The evaluation of convolutional neural network and genetic algorithm performance based on the number of hyperparameters for English handwritten recognition

Abstract

Convolutional neural network (CNN) has been widely applied to image recognition, especially handwritten English recognition. CNN's performance is good if the hyperparameter values are correct. However, the determination of precise hyperparameters is not a trivial task. This task is made more difficult when combined with a larger number of hyperparameters resulting in a high dimensionality of the search space. Usually, hyperparameter optimization uses a finite number. Previous studies have shown that a large number of hyperparameters can result in optimal CNN performance. However, the studies only apply to text mining datasets. This study offers two novelties. First, it applied 20 hyperparameters and their ranges to handwritten English. Second, this paper conducted seven experiments based on different hyperparameters and the number of hyperparameters. This paper also compares the existing methods, namely random and grid search. The experiment resulted in the proposed model being superior to the existing methods. EX3 is better than other experiments and a larger number of hyperparameters and layer-specific hyperparameter values are unimportant.