Particle Swarm Stepwise (pass) Algorithm for Information Criteria-Based Variable Selections

A new stochastic search algorithm is proposed for solving information-criterion-based variable selection problems. The idea behind the proposed algorithm is to search for the best model for the previously specified information criterion using multiple search particles. These particles simultaneously explore the candidate model space and communicate with each other to share search information. A new stochastic stepwise procedure is proposed to update the model during the search for the best model by adding or deleting variables. The proposed algorithm can also be used to generate variable selection ensembles efficiently. Several examples are used to demonstrate the performances of the proposed algorithm. A parallel version of the proposed algorithm is also introduced to accelerate the performance in terms of computation time.