Unsupervised feature selection using multi-objective genetic algorithms for handwritten word recognition

Abstract

In this paper a methodology for feature selection in unsupervisedlearning is proposed. It makes use of a multi-objectivegenetic algorithm where the minimization of thenumber of features and a validity index that measures thequality of clusters have been used to guide the search towardsthe more discriminant features and the best numberof clusters. The proposed strategy is evaluated usingtwo synthetic data sets and then it is applied to handwrittenmonth word recognition. Comprehensive experimentsdemonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposedmethodology.