Fitness-Proportional Negative Slope Coefficient is a fitness landscapes measure that has recently been introduced as a potential indicator of problem hardness for optimisation. It is inspired to an older measure, the Negative Slope Coefficient, and it has been theoretically modelled. Preliminary experiments have suggested that it may be a good predictor of problem hardness. However, this measure has not undergone any convincing and comprehensive empirical testing. Our objective is to fill this gap. So, we perform empirical tests using a large set of invertible functions of unitation. We find that while this measure may correctly predict the degree of evolvability of a landscape, this does not necessarily correlate with the difficulty of problems. Some landscapes may show, for example, limited evolvability and yet be easy to solve because either solutions are already present in the initial population or the computational resources provided exceed evolvability obstacles. Or it may be impossible to solve them irrespective of their evolvability simply because they are far too vast for the computational resources provided. These situations are hardly captured by the Fitness-Proportional Negative Slope Coefficient.

Poli, R., Valsecchi, A., Vanneschi, L. (2009). Limitations of the fitness-proportional negative slope coefficient as a difficulty measure. In Proceedings of the 11th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2009 (pp.1877-1878). New York : ACM [10.1145/1569901.1570212].

Limitations of the fitness-proportional negative slope coefficient as a difficulty measure

VALSECCHI, ANDREA;VANNESCHI, LEONARDO
2009

Abstract

Fitness-Proportional Negative Slope Coefficient is a fitness landscapes measure that has recently been introduced as a potential indicator of problem hardness for optimisation. It is inspired to an older measure, the Negative Slope Coefficient, and it has been theoretically modelled. Preliminary experiments have suggested that it may be a good predictor of problem hardness. However, this measure has not undergone any convincing and comprehensive empirical testing. Our objective is to fill this gap. So, we perform empirical tests using a large set of invertible functions of unitation. We find that while this measure may correctly predict the degree of evolvability of a landscape, this does not necessarily correlate with the difficulty of problems. Some landscapes may show, for example, limited evolvability and yet be easy to solve because either solutions are already present in the initial population or the computational resources provided exceed evolvability obstacles. Or it may be impossible to solve them irrespective of their evolvability simply because they are far too vast for the computational resources provided. These situations are hardly captured by the Fitness-Proportional Negative Slope Coefficient.
paper
limitations, fitness, proportional, negative, slope, coefficient, difficulty, measure
English
11th Annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation 11th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2009
2009
Proceedings of the 11th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2009
9781605583259
2009
1877
1878
none
Poli, R., Valsecchi, A., Vanneschi, L. (2009). Limitations of the fitness-proportional negative slope coefficient as a difficulty measure. In Proceedings of the 11th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2009 (pp.1877-1878). New York : ACM [10.1145/1569901.1570212].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10281/16084
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