An Experimental Comparison of Self-Adaptive Differential Evolution Algorithms to Induce Oblique Decision Trees

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Abstract
This study addresses the challenge of generating accurate and compact oblique decision trees using self-adaptive differential evolution algorithms. Although traditional decision tree induction methods create explainable models, they often fail to achieve optimal classification accuracy. To overcome these limitations, other strategies, such as those based on evolutionary computation, have been proposed in the literature. In particular, we evaluate the use of self-adaptive differential evolution variants to evolve a population of oblique decision trees encoded as real-valued vectors. Our proposal includes (1) an alternative initialization strategy that reduces redundant nodes and (2) a fitness function that penalizes excessive leaf nodes, promoting smaller and more accurate decision trees. We perform a comparative performance analysis of these differential evolution variants, showing that while they exhibit similar statistical behavior, the Single-Objective real-parameter optimization (jSO) method produces the most accurate oblique decision trees and is second best in compactness. The findings highlight the potential of self-adaptive differential evolution algorithms to improve the effectiveness of oblique decision trees in machine learning applications.

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