Abstract
Choosing a good representation is a vital component of solving any search problem. However, choosing a good representation for a problem is as difficult as choosing a good search algorithm for a problem. Wolpert and Мacready’s No Free Lunch theorem proves that no search algorithm is better than any other over all possible discrete functions. We elaborate on the No Free Lunch theorem by proving that there tend to be a small set of points that occur as local optima under almost all representations. Along with the analytical results, we provide some empirical evaluation of two representations commonly used in genetic algorithms: Binary Reflected Gray coding and standard Binary encoding.
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References
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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Rana, S., Whitley, L.D. (1999). Search, Binary Representations and Counting Optima. In: Davis, L.D., De Jong, K., Vose, M.D., Whitley, L.D. (eds) Evolutionary Algorithms. The IMA Volumes in Mathematics and its Applications, vol 111. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1542-4_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1542-4_10
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