Frequent Pattern-Based Search: A Case Study on the Quadratic Assignment Problem

We present frequent pattern-based search (FPBS) that combines data mining and optimization. FPBS is a general-purpose method that unifies data mining and optimization within the population-based search framework. The method emphasizes the relevance of a modular- and component-based approach, making it applicable to optimization problems by instantiating the underlying components. To illustrate its potential for solving difficult combinatorial optimization problems, we apply the method to the well-known and challenging quadratic assignment problem. We show the computational results and comparisons on the hardest QAPLIB benchmark instances. This work reinforces the recent trend toward closer cooperations between the optimization methods and machine learning or data mining techniques.