Comparison between two coevolutionary feature weighting algorithms in clustering

Feature weighting is an aspect of increasing importance in clustering because data are becoming more and more complex nowadays. In this paper, we propose two new feature weighting methods based on coevolutive algorithms. The first one is inspired by the Lamarck theory (inheritance of acquired characteristics) and uses the distance-based cost function defined in the LKM algorithm as fitness function. The second method uses a fitness function based on a new partitioning quality measure. It does not need a distance-based measure. We compare classical hill-climbing optimization with these new genetic algorithms on three data sets from UCI. Results show that the proposed methods are better than the hill-climbing based algorithms. We also present a process of hyperspectral remotely sensed image classification. The experiments, corroborated by geographers, highlight the benefits of using coevolutionary feature weighting methods to improve knowledge discovery process.