This paper describes the application of two evolutionary algorithms to the feedforward neural networks used in classification problems. Besides of a simple backpropagation feedforward algorithm, the paper considers the genetic algorithm and random search algorithm. The objective is to analyze the performance of GAs over the simple backpropagation feedforward in terms of accuracy or speed in this problem. The experiments considered a feedforward neural network trained with genetic algorithm/random search algorithm and 39 types of network structures and artificial data sets. In most cases, the evolutionary feedforward neural networks seemed to have better of equal accuracy than the original backpropagation feedforward neural network. We found few differences in the accuracy of the networks solved by applying the EAs, but found ample differences in the execution time. The results suggest that the evolutionary feedforward neural network with random search algorithm might be the best algorithm on the data sets we tested.
A Novel Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm Approach to Artificial Neural Network Topology Optimisation: The Breast Cancer Classification Problem
