Binary Anarchic Society Optimization for Feature Selection

Abstract

"Datasets comprise a collection of features; however, not all of these features may be necessary. Feature selection is the process of identifying the most relevant features while eliminating redundant or irrelevant ones. To be effective, feature selection should improve classification performance while reducing the number of features. Existing algorithms can be adapted and modified into feature selectors. In this study, we introduce the implementation of the Anarchic Society Optimization algorithm, a human-inspired algorithm, as a feature selector. This is the first study that utilizes the binary version of the algorithm for feature selection. The proposed Binary Anarchic Society Algorithm is evaluated on nine datasets and compared to three known algorithms: Binary Genetic Algorithm, Binary Particle Swarm Optimization, and Binary Gray Wolf Optimization. Additionally, four traditional feature selection techniques (Info Gain, Gain Ratio, Chi-square, and ReliefF) are incorporated for performance comparison. Our experiments highlight the competitive nature of the proposed method, suggesting its potential as a valuable addition to existing feature selection techniques."