Enhanced Ali Baba and the forty thieves algorithm for feature selection

Feature Selection (FS) aims to ameliorate the classification rate of dataset models by selecting only a small set of appropriate features from the initial range of features. In consequence, a reliable optimization method is needed to deal with the matters involved in this problem. Often, traditional methods fail to optimally reduce the high dimensionality of the feature space of complex datasets, which lead to the elicitation of weak classification models. Meta-heuristics can offer a favorable classification rate for high-dimensional datasets. Here, a binary version of a new human-based algorithm named Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (AFT) was applied to tackle a pool of FS problems. Although AFT is an efficient meta-heuristic for optimizing many problems, it sometimes exhibits premature convergence and low search performance. These issues were mitigated by proposing three enhanced versions of AFT, namely: (1) A Binary Multi-layered AFT called BMAFT which uses hierarchical and distributed frameworks, (2) Binary Elitist AFT (BEAFT) which uses an elitist learning strategy, and, (3) Binary Self-adaptive AFT (BSAFT) which uses an adapted tracking distance parameter. These versions along with the basic Binary AFT (BAFT) were expansively assessed on twenty-four problems gathered from different repositories. The results showed that the proposed algorithms substantially enhance the performance of BAFT in terms of convergence speed and solution accuracy. On top of that, the overall results showed that BMAFT is the most competitive, which provided the best results with excellent performance scores compared to other competing algorithms.