Backtracking search optimization algorithm is a recent stochastic-based global search algorithm for solving real-valued numerical optimization problems. In this paper, a binary version of backtracking algorithm is proposed to deal with 0-1 optimization problems such as feature selection and knapsack problems. Feature selection is the process of selecting a subset of relevant features for use in model construction. Irrelevant features can negatively impact model performances. On the other hand, knapsack problem is a well-known optimization problem used to assess discrete algorithms. The objective of this research is to evaluate the discrete version of backtracking algorithm on the two mentioned problems and compare obtained results with other binary optimization algorithms using four usual classifiers: logistic regression, decision tree, random forest, and support vector machine. Empirical study on biological microarray data and experiments on 0-1 knapsack problems show the effectiveness of the binary algorithm and its ability to achieve good quality solutions for both problems.
