This accessible introduction shows the reader how to understand, implement, adapt, and apply Learning Classifier Systems (LCSs) to interesting and difficult problems. The text builds an understanding from basic ideas and concepts. The authors first explore learning through environment interaction, and then walk through the components of LCS that form this rule-based evolutionary algorithm. The applicability and adaptability of these methods is highlighted by providing descriptions of common methodological alternatives for different components that are suited to different types of problems from data mining to autonomous robotics. The authors have also paired exercises and a simple educational LCS (eLCS) algorithm (implemented in Python) with this book. It is suitable for courses or self-study by advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in subjects such as Computer Science, Engineering, Bioinformatics, and Cybernetics, and by researchers, data analysts, and machine learning practitioners.

Learning Classifier Systems (LCS) are a machine learning paradigm introduced by John Holland in 1976. They are rule-based systems in which learning is viewed as a process of ongoing adaptation to a partially unknown environment through genetic algorithms and temporal difference learning. This book provides a unique survey of the current state of the art of LCS and highlights some of the most promising research directions. The first part presents various views of leading people on what learning classifier systems are. The second part is devoted to advanced topics of current interest, including alternative representations, methods for evaluating rule utility, and extensions to existing classifier system models. The final part is dedicated to promising applications in areas like data mining, medical data analysis, economic trading agents, aircraft maneuvering, and autonomous robotics. An appendix comprising 467 entries provides a comprehensive LCS bibliography.

Rule-basedevolutionaryonlinelearningsystems,oftenreferredtoasMichig- style learning classi?er systems (LCSs), were proposed nearly thirty years ago (Holland, 1976; Holland, 1977) originally calling them cognitive systems. LCSs combine the strength of reinforcement learning with the generali- tion capabilities of genetic algorithms promising a ?exible, online general- ing, solely reinforcement dependent learning system. However, despite several initial successful applications of LCSs and their interesting relations with a- mal learning and cognition, understanding of the systems remained somewhat obscured. Questions concerning learning complexity or convergence remained unanswered. Performance in di?erent problem types, problem structures, c- ceptspaces,andhypothesisspacesstayednearlyunpredictable. Thisbookhas the following three major objectives: (1) to establish a facetwise theory - proachforLCSsthatpromotessystemanalysis,understanding,anddesign;(2) to analyze, evaluate, and enhance the XCS classi?er system (Wilson, 1995) by the means of the facetwise approach establishing a fundamental XCS learning theory; (3) to identify both the major advantages of an LCS-based learning approach as well as the most promising potential application areas. Achieving these three objectives leads to a rigorous understanding of LCS functioning that enables the successful application of LCSs to diverse problem types and problem domains. The quantitative analysis of XCS shows that the inter- tive, evolutionary-based online learning mechanism works machine learning competitively yielding a low-order polynomial learning complexity. Moreover, the facetwise analysis approach facilitates the successful design of more - vanced LCSs including Holland’s originally envisioned cognitive systems. Martin V.

The significantly expanded and updated new edition of a widely used text on reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence. Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives while interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the field's key ideas and algorithms. This second edition has been significantly expanded and updated, presenting new topics and updating coverage of other topics. Like the first edition, this second edition focuses on core online learning algorithms, with the more mathematical material set off in shaded boxes. Part I covers as much of reinforcement learning as possible without going beyond the tabular case for which exact solutions can be found. Many algorithms presented in this part are new to the second edition, including UCB, Expected Sarsa, and Double Learning. Part II extends these ideas to function approximation, with new sections on such topics as artificial neural networks and the Fourier basis, and offers expanded treatment of off-policy learning and policy-gradient methods. Part III has new chapters on reinforcement learning's relationships to psychology and neuroscience, as well as an updated case-studies chapter including AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero, Atari game playing, and IBM Watson's wagering strategy. The final chapter discusses the future societal impacts of reinforcement learning.

This book provides a unified framework that describes how genetic learning can be used to design pattern recognition and learning systems. It examines how a search technique, the genetic algorithm, can be used for pattern classification mainly through approximating decision boundaries. Coverage also demonstrates the effectiveness of the genetic classifiers vis-à-vis several widely used classifiers, including neural networks.

Genetic algorithms are playing an increasingly important role in studies of complex adaptive systems, ranging from adaptive agents in economic theory to the use of machine learning techniques in the design of complex devices such as aircraft turbines and integrated circuits. Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems is the book that initiated this field of study, presenting the theoretical foundations and exploring applications. In its most familiar form, adaptation is a biological process, whereby organisms evolve by rearranging genetic material to survive in environments confronting them. In this now classic work, Holland presents a mathematical model that allows for the nonlinearity of such complex interactions. He demonstrates the model's universality by applying it to economics, physiological psychology, game theory, and artificial intelligence and then outlines the way in which this approach modifies the traditional views of mathematical genetics. Initially applying his concepts to simply defined artificial systems with limited numbers of parameters, Holland goes on to explore their use in the study of a wide range of complex, naturally occuring processes, concentrating on systems having multiple factors that interact in nonlinear ways. Along the way he accounts for major effects of coadaptation and coevolution: the emergence of building blocks, or schemata, that are recombined and passed on to succeeding generations to provide, innovations and improvements.

Lifelong Machine Learning, Second Edition is an introduction to an advanced machine learning paradigm that continuously learns by accumulating past knowledge that it then uses in future learning and problem solving. In contrast, the current dominant machine learning paradigm learns in isolation: given a training dataset, it runs a machine learning algorithm on the dataset to produce a model that is then used in its intended application. It makes no attempt to retain the learned knowledge and use it in subsequent learning. Unlike this isolated system, humans learn effectively with only a few examples precisely because our learning is very knowledge-driven: the knowledge learned in the past helps us learn new things with little data or effort. Lifelong learning aims to emulate this capability, because without it, an AI system cannot be considered truly intelligent. Research in lifelong learning has developed significantly in the relatively short time since the first edition of this book was published. The purpose of this second edition is to expand the definition of lifelong learning, update the content of several chapters, and add a new chapter about continual learning in deep neural networks—which has been actively researched over the past two or three years. A few chapters have also been reorganized to make each of them more coherent for the reader. Moreover, the authors want to propose a unified framework for the research area. Currently, there are several research topics in machine learning that are closely related to lifelong learning—most notably, multi-task learning, transfer learning, and meta-learning—because they also employ the idea of knowledge sharing and transfer. This book brings all these topics under one roof and discusses their similarities and differences. Its goal is to introduce this emerging machine learning paradigm and present a comprehensive survey and review of the important research results and latest ideas in the area. This book is thus suitable for students, researchers, and practitioners who are interested in machine learning, data mining, natural language processing, or pattern recognition. Lecturers can readily use the book for courses in any of these related fields.