This paper proposes a novel method for learning Bayesian networks from incomplete databases in the presence of missing values, which combines an evolutionary algorithm with the traditional Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. A data completing procedure is presented for learning and evaluating the candidate networks. Moreover, a strategy is introduced to obtain better initial networks to facilitate the method. The new method can also overcome the problem of getting stuck in sub-optimal

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... ions which occurs in most existing learning algorithms. The experimental results on the databases generated from several benchmark networks illustrate that the new method has better performance than some state-of-the-art algorithms. We also apply the method to a data mining problem and compare the performance of the discovered Bayesian networks with the models generated by other learning algorithms. The results demonstrate that our method outperforms other algorithms.