Abstract
Most evolutionary algorithms have parameters, which allow a great flexibility in controlling their behavior and adapting them to new problems. To achieve the best performance, it is often needed to control some of the parameters during optimization, which gave rise to various parameter control methods. In recent works, however, similar advantages have been shown, and even proven, for sampling parameter values from certain, often heavy-tailed, fixed distributions. This produced a family of algorithms currently known as "fast evolution strategies" and "fast genetic algorithms".
However, only little is known so far about the influence of these distributions on the performance of evolutionary algorithms, and about the relationships between (dynamic) parameter control and (static) parameter sampling. We contribute to the body of knowledge by presenting an algorithm that computes the optimal static distributions, which describe the mutation operator used in the well-known simple (1+λ) evolutionary algorithm on a classic benchmark problem OneMax. We show that, for large enough population sizes, such optimal distributions may be surprisingly complicated and counter-intuitive. We investigate certain properties of these distributions, and also evaluate the performance regrets of the (1 + λ) evolutionary algorithm using standard mutation operators.
However, only little is known so far about the influence of these distributions on the performance of evolutionary algorithms, and about the relationships between (dynamic) parameter control and (static) parameter sampling. We contribute to the body of knowledge by presenting an algorithm that computes the optimal static distributions, which describe the mutation operator used in the well-known simple (1+λ) evolutionary algorithm on a classic benchmark problem OneMax. We show that, for large enough population sizes, such optimal distributions may be surprisingly complicated and counter-intuitive. We investigate certain properties of these distributions, and also evaluate the performance regrets of the (1 + λ) evolutionary algorithm using standard mutation operators.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | GECCO '21 |
Subtitle of host publication | Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference |
Editors | Francisco Chicano |
Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
Pages | 660-668 |
Number of pages | 9 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-1-4503-8350-9 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 26 Jun 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | GECCO 2021 -Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference - Lille, France Duration: 10 Jul 2021 → 14 Jul 2021 |
Conference
Conference | GECCO 2021 -Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference |
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Country/Territory | France |
City | Lille |
Period | 10 Jul 2021 → 14 Jul 2021 |
Keywords
- mutation operators
- runtime analysis