Re: [ANNOUNCE 0/4][RFC] Genetic Algorithm Library

From: James Bruce
Date: Sat Jan 08 2005 - 09:27:26 EST


Ok I've read the patch and see you do indeed have crossover; Now I have a different question. What is the motivation for generating two children at once, instead of just one? Genes values shouldn't get "lost" since the parents are being kept around anyway. Also, since the parameters in general will not have a meaningful ordering, it might make sense for the generic crossover to be the "each gene randomly picked from one of the two parents" approach. In practice I've found that to mix things up a bit better in the parameter optimization problems I've done with GAs.
- Jim

James Bruce wrote:
Do you have any crossover? This is critical for GA to work well - without it, the algorithm is really only a parallel random search. More specifically, is step 6 pure copies of a single parents, or can children inherit tunables from multiple parents?
- Jim

Jake Moilanen wrote:

...
The basic flow of the genetic algorithm is as follows:

1.) Start w/ a broad list of initial tunable values (each set of
tunables is called a child) 2.) Let each child run for a timeslice. 3.) Once the timeslice is up, calculate the fitness of the child (how
well performed).
4.) Run the next child in the list.
5.) Once all the children have run, compare the fitnesses of each child
and throw away the bottom-half performers. 6.) Create new children to take the place of the bottom-half performers
using the tunables from the top-half performers.
7.) Mutate a set number of children to keep variance.
8.) Goto step 2.

Over time the tunables should converge toward the optimal settings for
that workload. If the workload changes, the tunables should converge to
the new optimal settings (this is part of the reason for mutation). This algorithm is used extensively in AI.

> ...


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