A new method of mining data streams using harmony search

Incremental learning has been used extensively for data stream classification. Most attention on the data stream classification paid on non-evolutionary methods. In this paper, we introduce new incremental learning algorithms based on harmony search. We first propose a new classification algorithm for the classification of batch data called harmony-based classifier and then give its incremental version for classification of data streams called incremental harmony-based classifier. Finally, we improve it to reduce its computational overhead in absence of drifts and increase its robustness in presence of noise. This improved version is called improved incremental harmony-based classifier. The proposed methods are evaluated on some real world and synthetic data sets. Experimental results show that the proposed batch classifier outperforms some batch classifiers and also the proposed incremental methods can effectively address the issues usually encountered in the data stream environments. Improved incremental harmony-based classifier has significantly better speed and accuracy on capturing concept drifts than the non-incremental harmony based method and its accuracy is comparable to non-evolutionary algorithms. The experimental results also show the robustness of improved incremental harmony-based classifier.