An Exploration into Dynamic Population Sizing

Abstract

Traditional evolutionary algorithms are powerful problem solvers that have several fixed parameters which require prior specification. Determining good values for any of these parameters can be difficult, as these parameters are generally very sensitive, requiring expert knowledge to set optimally without extensive use of trial and error. Parameter control is a promising approach to achieving this automation and has the added potential of increasing EA performance based on both theoretical and empirical evidence that the optimal values of EA strategy parameters change during the course of executing an evolutionary run. While many methods of parameter control have been published that focus on removing the population size parameter, μ, all hampered by a variety of problems. This paper investigates the benefits of making μ a dynamic parameter and introduces two novel methods for population control. These methods are then compared to state-of-the-art population sizing EAs, exploring the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Meeting Name

12th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2010 (2010: Jul 7-11, Portland, Oregon)

Department(s)

Computer Science

Sponsor(s)

Missouri University of Science and Technology. Natural Computation Laboratory

Keywords and Phrases

Evolutionary Algorithm; Optimization; Parameter Control; Parameterless Evolutionary Algorithm; Population Sizing

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

978-1450300728

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2010 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2010

Link to Full Text

Share

 
COinS