Multi-task Genetic Programming with Semantic based Crossover for Multi-output Regression

Chunyu Wang, Qi Chen, Bing Xue, Mengjie Zhang

Abstract: Multi-output regression involves predicting two or more target variables simultaneously. In contrast to its single-output counterpart, multi-output regression poses additional challenges primarily because the target variables are frequently interdependent. Achieving accurate predictions for one variable may necessitate a thorough consideration of its relationships with other variables. In this paper, multi-output regression problems are regarded as multi-task optimization problems where predicting one output variable is considered as one task. A new multi-task multi-population genetic programming method is proposed to solve the problem. The method utilizes the semantic based crossover operator to transfer positive knowledge and accelerate convergence. Additionally, it adopts an offspring reservation strategy to keep the quality of the individuals for the corresponding tasks. The empirical results demonstrate that our proposed method significantly enhances the training and the test performances of multi-task multi-population GP and also outperforms standard GP on five real-world multi-output regression datasets.