The alpha male genetic algorithm
Zvi Drezner, Taly Dawn Drezner · IMA Journal of Management Mathematics · 2018
We mimic alpha male social structure, which is common in many species of animals, for designing genetic algorithms. The population of solutions is partitioned into a number of social groups. One member of each is assigned alpha male status and the rest are reproductive females. A generation is defined as females producing one offspring each. Once all the females produce one offspring each, new groups are formed and one member of each is selected as the alpha male for the next generation. The procedure was extensively tested on instances of the quadratic assignment problem. We obtained better solutions using the same computer run time and found two new best known solutions, confirming the effectiveness of the alpha male approach.