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Main Authors: Kahlmeyer, Paul, Fischer, Markus, Giesen, Joachim
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19537
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author Kahlmeyer, Paul
Fischer, Markus
Giesen, Joachim
author_facet Kahlmeyer, Paul
Fischer, Markus
Giesen, Joachim
contents Solutions of symbolic regression problems are expressions that are composed of input variables and operators from a finite set of function symbols. One measure for evaluating symbolic regression algorithms is their ability to recover formulae, up to symbolic equivalence, from finite samples. Not unexpectedly, the recovery problem becomes harder when the formula gets more complex, that is, when the number of variables and operators gets larger. Variables in naturally occurring symbolic formulas often appear only in fixed combinations. This can be exploited in symbolic regression by substituting one new variable for the combination, effectively reducing the number of variables. However, finding valid substitutions is challenging. Here, we address this challenge by searching over the expression space of small substitutions and testing for validity. The validity test is reduced to a test of functional dependence. The resulting iterative dimension reduction procedure can be used with any symbolic regression approach. We show that it reliably identifies valid substitutions and significantly boosts the performance of different types of state-of-the-art symbolic regression algorithms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_19537
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dimension Reduction for Symbolic Regression
Kahlmeyer, Paul
Fischer, Markus
Giesen, Joachim
Machine Learning
Solutions of symbolic regression problems are expressions that are composed of input variables and operators from a finite set of function symbols. One measure for evaluating symbolic regression algorithms is their ability to recover formulae, up to symbolic equivalence, from finite samples. Not unexpectedly, the recovery problem becomes harder when the formula gets more complex, that is, when the number of variables and operators gets larger. Variables in naturally occurring symbolic formulas often appear only in fixed combinations. This can be exploited in symbolic regression by substituting one new variable for the combination, effectively reducing the number of variables. However, finding valid substitutions is challenging. Here, we address this challenge by searching over the expression space of small substitutions and testing for validity. The validity test is reduced to a test of functional dependence. The resulting iterative dimension reduction procedure can be used with any symbolic regression approach. We show that it reliably identifies valid substitutions and significantly boosts the performance of different types of state-of-the-art symbolic regression algorithms.
title Dimension Reduction for Symbolic Regression
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19537