Enhanced minimum attribute reduction based on quantum-inspired shuffled frog leaping algorithm

Attribute reduction in the rough set theory is an important feature selection method, but finding a minimum attribute reduction has been proven to be a non-deterministic polynomial (NP)-hard problem. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate some fast and effective approximate algorithms. A novel and enhanced quantum-inspired shuffled frog leaping based minimum attribute reduction algorithm (QSFLAR) is proposed. Evolutionary frogs are represented by multi-state quantum bits, and both quantum rotation gate and quantum mutation operators are used to exploit the mechanisms of frog population diversity and convergence to the global optimum. The decomposed attribute subsets are co-evolved by the elitist frogs with a quantum-inspired shuffled frog leaping algorithm. The experimental results validate the better feasibility and effectiveness of QSFLAR, comparing with some representative algorithms. Therefore, QSFLAR can be considered as a more competitive algorithm on the efficiency and accuracy for minimum attribute reduction.