A Novel Approach in Determining Neural Networks Architecture to Classify Data With Large Number of Attributes

One of the challenges in the successful implementation of deep neural networks (DNN) lies on the determination of its architecture, in terms of the number of hidden layers and neurons for each hidden layer. In this research, a new approach is proposed to determine the neural networks architecture especially in the form of Multi-layer Perceptron (MLP) which will later be used as a machine learning method to classify data with large number of attribute. The new approach is proposed since the previous approaches are no longer applicable as general guidelines to determine the architecture of neural networks. Thus, the proposed approach aims to determine the number of hidden layers by using principal component analysis (PCA), while the number of neurons for each hidden layer is determined by using K-Means clustering. The determined neural network architecture is utilized to classify data with large number of attribute, such as the Gas Sensor Array Drift dataset which has 128 input attributes and six output classes and the Parkinson’s Disease Classification dataset which has 754 output attributes and two output classes. The results indicate that the best-performing architecture for the first dataset is the one that uses one hidden layer, with a PCA cumulative variance of 69.7%, while for the second dataset is the one that uses three hidden layers, with a PCA cumulative variance of 38.9%. Increasing the number of hidden layers does not always improve the performance of neural networks. Therefore, it is essential to determine the number of hidden layers and neurons that are appropriate to achieve good performance in neural networks. The use of PCA and K-Means clustering is expected to provide guidelines in determining neural networks architectures with good performance.