Optimized fuzzy decision tree using genetic algorithm

Abstract

Fuzzy rules are suitable for describing uncertain phenomena and natural for human understanding and they are, in general, efficient for classification. In addition, fuzzy rules allow us to effectively classify data having non-axis-parallel decision boundaries, which is difficult for the conventional attribute-based methods. In this paper, we propose an optimized fuzzy rule generation method for classification both in accuracy and comprehensibility (or rule complexity). We investigate the use of genetic algorithm to determine an optimal set of membership functions for quantitative data. In our method, for a given set of membership functions a fuzzy decision tree is constructed and its accuracy and rule complexity are evaluated, which are combined into the fitness function to be optimized. We have experimented our algorithm with several benchmark data sets. The experiment results show that our method is more efficient in performance and complexity of rules compared with the existing methods.