Abstract:
The use of machine learning techniques to automatically analyze data for information is becoming increasingly widespread. In this chapter we examine the use of Genetic Programming and a Genetic Algorithm to pre-process data before it is classified using the C4.5 decision tree learning algorithm. Genetic Programming is used to construct new features from those available in the data, a potentially significant process for data mining since it gives consideration to hidden relationships between features. A Genetic Algorithm is used to determine which set of features is the most predictive. Using ten well-known data sets we show that our approach, in comparison to C4.5 alone, provides marked improvement in a number of cases.
