management system order heuristics, and in a chemical plant it would perform process control. In this paper we describe a Holland classifier system and present the implementation of its components, namely the production system, the bucket brigade algorithm, the genetic algorithm, and the cover detector, cover effector and triggered chaining operator. Finally, we illustrate the working of a Holland classifier system by learning to find a path with a high payoff in a simple finite state world.