Towards an Improved Ensemble Learning Model of Artificial Neural Networks: Lessons Learned on Using Randomized Numbers of Hidden Neurons

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have been widely applied in petroleum reservoir characterization. Despite their wide use, they are very unstable in terms of performance. Ensemble machine learning is capable of improving the performance of such unstable techniques. One of the challenges of using ANN is choosing the appropriate number of hidden neurons. Previous studies have proposed ANN ensemble models with a maximum of 50 hidden neurons in the search space thereby leaving rooms for further improvement. This chapter presents extended versions of those studies with increased search spaces using a linear search and randomized assignment of the number of hidden neurons. Using standard model evaluation criteria and novel ensemble combination rules, the results of this study suggest that having a large number of “unbiased” randomized guesses of the number of hidden neurons beyond 50 performs better than very few occurrences of those that were optimally determined. Fatai Anifowose Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia Jane Labadin Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia Abdulazeez Abdulraheem King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-6078-6.ch004