Bridging Elementary Landscapes and a Geometric Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms: First Steps

Abstract

Based on a geometric theory of evolutionary algorithms, it was shown that all evolutionary algorithms equipped with a geometric crossover and no mutation operator do the same kind of convex search across representations, and that they are well-matched with generalised forms of concave fitness landscapes for which they provably find the optimum in polynomial time [13]. Analysing the landscape structure is essential to understand the relationship between problems and evolutionary algorithms. This paper continues such investigations by considering the following challenge: develop an analytical method to recognise that the fitness landscape for a given problem provably belongs to a class of concave fitness landscapes. Elementary landscapes theory provides analytic algebraic means to study the landscape structure [15]. This work begins linking both theories to better understand how such method could be devised using elementary landscapes. Examples on the well known One Max, Leading Ones, Not-All-Equal Satisfiability and Weight Partition problems illustrate the fundamental concepts supporting this approach.