Evaluating alternative forms of crossover in evolutionary computation on linear systems of equations
David B. Fogel, Peter J. Angeline · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1998
Experiments are conducted to assess the utility of alternative crossover operators within a framework of evolutionary computation. Systems of linear equations are used for testing the efficiency of one-point, two-point, and uniform crossover. The results indicate that uniform crossover, which disrupts building blocks maximally, generates statistically significantly better solutions than one- or two-point crossover. Moreover, for the cases of small population sizes, crossing over existing solutions with completely random solutions can perform as well or better than the traditional one- and two-point operators.