Related papers: Evolutionary Algorithms and Submodular Functions: …
Combinatorial optimization problems are a prominent application area of evolutionary algorithms, where the (1+1) EA is one of the most investigated. We extend this algorithm by introducing some problem knowledge with a specialized mutation…
Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) and other randomized search heuristics are often considered as unbiased algorithms that are invariant with respect to different transformations of the underlying search space. However, if a certain amount of…
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are general-purpose problem solvers that usually perform an unbiased search. This is reasonable and desirable in a black-box scenario. For combinatorial optimization problems, often more knowledge about the…
Linear functions play a key role in the runtime analysis of evolutionary algorithms and studies have provided a wide range of new insights and techniques for analyzing evolutionary computation methods. Motivated by studies on separable…
We propose a new way to self-adjust the mutation rate in population-based evolutionary algorithms in discrete search spaces. Roughly speaking, it consists of creating half the offspring with a mutation rate that is twice the current…
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) form a popular optimisation paradigm inspired by natural evolution. In recent years the field of evolutionary computation has developed a rigorous analytical theory to analyse their runtime on many illustrative…
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are a kind of nature-inspired general-purpose optimization algorithm, and have shown empirically good performance in solving various real-word optimization problems. During the past two decades, promising…
For genetic algorithms using a bit-string representation of length~$n$, the general recommendation is to take $1/n$ as mutation rate. In this work, we discuss whether this is really justified for multimodal functions. Taking jump functions…
It is known that the evolutionary algorithm $(1+1)$-EA with mutation rate $c/n$ optimises every monotone function efficiently if $c<1$, and needs exponential time on some monotone functions (HotTopic functions) if $c\geq 2.2$. We study the…
Most research in the theory of evolutionary computation assumes that the problem at hand has a fixed problem size. This assumption does not always apply to real-world optimization challenges, where the length of an optimal solution may be…
Constrained submodular optimization problems play a key role in the area of combinatorial optimization as they capture many NP-hard optimization problems. So far, Pareto optimization approaches using multi-objective formulations have been…
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have found many successful real-world applications, where the optimization problems are often subject to a wide range of uncertainties. To understand the practical behaviors of EAs theoretically, there are a…
We analyze the performance of the 2-rate $(1+\lambda)$ Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) with self-adjusting mutation rate control, its 3-rate counterpart, and a $(1+\lambda)$~EA variant using multiplicative update rules on the OneMax problem. We…
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are universal solvers inspired by principles of natural evolution. In many applications, EAs produce astonishingly good solutions. As they are able to deal with complex optimisation problems, they show great…
Pseudo-Boolean monotone functions are unimodal functions which are trivial to optimize for some hillclimbers, but are challenging for a surprising number of evolutionary algorithms (EAs). A general trend is that EAs are efficient if…
The OneMax problem, alternatively known as the Hamming distance problem, is often referred to as the "drosophila of evolutionary computation (EC)", because of its high relevance in theoretical and empirical analyses of EC approaches. It is…
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are general-purpose optimization algorithms, inspired by natural evolution. Recent theoretical studies have shown that EAs can achieve good approximation guarantees for solving the problem classes of submodular…
The analysis of randomized search heuristics on classes of functions is fundamental for the understanding of the underlying stochastic process and the development of suitable proof techniques. Recently, remarkable progress has been made in…
In this paper we revisit the question how hard it can be for the $(1+1)$ Evolutionary Algorithm to optimize monotone pseudo-Boolean functions. By introducing a more pessimistic stochastic process, the partially-ordered evolutionary…
Repair operators are often used for constraint handling in constrained combinatorial optimization. We investigate the (1+1)~EA equipped with a tailored jump-and-repair operation that can be used to probabilistically repair infeasible…