Title
Visualizing the Search Dynamics in a High-Dimensional Space for a Particle Swarm Optimizer.
Abstract
Visualization of an evolutionary algorithm may lead to better understanding of how it works. In this paper, three dimension reduction techniques (i.e. PCA, Sammon mapping, and recently developed t-SNE) are compared and analyzed empirically for visualizing the search dynamics of a particle swarm optimizer. Specifically, the search path of the global best position of a particle swarm optimizer over iterations is depicted in a low-dimensional space. Visualization results simulated on a variety of continuous functions show that (1) t-SNE could display the evolution of search path but its performance deteriorates as the dimension increases, and t-SNE tends to enlarge the search path generated during the later search stage; (2) the local search behavior (e.g. convergence to the optimum) can be identified by PCA with more stable performance than its two competitors, though for which it may be difficult to clearly depict the global search path; (3) Sammon mapping suffers easily from the overlapping problem. Furthermore, some important practical issues on how to appropriately interpret visualization results in the low-dimensional space are also highlighted.
Year
Venue
Field
2017
SEAL
Sammon mapping,Convergence (routing),Continuous function,Mathematical optimization,Dimensionality reduction,Evolutionary algorithm,Visualization,Computer science,Algorithm,Local search (optimization),Particle swarm optimizer
DocType
Citations 
PageRank 
Conference
1
0.35
References 
Authors
18
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Qiqi Duan163.13
Chang Shao210.69
Xiaodong Li342840.14
Yuhui Shi44397435.39