Application of biologically inspired methods to improve adaptive ensemble learning

Abstract

Ensemble learning is one of the machine learning approaches, which can be described as the process of combining diverse models to solve a particular computational intelligence problem. We can find the analogy to this approach in human behavior (e.g. consulting more experts before taking an important decision). Ensemble learning is advantageously used for improving the performance of classification or prediction models. The whole process strongly depends on the process of determining the weights of base methods. In this paper we investigate different weighting schemes of predictive base models including biologically inspired genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) in the domain of electricity consumption. We were particularly interested in their ability to improve the performance of ensemble learning in the presence of different types of concept drift that naturally occur in electricity load measurements. The PSO proves to have the best ability to adapt to the sudden changes.