Locality vs. Randomness - Dependence of Operator Quality on the Search State.
Karsten Weicker, Nicole Weicker · 1998
By analyzing mutation operators' behavior through their effect on the tness only, fundamental statements on the interplay of the operator's quality and the state of the search process are enabled for arbitrary optimization problems with arbitrary discrete search spaces. First, it is observed that the defined operator quality has a direct effect on hill climbing search. Moreover, an operator's locality property influences its quality depending on the fitness level. This leads to the major result that a local operator cannot be valued without considering the search state.