Related papers: The Runtime of the Compact Genetic Algorithm on Ju…
Compact Genetic Algorithms (cGAs) are condensed variants of classical Genetic Algorithms (GAs) that use a probability vector representation of the population instead of the complete population. cGAs have been shown to significantly reduce…
To gain a better theoretical understanding of how evolutionary algorithms (EAs) cope with plateaus of constant fitness, we propose the $n$-dimensional Plateau$_k$ function as natural benchmark and analyze how different variants of the $(1 +…
We consider a classical scheduling problem on $m$ identical machines. For an arbitrary constant $q>1$, the aim is to assign jobs to machines such that $\sum_{i=1}^m C_i^q$ is minimized, where $C_i$ is the total processing time of jobs…
The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm~II (NSGA-II) is the most popular multi-objective optimization heuristic. Recent mathematical runtime analyses have detected two shortcomings in discrete search spaces, namely, that the NSGA-II has…
We present a new method for proving lower bounds on the expected running time of evolutionary algorithms. It is based on fitness-level partitions and an additional condition on transition probabilities between fitness levels. The method is…
While the theoretical analysis of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) has made significant progress for pseudo-Boolean optimization problems in the last 25 years, only sporadic theoretical results exist on how EAs solve permutation-based…
The global simple evolutionary multi-objective optimizer (GSEMO) is a simple, yet often effective multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA). By only maintaining non-dominated solutions, it has a variable population size that…
It is known that the $(1+(\lambda,\lambda))$~Genetic Algorithm (GA) with self-adjusting parameter choices achieves a linear expected optimization time on OneMax if its hyper-parameters are suitably chosen. However, it is not very well…
We show that, for any c>0, the (1+1) evolutionary algorithm using an arbitrary mutation rate p_n = c/n finds the optimum of a linear objective function over bit strings of length n in expected time Theta(n log n). Previously, this was only…
We investigate a family of $(\mu+\lambda)$ Genetic Algorithms (GAs) which creates offspring either from mutation or by recombining two randomly chosen parents. By scaling the crossover probability, we can thus interpolate from a fully…
We consider the expected runtime of non-elitist evolutionary algorithms (EAs), when they are applied to a family of fitness functions with a plateau of second-best fitness in a Hamming ball of radius r around a unique global optimum. On one…
Drift analysis is a powerful tool for analyzing the time complexity of evolutionary algorithms. However, it requires manual construction of drift functions to bound hitting time for each specific algorithm and problem. To address this…
We consider the problem of performing a random walk in a distributed network. Given bandwidth constraints, the goal of the problem is to minimize the number of rounds required to obtain a random walk sample. Das Sarma et al. [PODC'10] show…
The decomposition-based multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA/D) does not directly optimize a given multi-objective function $f$, but instead optimizes $N + 1$ single-objective subproblems of $f$ in a co-evolutionary manner. It…
The hyperclimbing hypothesis is a hypothetical explanation for adaptation in genetic algorithms with uniform crossover (UGAs). Hyperclimbing is an intuitive, general-purpose, non-local search heuristic applicable to discrete product spaces…
Theory of evolutionary computation (EC) aims at providing mathematically founded statements about the performance of evolutionary algorithms (EAs). The predominant topic in this research domain is runtime analysis, which studies the time it…
Estimation of distribution algorithms (EDAs) provide a distribution - based approach for optimization which adapts its probability distribution during the run of the algorithm. We contribute to the theoretical understanding of EDAs and…
NSGA-III is a prominent algorithm in evolutionary many-objective optimization. It is particularly well suited for optimizing problems with more than three objectives, distinguishing it from the classical NSGA-II. However, theoretical…
Evolutionary algorithms rely very heavily on randomized behavior. Execution speed, therefore, depends strongly on how we implement randomness, such as our choice of pseudorandom number generator, or the algorithms used to map pseudorandom…
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are general-purpose optimisers that come with several parameters like the sizes of parent and offspring populations or the mutation rate. It is well known that the performance of EAs may depend drastically on…