Explaining to what extent the real power of genetic algorithms lies in the ability of crossover to recombine individuals into higher quality solutions is an important problem in evolutionary computation. In this paper we show how the interplay between mutation and crossover can make genetic algorithms hillclimb faster than their mutation-only counterparts. We devise a Markov Chain framework that allows to rigorously prove an upper bound on the runtime of standard steady state genetic algorithms to hillclimb the OneMax function. The bound establishes that the steady-state genetic algorithms are 25 faster than all standard bit mutation-only evolutionary algorithms with static mutation rate up to lower order terms for moderate population sizes. The analysis also suggests that larger populations may be faster than populations of size 2. We present a lower bound for a greedy (2+1) GA that matches the upper bound for populations larger than 2, rigorously proving that 2 individuals cannot outperform larger population sizes under greedy selection and greedy crossover up to lower order terms. In complementary experiments the best population size is greater than 2 and the greedy genetic algorithms are faster than standard ones, further suggesting that the derived lower bound also holds for the standard steady state (2+1) GA.
Proofs that crossover may make a difference between polynomial and exponential time for escaping local optima have also been available for some time @cite_20 @cite_41 . The authors devised example functions where, if sufficient diversity was enforced by some mechanism, then crossover could efficiently combine different individuals into an optimal solution. Mutation, on the other hand required a long time because of the great Hamming distance between the local and global optima. The authors chose to call the artificially designed functions Real Royal Road functions because the Royal Road functions devised to support the building block hypothesis had failed to do so @cite_13 . The Real Royal Road functions, though, had no resemblance with the schemata structures required by the building block hypothesis.
@cite_41 @cite_13 @cite_20
2160241726 2160436193 2187785713 2148770681
Due to experimental evidence it is incontestable that crossover is essential for some fitness functions. However, theoretical results without assumptions are difficult. So-called real royal road functions are known where crossover is proved to be essential, i.e., mutation-based algorithms have an exponential expected runtime while the expected runtime of a genetic algorithm is polynomially bounded. However, these functions are artificial and have been designed in such a way that crossover is essential only at the very end (or at other well-specified points) of the optimization process.Here, a more natural fitness function based on a generalized Ising model is presented where crossover is essential throughout the whole optimization process. Mutation-based algorithms such as (μ+λ) EAs with constant population size are proved to have an exponential expected runtime while the expected runtime of a simple genetic algorithm with population size 2 and fitness sharing is polynomially bounded. Beginning with the early days of the genetic algorithm and the schema theorem it has often been argued that the crossover operator is the more important genetic operator. The early Royal Road functions were put forth as an example where crossover would excel, yet mutation based EAs were subsequently shown to experimentally outperform GAs with crossover on these functions. Recently several new Royal Roads have been introduced and proved to require expected polynomial time for GAs with crossover, while needing exponential time to optimize for mutation-only EAs. This paper does the converse, showing proofs that GAs with crossover require exponential optimization time on new Ignoble Trail functions while mutation based EAs optimize them efficiently. We reinvestigate a fundamental question: How effective is crossover in genetic algorithms in combining building blocks of good solutions? Although this has been discussed controversially for decades, we are still lacking a rigorous and intuitive answer. We provide such answers for royal road functions and OneMax, where every bit is a building block. For the latter, we show that using crossover makes every + i¾ genetic algorithm at least twice as fast as the fastest evolutionary algorithm using only standard bit mutation, up to small-order terms and for moderatei¾ andi¾ . Crossover is beneficial because it can capitalize on mutations that have both beneficial and disruptive effects on building blocks: crossover is able to repair the disruptive effects of mutation in later generations. Compared to mutation-based evolutionary algorithms, this makes multibit mutations more useful. Introducing crossover changes the optimal mutation rate on OneMax from to . This holds both for uniform crossover and k-point crossover. Experiments and statistical tests confirm that our findings apply to a broad class of building block functions. Evolutionary and genetic algorithms (EAs and GAs) are quite successful randomized function optimizers. This success is mainly based on the interaction of different operators like selection, mutation, and crossover. Since this interaction is still not well understood, one is interested in the analysis of the single operators. Jansen and Wegener [Proceedings of GECCO'2001, 2001, pp. 375-382] have described so-called real royal road functions where simple steady-state GAs have a polynomial expected optimization time while the success probability of mutation-based EAs is exponentially small even after an exponential number of steps. This success of the GA is based on the crossover operator and a population whose size is moderately increasing with the dimension of the search space. Here new real royal road functions are presented where crossover leads to a small optimization time, although the GA works with the smallest possible population size--namely 2.