Research and Application of an Improved Sparrow Search Algorithm

Abstract

Association rule mining utilizing metaheuristic algorithms is a prominent area of study in the field of data mining. However, when working with extensive data, conventional metaheuristic algorithms exhibit limited search efficiency and face challenges in deriving high-quality rules in multi-objective association rule mining. In order to tackle this issue, a novel approach called the adaptive Weibull distribution sparrow search algorithm is introduced. This algorithm leverages the adaptive Weibull distribution to improve the traditional sparrow search algorithm’s capability to escape local optima and enhance convergence during different iterations. Secondly, an enhancement search strategy and a multidirectional learning strategy are introduced to expand the search range of the population. This paper empirically evaluates the proposed method under real datasets and compares it with other leading methods by using three association rule metrics, namely, support, confidence, and lift, as the fitness function. The experimental results show that the quality of the obtained association rules is significantly improved when dealing with datasets of different sizes.