Functional-link net with fuzzy integral for bankruptcy prediction

The classification ability of a single-layer perceptron could be improved by considering some enhanced features. In particular, this form of neural networks is called a functional-link net. In the output neuron's activation function, such as the sigmoid function, an inner product of a connection weight vector with an input vector is computed. However, since the input features are not independent of each other for the enhanced pattern, an assumption of the additivity is not reasonable. This paper employs a non-additive technique, namely the fuzzy integral, to aggregate performance values for an input pattern by interpreting each of the connection weights as a fuzzy measure of the corresponding feature. A learning algorithm with the genetic algorithm is then designed to automatically find connection weights. The sample data for bankruptcy analysis obtained from Moody's Industrial Manuals is considered to examine the classification ability of the proposed method. The results demonstrate that the proposed method performs well in comparison with traditional functional-link net and multivariate techniques.