Title
On the limitations of the univariate marginal distribution algorithm to deception and where bivariate EDAs might help.
Abstract
We introduce a new benchmark problem called Deceptive Leading Blocks (DLB) to rigorously study the runtime of the Univariate Marginal Distribution Algorithm (UMDA) in the presence of epistasis and deception. We show that simple Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) outperform the UMDA unless the selective pressure µ/λ is extremely high, where µ and λ are the parent and offspring population sizes, respectively. More precisely, we show that the UMDA with a parent population size of µ = Ω (log n) has an expected runtime of eΩ(µ) on the DLB problem assuming any selective pressure [EQUATION], as opposed to the expected runtime of O (nλ log λ + n3) for the non-elitist (µ, λ) EA with µ/λ ≤ 1/e. These results illustrate inherent limitations of univariate EDAs against deception and epistasis, which are common characteristics of real-world problems. In contrast, empirical evidence reveals the efficiency of the bi-variate MIMIC algorithm on the DLB problem. Our results suggest that one should consider EDAs with more complex probabilistic models when optimising problems with some degree of epistasis and deception.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1145/3299904.3340316
FOGA
Keywords
DocType
ISBN
Running time analysis,univariate marginal distribution algorithm,deception,epistasis,deceptive leading blocks,theory
Conference
978-1-4503-6254-2
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.36
0
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Per Kristian Lehre162742.60
Phan Trung Hai Nguyen2132.25