Automatic Grammar Complexity Reduction in Grammatical Evolution
Miguel Nicolau · Research Repository UCD (University College Dublin) · 2004
Abstract. Grammatical Evolution is an automatic programming system, where a population of binary strings is evolved, from which phenotype strings are generated through a mapping process, that employs a grammar to define the syntax of such output strings. This paper presents a study of the effect of grammar size and complexity on the performance of the system. A simple method to reduce the number of non-terminal symbols in a grammar is presented, along with the reasoning behind it. Results obtained on a series of problems suggest that performance can be increased with the approach presented. 1