Multi-Strategy Improved Golden Sine Optimization Algorithm for Global Optimization and Corporate Bankruptcy Forecasting
With the increasing complexity of engineering optimization and intelligent decision-making problems, traditional metaheuristic algorithms often suffer from premature convergence, loss of population diversity, and insufficient adaptability to complex fitness landscapes. To address these issues, this paper proposes a Multi-strategy Symmetry-Aware Improved Golden Sine Algorithm (MIGoldSA). The proposed algorithm introduces a symmetry-guided multi-strategy framework in which multiple complementary search operators are organized in a structurally balanced manner. Specifically, a strategy pool consisting of the original golden sine update rule, three differential evolution mutation strategies, and an elite-based quadratic interpolation local search operator is constructed. An adaptive strategy selection mechanism is further developed to dynamically regulate the selection probabilities of different strategies according to their historical success rates, forming a dynamic probabilistic symmetry that balances global exploration and local exploitation throughout the optimization process. The numerical performance of the resulting method is assessed using the CEC2014, 30-dimensional CEC2017, and 20-dimensional CEC2022 test collections. Comparative and statistical findings confirm that MIGoldSA generally delivers more accurate final solutions, more consistent outcomes across independent trials, and stronger convergence behavior than established algorithms and recently developed competitors. Its applicability is further examined in corporate insolvency forecasting by employing MIGoldSA to determine the hyperparameter configuration of a K-nearest neighbors classifier. Tests conducted on the Wieslaw financial database show that the resulting MIGoldSA-KNN system outperforms the selected reference models in classification accuracy, Matthews correlation coefficient, F1-score, and recall. These findings suggest that the proposed symmetry-inspired architecture offers an effective means of coordinating diversified search and intensive refinement, thereby providing a valuable computational approach for challenging global optimization and financial classification tasks.