Estimation-of-Distribution Algorithms for Multi-Valued Decision Variables
Firas Ben Jedidia, Benjamin Doerr, Martin S. Krejca · Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference · 2023
With apparently all research on estimation-of-distribution algorithms (EDAs) concentrated on pseudo-Boolean optimization and permutation problems, we undertake the first steps towards using EDAs for problems in which the decision variables can take more than two values, but which are not permutation problems. To this aim, we propose a natural way to extend the known univariate EDAs to such variables. Different from a naïve reduction to the binary case, it avoids additional constraints.