Epilepsy becomes one of the most frequently arising brain disorder, and it is marked by the unexpected occurrence of frequent seizures. In this study, the University of the Boon Database with ictal seizure disorder diagnosis of the epilepsy is classified by making use of the expectation maximization features as dimensionality reduction technique followed by the nonlinear model, namely, Gaussian mixture model, logistic regression, firefly algorithm, and hybrid model such as cuckoo search with Gaussian mixture model and firefly algorithm with the Gaussian mixture model which are the classifiers used for the diagnosis of epilepsy from the electroencephalogram signals. The performance of the classifiers is analyzed based on performance index, sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, mean square error, good detection rate, and error rate. The most promising outcome in this work indicates expectation maximization features are applied as the dimensionality reduction technique and the hybrid model Cuckoo search with the Gaussian mixture model outperforms with classification accuracy of 92.19%, performance index of 81.43%, good detection rate of 83.48%, and with low error rate of 15.62%, among other classifiers.