Fitness Probability Distribution of Bit-Flip Mutation

Autor: Chicano, Francisco, Sutton, Andrew M., Whitley, L. Darrell, Alba, Enrique
Rok vydání: 2013
Předmět:
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1162/EVCO_a_00130
Popis: Bit-flip mutation is a common mutation operator for evolutionary algorithms applied to optimize functions over binary strings. In this paper, we develop results from the theory of landscapes and Krawtchouk polynomials to exactly compute the probability distribution of fitness values of a binary string undergoing uniform bit-flip mutation. We prove that this probability distribution can be expressed as a polynomial in p, the probability of flipping each bit. We analyze these polynomials and provide closed-form expressions for an easy linear problem (Onemax), and an NP-hard problem, MAX-SAT. We also discuss some implications of the results for runtime analysis.
Comment: Submitted to Evolutionary Computation Journal (MIT Press)
Databáze: arXiv