Explicitly Defined Introns and Destructive Crossover in Genetic Programming
Peter Nordin, Frank D. Francone, Wolfgang Banzhaf · The MIT Press eBooks · 1996
In Genetic Programming, introns play at least two substantial roles: (1) A structural protection role, allowing the population to preserve highly-fit building blocks; and (2) A global protection role, enabling an individual to protect itself almost entirely against the destructive effect of crossover. We introduce Explicitly Defined Introns into Genetic Programming. Our results suggest that the introduction of Explicitly Defined Introns can improve fitness, generalization, and CPU time. Further, Explicitly Defined Introns partially replace the role of Implicit Introns ( that is, introns that emerge from crossover and mutation without being explicitly defined as such). Finally, Explicitly Defined Introns and Implicit Introns appear, in some situations, to work in tandem to produce better training, fitness and generalization than occurs without Explicitly Defined Introns. 1 Introduction Introns are an important part of the genomes of eucaryotic cells. In some genes, up to 70 %...