  Representing patterns as labeled graphs is becoming increasingly common in
the broad field of computational intelligence. Accordingly, a wide repertoire
of pattern recognition tools, such as classifiers and knowledge discovery
procedures, are nowadays available and tested for various datasets of labeled
graphs. However, the design of effective learning procedures operating in the
space of labeled graphs is still a challenging problem, especially from the
computational complexity viewpoint. In this paper, we present a major
improvement of a general-purpose classifier for graphs, which is conceived on
an interplay between dissimilarity representation, clustering,
information-theoretic techniques, and evolutionary optimization algorithms. The
improvement focuses on a specific key subroutine devised to compress the input
data. We prove different theorems which are fundamental to the setting of the
parameters controlling such a compression operation. We demonstrate the
effectiveness of the resulting classifier by benchmarking the developed
variants on well-known datasets of labeled graphs, considering as distinct
performance indicators the classification accuracy, computing time, and
parsimony in terms of structural complexity of the synthesized classification
models. The results show state-of-the-art standards in terms of test set
accuracy and a considerable speed-up for what concerns the computing time.
