A hybrid particle swarm optimization method for structure learning of probabilistic relational models

Probabilistic relational models (PRMs) extend the Bayesian network representation to incorporate a much richer relational structure. Existing probabilistic relational model (PRM) learning approaches based on search and scoring usually perform a heuristic search for the highest scoring structure. In this paper, we proposes the maximum likelihood tree based immune binary particle swarm optimization (MLT-IBPSO) method to learn structures of PRMs from relational data. First, a maximum likelihood tree (MLT) is generated from the data sample, and a population is created according to the MLT. Then, immune theory is combined with particle swarm optimization (PSO) for searching the structures. As a result, the probabilistic structure is learned based on the proposed method. Experiments show that the MLT-IBPSO method can learn structures from relational data effectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.