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Cooperative Coevolution versus Monolithic Evolutionary Search for Semi-Supervised Tabular Classification

Neural and Evolutionary Computing 2026-04-21 v1 Machine Learning

Abstract

This paper studies semi-supervised tabular classification in the extreme low-label regime using lightweight base learners. The paper proposes a cooperative coevolutionary method (CC-SSL) that evolves (i) two feature-subset views and (ii) a pseudo-labeling policy, and compares it to a matched monolithic evolutionary baseline (EA-SSL) and three lightweight SSL baselines. Experiments on 25 OpenML datasets with labeled fractions {1%,5%,10%} evaluate test MacroF1 and accuracy, together with evolutionary and pseudo-label diagnostics. CC-SSL and EA-SSL achieve higher median test MacroF1 than the lightweight baselines, with the largest separations at 1% labeled data. Most CC-SSL vs. EA-SSL comparisons are statistical draws on final test performance. EA-SSL shows higher best-so-far fitness and higher diversity during search, while time-to-target is comparable and generations-to-target favors EA-SSL in several multiclass settings. Pseudo-label volume, ProbeDrop, and validation optimism show no significant differences between CC-SSL and EA-SSL under the shared protocol.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.16412,
  title  = {Cooperative Coevolution versus Monolithic Evolutionary Search for Semi-Supervised Tabular Classification},
  author = {Jamal Toutouh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.16412},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted to be presented during the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2026. July 13--17, 2026. San Jos\'e, Costa Rica

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:14:57.438Z