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Keep–Best Reproduction: A Local Family Competition Selection Strategy and the Environment it Flourishes in

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Abstract

This paper presents a comparison of two genetic algorithms (GAs) for constrained ordering problems. The first GA uses the standard selection strategy of roulette wheel selection and generational replacement (STDS), while the second GA uses an intermediate selection strategy in addition to STDS. This intermediate selection strategy keeps only the superior offspring and replaces the inferior offspring with the superior parent. We call this selection strategy Keep–Best Reproduction (KBR). The effect of recombination alone, mutation alone and both together are studied. We compare the performance of the different selection strategies and discuss the environment that each selection strategy needs to flourish in. Overall, KBR is found to be the selection strategy of choice. We also present empirical evidence that suggests that KBR is more robust than STDS with regard to operator probabilities and works well with smaller population sizes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technical University of British Columbia—TechBC, 2400 Surrey Place, 10153 King George Highway, Surrey, B.C., Canada, V3T 2W1

    Kay C. Wiese

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Regina, 3737 Wascana Parkway, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, S4S 0A2

    Scott D. Goodwin

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  1. Kay C. Wiese
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  2. Scott D. Goodwin
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Wiese, K.C., Goodwin, S.D. Keep–Best Reproduction: A Local Family Competition Selection Strategy and the Environment it Flourishes in. Constraints 6, 399–422 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011409029226

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