As a commonly used technique in data preprocessing, feature selection selects a subset of informative attributes or variables
to build models describing data. By removing redundant and irrelevant or noise features, feature selection can improve the
predictive accuracy and the comprehensibility of the predictors or classifiers. Many feature selection algorithms with different
selection criteria has been introduced by researchers. However, it is discovered that no single criterion is best for all
applications. In this paper, we propose a framework based on a genetic algorithm (GA) for feature subset selection that combines
various existing feature selection methods. The advantages of this approach include the ability to accommodate multiple feature
selection criteria and find small subsets of features that perform well for a particular inductive learning algorithm of interest
to build the classifier. We conducted experiments using three data sets and three existing feature selection methods. The
experimental results demonstrate that our approach is a robust and effective approach to find subsets of features with higher
classification accuracy and/or smaller size compared to each individual feature selection algorithm.
Keywords Feature selection - Gene Selection - Genetic algorithm - Microarray gene expression data analysis