A Rigorous Evaluation of Crossover and Mutation in Genetic Programming

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Abstract

The role of crossover and mutation in Genetic Programming (GP) has been the subject of much debate since thee emergence of the field. In this paper, we contribute new empirical evidence to this argument using a rigorous and principled experimental method applied to six problems common in the GP literature. The approach tunes the algorithm parameters to enable a fair and objective comparison of two different GP algorithms, the first using a combination of crossover and reproduction, and secondly using a combination of mutation and reproduction. We find that crossover does not significantly outperform mutation on most of the problems examined. In addition, we demonstrate that the use of a straight forward Design of Experiments methodology is effective at tuning GP algorithm parameters.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationGENETIC PROGRAMMING
EditorsL Vanneschi, S Gustafson, A Moraglio, I DeFalco, M Ebner
Place of PublicationBERLIN
PublisherSpringer
Pages220-231
Number of pages12
Volume5481 LNCS
ISBN (Print)978-3-642-01180-1
Publication statusPublished - 2009
Event12th European Conference on Genetic Programming - Tubingen
Duration: 15 Apr 200917 Apr 2009

Conference

Conference12th European Conference on Genetic Programming
CityTubingen
Period15/04/0917/04/09

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