Prof. Marjan Mernik

Direct Measuring of Exploration and Exploitation in Evolutionary Algorithms using Attraction Basin-based measures

Abstract:

Evolutionary Algorithms mimic natural processes, such as selection, crossover, and mutation, to solve various optimisation problems. To properly apply Evolutionary Algorithms, a deep understanding of various selection, crossover and mutation operators is required. However, exploration and exploitation are crucial steps and even more essential concepts for any search algorithm. On the other hand, these fundamental concepts are not very well understood among researchers and practitioners. Furthermore, directly measuring exploration and exploitation is an open problem in Evolutionary Computation. In this talk, I will first introduce the basic ingredients of evolutionary algorithms, highlight the problems and mistakes that inexperienced users encounter, and discuss their various applications. In the second part of my talk, I will introduce a novel direct measure of exploration and exploitation based on attraction basins — regions of a search space where each region has a point, called an attractor, to which neighbouring points tend to evolve. Each search point can be associated with a particular attraction basin. If a newly generated search point belongs to the same attraction basin as its parent, the search process is considered exploitation; otherwise, exploration. In the last part, I will show how newly developed exploration and exploitation measures can be used to analyse different evolutionary algorithms.

Profile:

Marjan Mernik received the MSc and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Maribor in 1994 and 1998, respectively. He is currently a professor at the University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. From 2007 to 2017, he was a visiting professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His research interests include programming languages, domain-specific (modelling) languages, grammar and semantic inference, and evolutionary computations. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Computer Languages, as well as an Associate Editor of the Applied Soft Computing Journal and Swarm and Evolutionary Computation Journal. He has been named a Highly Cited Researcher for the years 2017 and 2018. More information about his work is available at https://lpm.feri.um.si/en/members/mernik/.