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arXiv · 2401.12121

Improving genetic algorithms performance via deterministic population shrinkage

Juan Luis Jiménez Laredo·Carlos Fernandes·Juan Julián Merelo·Christian Gagné
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Abstract

Despite the intuition that the same population size is not needed throughout the run of an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA), most EAs use a fixed population size. This paper presents an empirical study on the possible benefits of a Simple Variable Population Sizing (SVPS) scheme on the performance of Genetic Algorithms (GAs). It consists in decreasing the population for a GA run following a predetermined schedule, configured by a speed and a severity parameter. The method uses as initial population size an estimation of the minimum size needed to supply enough building blocks, using a fixed-size selectorecombinative GA converging within some confidence interval toward good solutions for a particular problem. Following this methodology, a scalability analysis is conducted on deceptive, quasi-deceptive, and non-deceptive trap functions in order to assess whether SVPS-GA improves performances compared to a fixed-size GA under different problem instances and difficulty levels. Results show several combinations of speed-severity where SVPS-GA preserves the solution quality while improving performances, by reducing the number of evaluations needed for success.

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Juan Luis Jiménez Laredo, Carlos Fernandes, Juan Julián Merelo, Christian Gagné. 2024-01-22. Improving genetic algorithms performance via deterministic population shrinkage. https://doi.org/10.1145/1569901.1570014

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