Wolves in sheep's clothing? The effects of “hidden”parental mutation on genetic algorithm performance
Theodore P. Hoehn · 1998
A novel, modified GA is proposed in which mutation occurs not only following selection (i.e., in offspring) but also at the parental level, between evaluation and selection of population members.Effects of such mutation are not phenotypically expressed in the parents.Rather, they are "hidden" within the parental genotypes.Only in the succeeding generation are these altered genotypes expressed phenotypically.Four GAS, the "standard" GA and three variants of the proposed parental mutation GA, were tested and compared in two experiments.Results clearly indicate that, with or without an elitist selection policy, inclusion of such mutation within a GA does not in general adversely affect its performance.Indeed, a variable-rate parental mutation GA was found to facilitate overall performance (with respect to best phenotypes produced) relative to that of the standard GA; under certain conditions, improvements in performance with the two other, constant-rate, parental mutation GAS also were evidenced.Furthermore, results suggest that the proposed GA should be comparatively resistant to premature convergence.