We study the issue of error diversity in ensembles of neural networks. In ensembles of regression estimators, the measurement of diversity can be formalised as the Bias-Variance-Covariance decomposition. In ensembles of classifiers, there is no neat theory in the literature to date. Our objective is to understand how to precisely define, measure, and create diverse errors for both cases. As a focal point we study one algorithm, Negative Correlation (NC) Learning which claimed, and showed empirical evidence, to enforce useful error diversity, creating neural network ensembles with very competitive performance on both classification and regression problems. With the lack of a solid understanding of its dynamics, we engage in a theoretical and empirical investigation. In an initial empirical stage, we demonstrate the application of an evolutionary search algorithm to locate the optimal value for λ, the configurable parameter in NC. We observe the behaviour of the optimal parameter under different ensemble architectures and datasets; we note a high degree of unpredictability, and embark on a more formal investigation. During the theoretical investigations, we find that NC succeeds due to exploiting the

Ensemble methodology, which builds a classification model by integrating multiple classifiers, can be used for improving prediction performance. Researchers from various disciplines such as statistics, pattern recognition, and machine learning have seriously explored the use of ensemble methodology. This paper presents an updated survey of ensemble methods in classification tasks, while introducing a new taxonomy for characterizing them. The new taxonomy, presented from the algorithm designer’s point of view, is based on five dimensions: inducer, combiner, diversity, size, and members dependency. We also propose several selection criteria, presented from the practitioner’s point of view, for choosing the most suitable ensemble method. Key words: