A unified approach to the extraction of rules from artificial neural networks and support vector machines

Abstract

Support Vector Machines (SVM) are believed to be as powerful as Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) in modeling complex problems while avoiding some of the drawbacks of the latter such as local minimæ or reliance on architecture. However, a question that remains to be answered is whether SVM users may expect improvements in the interpretability of their models, namely by using rule extraction methods already available to ANN users. This study successfully applies the Orthogonal Search-based Rule Extraction algorithm (OSRE) to Support Vector Machines. The study evidences the portability of rules extracted using OSRE, showing that, in the case of SVM, extracted rules are as accurate and consistent as those from equivalent ANN models. Importantly, the study also shows that the OSRE method benefits from SVM specific characteristics, being able to extract less rules from SVM than from equivalent ANN models. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.