Skip to main content

Mining Comprehensible Rules from Data with an Ant Colony Algorithm

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Advances in Artificial Intelligence (SBIA 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2507))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

This work describes an algorithm for data mining called Ant-Miner (Ant Colony-based Data Miner).The goal of Ant-Miner is to extract classification rules from data. The algorithm is inspired by both research on the behavior of real ant colonies and some data mining concepts and principles. We compare the performance of Ant-Miner with CN2, a well-known data mining algorithm for classification, in six public domain data sets. The results provide evidence that: (a) Ant-Miner is competitive with CN2 with respect to predictive accuracy; and (b) The rule lists discovered by Ant-Miner are considerably simpler (smaller) than those discovered by CN2.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. E. Bonabeau, M. Dorigo and G. Theraulaz, Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems. New York, NJ: Oxford University Press, 1999.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. L. A. Brewlow and D. W. Aha, “Simplifying decision trees: a survey,” The Knowledge Engineering Review, vol. 12, no. l,pp. 1–40, 1997.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. P. Clark and T. Niblett, “The CN2 induction algorithm,” Machine Learning, vol. 3, pp. 261–283, 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  4. T. M. Cover and J. A. Thomas, Elements of Information Theory, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. M. Dorigo, A. Colorni and V. Maniezzo, “The ant system: optimization by a colony of cooperating agents,” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics-Part B, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 1–13, 1996.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. M. Dorigo and G. Di Caro, “The ant colony optimization meta-heuristic,” In: New Ideas in Optimization, D. Corne, M. Dorigo and F. Glover Eds. London, UK: McGraw Hill, pp. 11–32, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  7. M. Dorigo, G. Di Caro and L. M. Gambardella, “Ant algorithms for discrete optimization,” Artificial Life, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 137–172, 1999.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. U. M. Fayyad, G. Piatetsky-Shapiro and P. Smyth, “From data mining to knowledge discovery: an overview,” In: Advances in Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining, U.M. Fayyad, G. Piatetsky-Shapiro, P. Smyth and R. Uthurusamy Eds. Cambridge: AAAI/MIT, pp. 1–34, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  9. A. Freitas and S. H. Lavington, Mining Very Large Databases with Parallel Processing, London: Kluwer, 1998.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. A. Freitas, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery with Evolutionary Algorithms, (Forthcoming book) Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2002.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. R. Kohavi and M. Sahami, “Error-based and entropy-based discretization of continuous features,” In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press, pp. 114–119, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  12. H. S. Lopes, M. S. Coutinho and W. C. Lima, “An evolutionary approach to simulate cognitive feedback learning in medical domain,” In: Genetic Algorithms and Fuzzy Logic Systems: Soft Computing Perspectives, E. Sanchez, T. Shibata and L.A. Zadeh Eds. Singapore: World Scientific, pp. 193–207, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  13. N. Monmarche, “On data clustering with artificial ants,” In: Data Mining with Evolutionary Algorithms, Research Directions — Papers from the AAAI Workshop, Technical Report WS-99-06, A.A. Freitas Ed. Menlo Park: AAAI Press, pp. 23–26, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  14. S. M. Weiss and C. A. Kulikowski, Computer Systems That Learn, San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Parpinelli, R.S., Lopes, H.S., Freitas, A.A. (2002). Mining Comprehensible Rules from Data with an Ant Colony Algorithm. In: Bittencourt, G., Ramalho, G.L. (eds) Advances in Artificial Intelligence. SBIA 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2507. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36127-8_25

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36127-8_25

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-00124-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36127-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics