Set-Based Particle Swarm Optimization

Abstract

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms have been successfully applied to discrete-valued optimization problems. However, in many cases the algorithms have been tailored specifically for the problem at hand. This study proposes a generic set-based particle swarm optimization algorithm, called SBPSO, for use on discrete-valued optimization problems that can be formulated as set-based problems. The performance of the SBPSO is then evaluated on two different discrete optimization problems: the multidimensional knapsack problem (MKP) and the feature selection problem (FSP) from machine learning. In both cases, the SBPSO is compared to three other discrete PSO algorithms from literature. On the MKP, the SBPSO is shown to outperform, with statistical significance, the other algorithms. On the FSP and using a k-nearest neighbor classifier, the SBPSO is shown to outperform, with statistical significance, the other algorithms. When a Gaussian Naive Bayes or a J48 decision tree classifier is used, no algorithm can be shown to outperform on the FSP.