Rule extraction: From neural architecture to symbolic representation

• Main Authors: CARPENTER, Gail A., TAN, Ah-hwee
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 1995
• Subjects: Fuzzy ARTMAP rule; confidence factor; pruning; Databases and Information Systems; Systems Architecture; Theory and Algorithms
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/6281; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/7284/viewcontent/ARTMAP_Rule_Extraction_CS95.PDF
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper shows how knowledge, in the form of fuzzy rules, can be derived from a supervised learning neural network called fuzzy ARTMAP. Rule extraction proceeds in two stages: pruning, which simplifies the network structure by removing excessive recognition categories and weights; and quantization of continuous learned weights, which allows the final system state to be translated into a usable set of descriptive rules. Three benchmark studies illustrate the rule extraction methods: (1) Pima Indian diabetes diagnosis, (2) mushroom classification and (3) DNA promoter recognition. Fuzzy ARTMAP and ART-EMAP are compared with the ADAP algorithm, the k nearest neighbor system, the back-propagation network and the C4.5 decision tree. The ARTMAP rule extraction procedure is also compared with the Knowledgetron and NOFM algorithms, which extract rules from back-propagation networks. Simulation results consistently indicate that ARTMAP rule extraction produces compact sets of comprehensible rules for which accuracy and complexity compare favorably to rules extracted by alternative algorithms.