Futility-based offspring sizing
André Chidi Nwamba, Daniel R. Tauritz · 2009
Parameter control in evolutionary algorithms (EAs) has been shown to be beneficial; however, the control of offspring size has so far received very little attention. This paper introduces Futility-Based Offspring Sizing (FuBOS), a method for controlling offspring size on a per generation basis without even requiring the user to set an initial offspring size value. We show that on several complex problems, an EA employing FuBOS performs on par with a highly tuned, fixed offspring size EA while being far more efficient in terms of fitness evaluations and much easier to tune as well.