Classifiers selection in ensembles using genetic algorithms for bankruptcy prediction

Ensemble learning is a method to improve the performance of classification and prediction algorithms. Many studies have demonstrated that ensemble learning can decrease the generalization error and improve the performance of individual classifiers and predictors. However, its performance can be degraded due to multicollinearity problem where multiple classifiers of an ensemble are highly correlated with. This paper proposes a genetic algorithm-based coverage optimization technique in the purpose of resolving multicollinearity problem. Empirical results with bankruptcy prediction on Korea firms indicate that the proposed coverage optimization algorithm can help to design a diverse and highly accurate classification system.