Title
Parameter identification for symbolic regression using nonlinear least squares
Abstract
In this paper we analyze the effects of using nonlinear least squares for parameter identification of symbolic regression models and integrate it as local search mechanism in tree-based genetic programming. We employ the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm for parameter optimization and calculate gradients via automatic differentiation. We provide examples where the parameter identification succeeds and fails and highlight its computational overhead. Using an extensive suite of symbolic regression benchmark problems we demonstrate the increased performance when incorporating nonlinear least squares within genetic programming. Our results are compared with recently published results obtained by several genetic programming variants and state of the art machine learning algorithms. Genetic programming with nonlinear least squares performs among the best on the defined benchmark suite and the local search can be easily integrated in different genetic programming algorithms as long as only differentiable functions are used within the models.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1007/s10710-019-09371-3
Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Genetic programming, Symbolic regression, Parameter identification, Nonlinear least squares, Automatic differentiation
Journal
21
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
3
1573-7632
3
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.41
0
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Michael Kommenda19715.58
Bogdan Burlacu230.41
Gabriel Kronberger319225.40
Michael Affenzeller433962.47