Abstract
We investigate the expected running time of the (1+1) EA, a very simple Evolutionary Algorithm, on the class of unimodal fitness functions with Boolean inputs. We analyze the behavior on a generalized version of long paths [6, 10] and prove an exponential lower bound on the expected running time. Thereby we show that unimodal functions can be very difficult to be optimized for the (1+1) EA. Furthermore, we prove that a little modification in the selection method can lead to huge changes in the expected running time.
This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as part of the Collaborative Research Center “Computational Intelligence” (531).
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Droste, S., Jansen, Th., and Wegener, I. (1998). A rigorous complexity analysis of the (1+1) Evolutionary Algorithm for linear functions with Boolean inputs. In Proceedings of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (ICEC'98), 499–504. IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ.
Fogel, D.B. (1995). Evolutionary Computation: Toward a New Philosophy of Machine Intelligence. IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ.
Goldberg, D.E. (1989). Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and Machine Learning. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.
Höhn, C. and Reeves, C. (1996). Are long path problems hard for Genetic Algorithms? In Voigt, H.-M., Ebelin, W., Rechenberg, I., and Schwefel, H.-P. (Eds.): Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN IV), 134–143. Springer, Berlin. LNCS 1141.
Holland, J.H. (1975). Adaption in Natural and Artificial Systems. University of Michigan, Michigan.
Horn, J., Goldberg, D.E., and Deb, K. (1994). Long path problems. In Davidor, Y., Schwefel, H.-P., and Männer, R. (Eds.): Parallel Problem Solving From Nature (PPSN III), 149–158. Springer, Berlin. LNCS 866.
Koza, J.R. (1992). Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Mühlenbein, H. (1992). How Genetic Algorithms really work. Mutation and hillclimbing. In Männer, R. and Manderick, R. (Eds.), Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN II), 15–25. North-Holland, Amsterdam.
Rechenberg, I. (1994). Evolutionsstrategie '94. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart.
Rudolph, G. (1997). Convergence Properties of Evolutionary Algorithms. Ph.D. Thesis. Verlag Dr. Kovač, Hamburg.
Rudolph, G. (1997b). How mutation and selection solve long-path problems in polynomial expected time. Evolutionary Computation 4(2), 195–205.
Schwefel, H.-P. (1995). Evolution and Optimum Seeking. Wiley, New York.
Schwefel, H.-P. (1997). Personal communication.
Wolpert, D.H. and Macready, W. G. (1997). No free lunch theorems for optimization. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 1(1), 67–72.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Droste, S., Jansen, T., Wegener, I. (1998). On the optimization of unimodal functions with the (1+1) evolutionary algorithm. In: Eiben, A.E., Bäck, T., Schoenauer, M., Schwefel, HP. (eds) Parallel Problem Solving from Nature — PPSN V. PPSN 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1498. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0056845
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0056845
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65078-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49672-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive