Related papers: Lower Bounds for Non-Elitist Evolutionary Algorith…
Drift analysis aims at translating the expected progress of an evolutionary algorithm (or more generally, a random process) into a probabilistic guarantee on its run time (hitting time). So far, drift arguments have been successfully…
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…
In this work, we introduce multiplicative drift analysis as a suitable way to analyze the runtime of randomized search heuristics such as evolutionary algorithms. We give a multiplicative version of the classical drift theorem. This allows…
This erratum points out an error in the simplified drift theorem (SDT) [Algorithmica 59(3), 369-386, 2011]. It is also shown that a minor modification of one of its conditions is sufficient to establish a valid result. In many respects, the…
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are population-based general-purpose optimization algorithms, and have been successfully applied in various real-world optimization tasks. However, previous theoretical studies often employ EAs with only a…
Understanding how the time-complexity of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) depend on their parameter settings and characteristics of fitness landscapes is a fundamental problem in evolutionary computation. Most rigorous results were derived…
In a seminal paper in 2013, Witt showed that the (1+1) Evolutionary Algorithm with standard bit mutation needs time $(1+o(1))n \ln n/p_1$ to find the optimum of any linear function, as long as the probability $p_1$ to flip exactly one bit…
Drift analysis is one of the state-of-the-art techniques for the runtime analysis of randomized search heuristics (RSHs) such as evolutionary algorithms (EAs), simulated annealing etc. The vast majority of existing drift theorems yield…
The fitness level method is a popular tool for analyzing the hitting time of elitist evolutionary algorithms. Its idea is to divide the search space into multiple fitness levels and estimate lower and upper bounds on the hitting time using…
This paper explores the use of the standard approach for proving runtime bounds in discrete domains---often referred to as drift analysis---in the context of optimization on a continuous domain. Using this framework we analyze the (1+1)…
Drift analysis has become a powerful tool to prove bounds on the runtime of randomized search heuristics. It allows, for example, fairly simple proofs for the classical problem how the (1+1) Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) optimizes an…
We argue that proven exponential upper bounds on runtimes, an established area in classic algorithms, are interesting also in heuristic search and we prove several such results. We show that any of the algorithms randomized local search,…
It is generally accepted that populations are useful for the global exploration of multi-modal optimisation problems. Indeed, several theoretical results are available showing such advantages over single-trajectory search heuristics. In…
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…
One of the easiest randomized greedy optimization algorithms is the following evolutionary algorithm which aims at maximizing a boolean function $f:\{0,1\}^n \to {\mathbb R}$. The algorithm starts with a random search point $\xi \in…
Elitism, which constructs the new population by preserving best solutions out of the old population and newly-generated solutions, has been a default way for population update since its introduction into multi-objective evolutionary…
Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (EDAs) are one branch of Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) in the broad sense that they evolve a probabilistic model instead of a population. Many existing algorithms fall into this category. Analogous to…
One important goal of black-box complexity theory is the development of complexity models allowing to derive meaningful lower bounds for whole classes of randomized search heuristics. Complementing classical runtime analysis, black-box…
The theory of evolutionary computation for discrete search spaces has made significant progress in the last ten years. This survey summarizes some of the most important recent results in this research area. It discusses fine-grained models…
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…